Justin Mezzell (Occasionally) Blogs

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  This week, I and a number of other designers will be spending the week in San Francisco for a week we’re calling Field Trip made possible by The Lost Type Co-Op & our friends at MailChimp. This is the what and why.

  We’re living in an increasingly remote society where our coworkers are no longer our cube-mates and our drinking buddies needn’t share the same tap. It’s an age where the traditional rules, regulations, and politics of the office space are not only in question, but rather their very existence seems most at home as fringe fodder. The changing face of the workforce—most notably our increasingly digital culture has enabled cooperation and collaboration to the extent which seemed hardly plausible a decade ago. International connectivity is no longer a pipe dream for the wander-hungry, but a living, breathing reality for the taking.

  The human story is changing. It’s evolving. Our connectivity is making my stories your stories. Your history, my future. And story is essential to the human condition.

  Field Trip is a brief opportunity to be part of that story—to entwine our own experiences together and be an active role in another’s. As designers, the stories we tell are so incredibly vital to the human narrative and while I agree we’re not curing cancer, I would also argue that makes our part in this world no less a facet of the story. Field Trip is the chance to not only tell our stories or hear others’ stories, but an opportunity to birth new ones. New concepts, ideas and an exchange of that which lies beyond our own bodies of work. It’s the chance to build when there is time to build and simply be when there is time to be. Field Trip isn’t a stage-centered conference built around listening, it’s an organically leveled time of collaboration and hands-on interaction. Learning through being.

  Let’s take the time to remember those things which bring us together and also those gifts of a pluralistic age where we can embrace our differences. Inside and outside of design. By coming together, perhaps we can tell better, newer stories based on the experiences of a week spent outside the walls of familiarity.

  6 Jun 2012