When Tibor said I pursue the blissful moment of coming up with an idea, he essentially wrote the designers creed. This pursuit of bliss becomes more rewarding when we invest our personal lives into it. And when we do that, our own system of ethics and ideals becomes a part of the work we produce. We can honor that creed by being selective about the clients we work with and by collaborating with other designers.
At reeve+jones design, I developed the Sigmund Typeface Utility to speed up the process of creating bitmap letters for use in design comps. While I was developing it, I realized that it could be used online to display the typeface dynamically and thereby expand beyond some limitations of the web.
It has now evolved into the epitome of a collaborative web for now other designers have used it to create "UNDESIGN IN ORBIT," an accomplishment that would have never happened without the vision and talents of others.
The internet was created and nurtured by social responsibility. Web developers can attribute half of our knowledge to the view source button. Many of the dot-coms haven't embraced this concept and have focused instead on exclusionary practices that protect profits; which is why they jumped on the bandwagon too late and why they were the first to fall off. The few who are left are irresponsibly patenting mundane technology, filing frivolous lawsuits, and disputing domain names. This type of behavior has stifled the growth of the internet. It is our social responsibility to counter such irresponsible behavior by devoting our time and effort to community and open source projects.