If I Show You About Myself, Will You Stay?

I wanted to question how connected we are to each other. But let me tell you, in that question statement alone, the word to be understood is "connection." What does it mean to have connection? What is connection? At what point does it happen? Why do we sometimes know when it happens and sometimes we don't recognize it taking place?

If I had known that questioning connectedness would lead to so many more questions, perhaps I would have done the smart, safe thing and run completely away from the idea! I have found more questions than I have time for and more questions then I have personal experience to relate to. This is the challenge that comes with designing concepts. But by this point I have asked a hard question and I'm committed to not understanding it fully but still effectively communicating what I do know about it.

So, back to "what does it mean to have connection?" Let me walk you through my brainstorm analysis:

Connection - to connect - to belong.
That's about as far as I got before I panicked and consulted wisdom of the lady who started me on this questioning journey - Brené Brown (and specifically this article) - who I respect and admire for her dedication to unravelling hard and sometimes subjective life concepts.

She says:

“I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.” - Brené Brown

"They feel seen, heard, and valued.... can give and receive without judgement." 
Ok, so then I figured that connection is asking the question: can I be known and can I be safe in who I am? But then I had to ask: what does it look like to be known? (At this point the questions are questioning themselves, incase you haven't noticed).

What does it mean to be known?
We use social media to know about people. "Connection" is the manifesto of social media but what if that's not what is really happening? What if social media connection is being confused with options for isolation? To have the ability to show our lives to people as a highlight reel of the good times (or the attention-seeking times..), or to show what looks put together. We can show people what we want them to see but then are we truly known? There are many stats and studies that suggest a greater disconnect, a greater loneliness as a result of this process. In this case, if we accept the social media type of connection as entirely connection then are we settling for counterfeit connection in the end? (At this point the questions are real deep and wildly unresolved).

Next thought:
˙ǝʌᴉʇɔǝdsɹǝd ʍǝu ɐ pǝǝu I

I have recently become obsessed with the idea of looking at the presence of something through the lens of that same thing's absence. So if I seem to be getting no where and everywhere with reflecting on connection, what happens if I consider occurrences of disconnection? 
And the same many questions follow.

In this journey the conclusion I have come to is that letting other people see you is an act of your own will. You choose to let people in and to share with them. If you want people to know you, you have to tell them about yourself. All of this is vulnerability and all of vulnerability is scary and no WONDER we settle for any kind of other counterfeit connection.

And so I have decided my final statement in all of this. It requires vulnerability. It is an exchange between people that will allow connection. It is a question (go figure), but just like how choosing to show yourself to another person requires action, so then does the response of the other. Their response is important - it's the thing we're scared of. And so,

Connection asks: if I show you about myself, will you stay?

(What does it mean to "stay?" Just kidding! I'm stopping the questions right this very minute but this one intrigues me quite a lot and I'd be lying to say I won't revisit it again sometime.)

Elegant design over exact implication

Elegant design over exact implication

Design as a communication-oriented discipline

Despite all the negative connotations, persuasion is not necessarily an underhanded device, but rather a socially acceptable form of reasoning.

Because all human communication is, in one way or another, infiltrated rhetorically, design for visual or verbal communication cannot be exempt from that fact.

According to Quintilian, rhetorical figures generate rules that can be looked upon as means of "lending credibility to our arguments" and "exciting the emotions."

He also considered the use of these figures as "the art of saying something in a new form" to give a message greater vitality and impact.

"Well-chosen words deserve well-chosen letters"

Typography as a concept is like clothing. The sizes, colours, and shapes may change with the trends but our need for clothing will not. Likewise, sometimes we notice outfits and pairings of clothing items and sometimes we don't. Noticing outfits can be the result a good choice, or a bad choice - one that suggests it might be laundry day and we just threw on whatever was still clean.

In my experience, strong typography always stirs the same reaction in me. A breath.
I get the sense that Bringhurst would understand my reaction from reading his description of the power of typography. A piece with strong typography lets me breathe, lets me rest. I know the difference between looking at a document and panicking and looking at a document and taking a breath.
This may sound dramatic but if I am presented with one of these take-a-breath documents, I feel loved. I feel like the designer created space for me and that they considered me, their reader, when they wrote/designed.

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"Well-chosen words deserve well-chosen letters" (again, Bringhurst)

I was once asked to write an article for a newsletter that is distributed all over Alberta. It took me a full day to write and I cried over it. I'm not a crier but I'll tell you why I was overwhelmed to the point of tears: The sheer weight of words.
I somehow understood that my words held value and that my audience was as broad as people that can read. I was asked to share my experience. Sharing meaning vulnerability. These are scary things! I remember how then, and many times since, I chose my words so very carefully, almost painfully. My story doesn't end in some disaster of my article being printed in some shockingly bad typeface (cough*chalkduster*cough) but these words of Bringhurst caught my attention because I have also known well-chosen words and I can appreciate the importance of the letters they are given.

Placing a typeface on text gives it an identity. Not in a mask-wearing, new outfit kind of way but in a representation of the text's meaning kind of way.

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Bringhurst suggests that typography should perform these services for the reader:

//   invite the reader into the text;
//   reveal the tenor and meaning of the text;
//   clarify the structure and the order of the text;
//   link the text with other existing elements;
//   induce a state of energetic repose, which is the ideal condition for reading.

I'm including these in hopeful anticipation of some stray reader understanding the importance of at least knowing about typography as a thing to be considered. Admittedly, it's importance, existence, and necessity was all lost on me prior to learning the process of what it takes to design a new typeface.
I'm also including these in hopeful anticipation that I will return often to these typographic truths. I want to let people breathe and make them feel considered in my work.

Data is Both Number and Value

What kind of data would make me want to tell stories?

In answering this question, I need to first understand why we tell stories. Does it always need to have a meaning or a moral? If it is argued that it doesn’t need this kind of purpose, is there any good reason for telling a story? Is this, perhaps, the difference between unnecessary noise and valuable information?

I think that stories are influential in any sense because they impact our emotions. They cause our reaction. It touches our values – the core of our personhood.

If this is the case, I want to deal with data that impressed upon values. Then, some values are subjective; others still, are objective. I have my personal set of beliefs and values and you surely do to. These are three questions I’m challenging myself to understand when deciding to tell stories:

1. What things make me come alive?
2. What cause(s) can I imagine myself, if not now but in the future, excellent at living in defense of?
3. What is the problem in the world that I am meant to solve?

It’s not easy to answer these questions and it takes, as I’m learning, a life time of searching, experiencing, self-awareness, anticipating, reacting, forgetting, and re-learning.

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Now, in the direction of becoming more concrete:

I read a quote recently that described people as “drowning in information while starving for wisdom.” This is where I will begin my discussion of what kind of data would make me want to tell stories.