Remembering Russ D’Anna

In January of this year I wrote an essay about mentorship the day after Russ D’Anna passed away. Yesterday I spoke these words at his memorial.

Every designer believes in design. Russ believed in designers. He started The Design Forum as an expression of that belief. The organizational embodiment of his spirit. It was a small idea. Deep down he simply wished to bring designers together. But like Russ the idea was larger than its stature. Junior, senior, print, digital, trade, education, different teams, different divisions, even different publishing houses. Russ wound our dividing lines into a filament. He flipped the switch, and we lit up. The room would be ablaze with toasts and talk of shop — a tangle of designers buzzing brightly. Suddenly I’d spot him from across the room, watching the energy eb and flow around the crowd, smiling a smile that he saved for the togetherness of those moments. But bringing us together was merely the baseline of his vision. He sought to raise the role of design high above that horizon. He believed design was more than a luminous gloss, that shaping language shapes the world, that designers are stewards of the place where light meets the earth — where ideas become solid. He shone brightly with these convictions and our eyes adjusted to him. He helped us to see things differently. He’s helping us to see things differently today. The light isn’t the same without Russ. It’s different now, but still shining — especially when we’re together. And so we’ll continue to gather. We’ll come together to spark the fire that lights the way forward from here. We’ll come together for the chance to catch a glimpse of his smile shining in the space between us.