I recently went camping for the first time this year and was reminded of how much I love it. I love waking up in a tent, a thin nylon fabric between me and the wild. I love the freedom of having everything I need for a few days packed into a car: house, kitchen, living room. What I love the most, however, are the fires. I’ve improved my fire-building skills over the years, although it took me several walks into the woods and some swear words the first night. I can sit and stare into a fire for hours, and I find there is something very deeply comforting about it. It feels like ancient ancestors are reaching through the embers to remind me of a fundamental part of myself. A part that is connected to the earth and to life itself, deeper and beyond the details of my personality and culture.

I’m lucky because connecting to these things is, essentially, my job. Words are powerful, but they can also turn us in circles and confuse us. Often what I’m asked to do is take language, words that organizations write or that leaders say, and turn them into visuals that convey something beyond words.

A picture is worth a thousand words – an overdone cliché but true nonetheless. Sometimes a picture takes the form of a story. Ernest Hemingway was famously challenged to create an entire short story in six words. His answer "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." tells a story that a description of the situation could never do justice. A story brings the reader into a world in a way that reporting and facts cannot.

In my world, it can even be as simple as color and font. Take Sierra Club’s homepage message: “Fight for the Planet.” While a fierce message in words alone, visuals can add nuance that would take many words to convey. In the example below, the top blue and green version makes one think of fighting through letter-writing and voting. The second brings to mind visions of direct action and standing in front of bulldozers.

This is the work I love. I’m an intuitive person and I see my work as being in conversation with the humanity that we all share. Even if I’m not sleeping in the forest, I get to listen to the issues people care most about and hear the emotion in their voices. When kicking off a new project, I love to ask the question “why do you care about your work?” Since I work with social changemakers I usually get pretty impassioned answers. Then I take that passion and translate it into something that will move others. If the work I do in collaboration with social change organizations makes people FEEL then we’ve done our job well.

Being in nature rejuvenates me (even if it’s at a campground with a noisy troop of scouts roasting marshmallows nearby). It reconnects me to myself and my humanity. I love being recharged and ready to work together to create compelling, engaging communications that get people’s attention.

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