It’s been a while since I’ve introduced myself and checked in here. Hello! I’m Natalie and I make the stuff you see here and lots of other stuff too.
I’ve really been struggling with making recently. It’s been a hard year. It’s been a hard year for all of us, for the world. But I think this particular block had been building long before I’d ever heard of COVID-19.
The lyrics from a teenhood favourite song have been on a loop in my head.
This is almost certainly my brain’s way of telling me I’m burnt out and I’m listening. I’m setting boundaries, saying no and taking time to rest. But I also think it’s a sign that I’m struggling with not having a clear direction for my work.
For the past five years, I’ve been a really lame version of Clark Kent. I don my best reporter worthy outfit to work as a design researcher, largely on brilliant and serious government service design projects. Then when the internet calls I don my spandex (read pyjamas) and become someone who illustrates and tells visual stories online. Each of those identities have been running separately and they’ve been running in different directions, tearing me apart in the process.
Now it’s time to just be one person.
I’ve tried in the past to define a set of values of a direction I thought would unify my work. But my 2019 mission statement now feels like a relic of who I thought I should be and what I thought I should be making. I don’t think anything I had on that list was bad or wrong. They’re all qualities that I strive to embody in my work. But I could only ever strive for them. They were too big, too nebulous, too generic. My work can never be everything. The only thing I can guarantee is that it will be mine. So right now I’m more interested in having something I can hold that encourages me to be who I am and to make the work I can make best while enjoying myself.
Right now that looks something like this.
I am a design researcher and illustrator (all of the time).
I am a person who uses visual storytelling to bring human centered research, inclusive services and interesting conversations to life.
I make work that is inquisitive, structured, honest, inclusive and connected.
I’m excited by those values. They are a north star I can use. I can measure myself and my choices against them. I can use them to say no to the work that doesn’t serve me and to make the work I do the best it can be to serve others.
Despite being only a few words it’s taken me a long while to get here. There was a lot of reflection behind each choice.
Inquisitive – I want to make work that reflects how much I love to ask questions, that’s not settled and makes people want to know more.
Structured – I want to make work that is rooted in method and rigour, and that uses structure to hold stories together.
Honest – I want to make work that tells the truth, even when it’s hard.
Inclusive – I want to make work that actively welcomes people in and that supports belonging for more people.
Connected – I want to make work that is connected to its context and real life, but that also makes its own connections bringing new things together.
The process I went through leant heavily on brilliant work done by other people. I can’t prescribe steps because I think that working these things out is hugely personal. But I benefited hugely from Meg Lewis’s talks and workbook, talking to the wonderful Hollie Arnett, and this blog post by Emily Bazalgette. They all take quite different approaches and I think I needed all of those different ways to make enough cracks in the problem that I could get to the heart of it.
It was a messy process. But all process is, and it’s the best part.
So I want to reintroduce myself at the start of the next phase of this process. I’m ready to embrace the next phase of mess and then look back on it in a few years and see how that version of me in the world compares with this version.
