Hi I’m Gagan Diesh and I am one of the instructors that tormented and tortured your loved ones over the last few months.

DD04 like every class before them has gone through hell and back in 48 short weeks. Their days have blended into nights; their weeks have been a whirlwind of assignments, deliverables and designs. So on behalf of DD04, I would like to thank the mums and dads, boyfriends and girlfriends, friends and for allowing [names withheld to respect privacy], to disappear for the last year. So thank you family, thank you friends.

The point is that the Digital Design program is a lot of hard work and you have survived it, so congrats. You have made it to the finish line!

When I heard that I was invited to speak at tonight’s grad, I really had to think about what I had left to say to you guys. I just hosted that Freelancing workshop last week and had shared my advice about work and ethics then. And I got the opportunity to work with each of you individually and collectively throughout the year, so what was left to say?

So… instead of just my words to you, I thought I would use the words of some mighty people that inspire me and keep me going.

I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn’t like it.
— Samuel Goldwyn

“The details are not the details. They make the design.”
—Charles Eames

“Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that’s why it is so complicated.”
—Paul Rand

Dare to be naive.
— R. Buckminster Fuller

…it’s very easy to be different, but very difficult to be better.
— Jonathan Ive

Common sense is not so common.
— Voltaire

If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.
— Red Adair

Why am I telling you all this?

I just to remind you of the responsibility that sits on your shoulders. You now have the power to change the world that we live in.

We have entered the age of design where everyone has the tools available to them to design things. Whether it is a webpage or the architecture of a house. Everyone can design if they choose to do so. Design is now the property and prerogative of everyone. Design is now in the hand of the masses and in that lays great opportunity and danger. We see the world becoming a homogenous mass of sameness. The culture of Wal-Mart and the Gap leads to the horrible blandness of dressing the same, listening to the same music, on the same mp3 player and holding the same idols up as our heroes. Sure everyone can self-publish their life but they are choosing to tell their life through mass produced generic templates. Everyone can take millions of photos but do people think about what they want to say before they take a photo anymore? Everyone can exercise their right to vote and choose their leaders but are they really thinking about their choices or choosing the one that says the things that are easiest to understand.

You are the expert and you can make this world a better place to live in. We have given up on politician and celebrities to affect change. You are the chosen ones who can make things work; You can design things that are incredibly simple or beautiful. You have to help people find things they don’t even know they need, yet. Invent and Innovate.

So as you step in the real world just remember that it is full of choices. You had only a few choices at VFS and there was only one main highway that lead you to this place today. But life is not like that. You have many forks and decision points ahead of you. You have a few battles ahead, and success is not graded equally for all. You need to define your own futures and decide what success will mean to you personally. But don’t wait to make the right decision, to take the right path—just don’t wait. Just do. Really, action is better than waiting. You have prepared for 48 weeks and you are now ready to take flight.

I just hope that whatever you do, you will do with your own individual style. Don’t look to fit in but create your own niche. Don’t obey but shout out your point of view. Don’t go to the big design party that everyone is going to, but throw your own.

I fear sameness as much as I do beige. Imitation is a great start but that’s not where you want to end up. And if you imitate, I hope you’d look to imitate the work of giants who came before you, not the person who is sitting to the right or left of you. If your work is to be informed by things that you know, you should probably be on a quest to know more, learn more. Be curious, be inquisitive, and be darn right nosy. You can become one of many or you can be one of the few. The choice is yours.

All this said, I hope you are inspired by your own abilities and I want you to know that I am looking forward to continuing to work with most of you. Welcome to world of being a professional designer. Before I let you off to go and change the world I would like you to stand up and take the designer oath with me. Face the audience, they are part of the big group of people you will design for in the future. So speak to them directly and say after me…

The Designer Oath:

I will design for you. I will use my powers for good. I will be your advocate. I will make work that matters. I will try and improve our lives. I will have the courage to lead. And I will have the flexibility to follow. I will listen to both my heart and mind. In short, I will kick ass! Peace out.

I wanted to be skilled in the media of creative production,
wanted to become adept with tools that could deliver my art. I wanted
to act as a bridge for those who were disenfranchised from the luxuries
of media production, and provide their stories a means to be seen and
heard instead of being drowned out by the din of corporate advertising
and homogenized entertainment. So I enrolled in the VFS Digital Design program,
despite the fact that I had had only used my computer for writing
poetry, and the extent of my familiarity with the web involved checking
email and occasional haphazard browsing.

With an excess of faith in myself and not too much forethought, I
jumped on the digital bus, and found myself suddenly committed to a
great and grueling passage, a blur of insomniac nights editing videos
and crash courses in software languages that felt as foreign to me as
Chinese. It was digital boot camp. Learning HTML made me want to tear
off my nose. Photoshop made me weak in the knees. The magic of
cinematography, lighting, sound, editing, motion graphics made me
tremble. It was the way I had felt holding a paintbrush for the first
time; as if the gates were opening out of a small grey world, into an
infinitely vivid and endless landscape. I now had the potential of
creating fluid alchemical multimedia compositions that communicated what
words or static images alone could not.

But it is one thing to be five years old and delving into new media;
it is another to feel like a clumsy novice when you are pushing thirty.
My ego took a nosedive. This was furthered by the fact that most of my
compatriots were far more experienced than I, whereas I was a beginner
at all of them. I felt like I had been thrust into a graduate course in
trigonometry without ever having learned how to add or subtract.

Then, suddenly, we graduated. We dispersed, some returning to native
lands to seek employment, to Korea, San Francisco, New York, Venezuela,
Mexico. My girlfriend and I got evicted because the landlord sold our
house. I spent a few transient weeks wandering beaches, staring at
seaweed and mumbling to myself about blending modes. Then I started
taking photos of the seaweed and playing with them in Photoshop and
waking early with my video camera ready, to shoot the crows flying over
the house at dawn. Slowly, with the recovery of relatively normal
eating and sleeping patterns, the deeper realization of the potential
applications of all I had learned sank in. Once overwhelming tools of
media were finally beginning to feel familiar, I was writing again,
drawing again, breathing again.

I got freelance work, here and there, mostly volunteered to
non-profits with high values and low budgets. I dug deep into my
pockets, bought a new shirt, and went to interviews looking sharp. To
no avail. The businesses that had the capacity to pay me were, in most
cases, whose total lack of social or environmental ethics sickened me.
I had made it through an agonizing year of training in the incredible
media of creation and communication only to get slammed by the fact
that, in this world, skilled people are generally hired by companies
who are proud to include Nike and Coca-Cola on their client list. Since
I was fifteen after researching sweatshops, I had wanted to blow Nike
up. My morning reading of the alternative press told me about kids in
India that were suffering diseases from dehydration, now that Coke had
opened a factory near their village, sucked up their water supply and
polluted their aquifer. I did not want to sell out.

Moreover, when prospects came to me, I was afflicted by hesitation.
I knew I could excel in this field, I knew I possessed a unique
perspective and talent, but I felt like I was trying to get a job
building rocket ships after a few courses in mechanics. I cursed the
Digital Design program for being only one year long and cursed myself
for not building my skills up beforehand. I needed more time to become
adept with these complex and powerful media before meeting professional
demands, let alone being picky about job offers, but I also needed an
income.
So I wrestled with the demons of my doubts as I struggled with the
dilemma of what to compromise in order to achieve security. Tightened
my belt, sucked up my pride, and asked my mother to lend me money for
another month.
At long last, I found two glimmers of hope:

1. I made contact with a producer who expressed deep interest in my
   proposal for a documentary on leaders of the global peace movement.
   With a successful track record behind her company, she seemed confident
   that funding could be obtained.
2. Simultaneously, I discovered that the deadline for the national production program with the CFTPA

   was December 16th. In another three months (after my birthday) I would
   be ineligible. I had one shot. This mentorship would enable me to offer
   my skills to a production company that may prioritize social and
   political progress over its profit margin. The CFTPA would cover the bulk of my salary.

My path, which had been buried under thick fog for three months, was coming clear.

And this is where I find myself, reckoning with self-realization, in the dark Vancouver winter.
Still sitting in internet coffee shops, spending countless hours
preparing and revising my letters of intent, tailoring emails to
potential references, and doing my very best to tackle this vision of a
life in which my work, my gifts, my art, my politics and my soul can
manifest in a world that so often seems bizarre and berserk to me.
Still burning the wick at both ends, editing footage of birds and
vagabonds, doing After Effects tutorials, making art. Proceeding.
Sometimes falling flat on my face. Sometimes with full throttle
faith.