stories of a journeyman

One morning in my garden in Addis Ababa, drinking coffe, reading the newspaper…feeling something strange on my foot – a praying mantis trying to get some shadow. Couldn’t get the camera fast enough so this weird animal already got off my foot when I reached the momentcapturer. Nevertheless, we spent some fun time together.

…yeah, pretty fast editing, I know.

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Well, there you go. Already stressed out by deadlines.
It’s been one and a half weeks since I met the guys from the museum und the Foto Fest. The first couple of days were pretty relaxed, nothing much to do except for riding around the city, taking part in meetings and going out for coffee or beer. It happened again that I accidently ended up in a meeting with a partner ( The Intercontinental Hotel ) of the Addis Foto Fest but better prepared this time – no Sandals, no Death Metal T-shirt that I wore in a meeting with the main sponsor of the Kuala Lumpur Design Week earlier this year.

Last week then it started to get busy. I had an actual job to do. A member of the modern art museum drove me to 6 different spots of the huge University for a photoshooting. Mostly architecture but also some people, mainly students.
Right after the shooting I started to design 2 brochures, one for an inauguration of all those Design Schools I was taking photos at and one for the Modern art Museum which is going to work as a template for the future.

One of the things I still have to get used to, is the way of communicating in Ethiopia. It’s not mainly the e-mail that is used to keep people, colleagues or staff up to date, because internet is not as spread as it is in other countries. Of course there are internet cafés and you also can get one of those usb surfings sticks but it’s not like every institution has internet access. It is the phone that keeps people together and the situation of a face-to-face meeting. Kinda hard to deal with that if you just want to present a fast design for which you don’t need a face-to-face meeting. On the other hand you get more out of it than you would from a fast mail-reply that says “good” or “go on” which is a clear statement but also non-sense. Because in the end, when you are finally meeting in a face-to-face situation with a customer or your boss, there are always things to change in a design that could have been done much earlier if the e-mail responder took his or her time for a more detailled answer. This web correspondence thing really gives us the opportunity to do much more and talk to many more people than ever before ( myself is doing the same and any other person who has internet access does it – it’s human! ). And I’m not referring to all this everyone-has-many-friends-on-social-networks-but-they-are-not-real-friends-CRAP! I’m talking about work. I realized after my 5 different jobs in 5 differnt countries, that my work was much more efficient when I was actually being together with the people I worked with. Plus, it was way more relaxed and I stayed focused on relevant things.

Now you would think “Yeah, nice! But how am I gonna tell my customer I wanna hang out with him to be more efficient?” and guess what, I don’t have an answer to that. And maybe your customer is such an asshole, that you DON’T WANT to hang out with him. And then there are people who think efficiency means getting a shitload of work done with more focus on much and less on good.

In the end, beside all the exciting things I see in those countries I travel and the adventures I experience, that’s why Ienjoy this Design-Journey, because I CAN CHOOSE MY CUSTOMER TO HANG OUT WITH. Pure luxury! And so far, my choice has always been a good one.

Back to work
fabsn

// Note // Things that never change: Stress before deadlines!

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The interior view of the cultural center at the University of Addis Ababa. The pictures from the photoshooting aren’t published yet so this is just a glimpse of what I did. – click to enlarge