I've had similar frustrations, but I've started to understand it as a matter of visibility bias. There are lots of people out there, doing the good work, doing it well, for the right reasons, in the right ways, without buzzwordy bullshit. But you don't hear about them because... they're working. They aren't promoting themselves. They're just working. It's the asshats who don't know what they are doing, don't have their skills in constant, 100% demand, don't have work to do, that have the time to promote themselves like this.
I've been on a PR bent for the last 6 months. It's a slog. If I don't treat it like a full-time job when I do it, it doesn't go anywhere. And that means my other work suffers. You can't be in two places at one time.
I sometimes rail against the larger market of "DIY" and "Makers" and "Creatives". Most people who would call themselves a "maker" are in-name only. People who actually make things call themselves “postal worker” or "teacher" or "accountant". In other words, we make things as a matter of course and don't use it as a status symbol, as a component of our identity that we need to broadcast to others.
I think it's the same way with Design. There is design in everything we do. "Design" is nothing more than the human condition: impacting upon the environment through your will, through your intention. At least it is to me. If I think of any way that design is different than a monkey throwing shit on the wall, it's intention. Agency. And every man and woman has that. So to call someone a "designer" is a null statement. Designer of what? And how? For whom? And most importantly, by what set of values?
So keep working, and don't let the TEDx asshats get you down.
I'd love to know more companies that are doing good work, can you (or anyone else) list some startups/employers that are working on "real" problems, but may not be well known?
Don't ignore the public sector. Not everything is as bad as working for Raytheon on war industry projects, or working for Health and Human Services on disease industry projects. My experience has been: the more local, the better. There are some municipal IT departments that are trying to do good work and support open standards at the same time, in a realistic environment. I think it's a burgeoning area where more young people could turn their attention.
There are a lot of small manufacturers across the country (don't believe what you've heard, it's only gigantocorp manufacturing that is dead in America, and that's more because gigantocorps are on the way out than anything to do with manufacturing) that have very good, results-based attitudes to work. My current client is one such place. They essentially give me free reign over their project.
But ultimately, I think a person can do good work in any environment. Though you probably want to stay out of the boiler-rooms of anything that is closely ran by someone with an MBA. When you hear them start to talk about "our employees are our greatest asset", then you know they doth protest too much. Why would you want to be considered an "asset" anyway, which is by definition owned property? Stick to places that are pragmatic, open, and honest.
Starting with the assumption that centralized system are generally wasteful compared to decentralized systems [1]: Why does middle-management exist? As a class of worker, I mean. They are a vast body of employees who do nothing directly towards consuming input resources and transforming them into output products and services. They exist solely to organize the people who do real work into a large, hierarchical organization. But to what end?
From a labor and trade perspective, the most efficient transaction is Person A making a thing and Person B buying it directly from Person A. There is no additional overhead of management, transportation, holding stock in display rooms, etc. But it's impossible to make those sorts of connections on the daily, hourly, minutely basis necessary to make an economy flow.
The best answer I've ever gotten was "it's more efficient!" So we've been told, but has anyone checked? And to which, the best answer I've ever received was, "well, it hasn't been disproven." Because of the key role of distribution in an economy, we accept these other inefficiencies.
But is that absolute? I think we are seeing proto-elements of decentralized distribution in sites like Etsy (which serves only to connect producers to customers) and Amazon (which both connects trading entities and performs stock warehousing and shipping for them, but doesn't actually produce anything of their own). We are only now entering an era of eCommerce. Everything before now has been "commerce as it has been since the industrial revolution" just on the Internet.
[1] and I do acknowledge that it is an assumption. But I think it's a stronger position than "bigger is better".
Anyone in your office put together a spreadsheet? Then they are a designer. Anyone else send out a mail shot to some customer base? Then they are a designer. Design is not sexy. It is interesting, but it's not sexy.
I've been on a PR bent for the last 6 months. It's a slog. If I don't treat it like a full-time job when I do it, it doesn't go anywhere. And that means my other work suffers. You can't be in two places at one time.
I sometimes rail against the larger market of "DIY" and "Makers" and "Creatives". Most people who would call themselves a "maker" are in-name only. People who actually make things call themselves “postal worker” or "teacher" or "accountant". In other words, we make things as a matter of course and don't use it as a status symbol, as a component of our identity that we need to broadcast to others.
I think it's the same way with Design. There is design in everything we do. "Design" is nothing more than the human condition: impacting upon the environment through your will, through your intention. At least it is to me. If I think of any way that design is different than a monkey throwing shit on the wall, it's intention. Agency. And every man and woman has that. So to call someone a "designer" is a null statement. Designer of what? And how? For whom? And most importantly, by what set of values?
So keep working, and don't let the TEDx asshats get you down.