Last week I met a young girl who was doing some cool stuff: she started a business, a hip little shop selling indoor plants. And she’s doing pretty well, opening a second location soon. What led her to start a plant shop?
While in design school she worked on a project that included plants, and she was hooked.
Why was she in design school?
She had begun by studying photojournalism, but realized she wasn’t great at it and she was losing interest. So she switched to “industrial design.”
I asked her, “have you ever seen the film, Objectified?”
“Yes!” she exclaimed. “It was after watching that movie that I decided to study industrial design!”
So here’s a cool young hipster girl doing cool hipster stuff with plants…and one of the main “tipping points” that led her to do all of this came from a film. Do you think she ever sent the filmmaker a note saying, “Your work inspired me and now I’m doing all this really cool stuff?” Probably not. I wouldn’t have. The same director, Gary Hustwit, was one of my inspirations behind PlantPop, and I’ve never thought to share that with him. Why would I?
You’ll never know what influence your work will have, but you should set out to make whatever you make so that it will have a positive and inspiring influence. Lets’ just assume it will change peoples’ lives for the better. Just don’t expect to ever get confirmation.