Both/And: Holding Two Things at Once…to Become Something More.
"A paradox is something that appears to be a contradiction, but from another perspective is not a contradiction at all."
—Richard Rohr, Holding the Tension: The Power of Paradox
I keep a logo near my desktop that I designed for fun—for clarity. BOTH spelled out in a grid, with a single oversized ampersand laid over top. The ampersand doesn't interrupt the word. It completes it.
Both. And.
It sits there as a reminder: not either/or; both/and.
Two people whose work has changed the way I move through the world, Richard Rohr and Brené Brown, arrived at this same place from entirely different directions. Rohr came through contemplative theology, a lifetime of sitting with paradox and refusing to resolve it too quickly. Brown came through research: years of listening to people talk about shame, courage, and what it actually takes to show up. Different roads, same territory.
Both will tell you: the either/or impulse is a trap. Certainty is comfortable. Resolution feels like progress. But the most interesting—and the most honest—territory tends to live right in the tension between two things that both happen to be true.
Brown puts it this way in her most recent book, Strong Ground:
"The gift of the paradox is that if we hang in there and tolerate the tension
—grounding down and holding both ideas—
a new and deeper level of understanding is born."
How does this relate to design?
That's exactly what happens in my design process when I’m working in alignment. A client brings me their vision; I bring mine. My instinct pulls one direction; theirs pulls another. The lazy version of this is a negotiation. The real version is something I've come to call The Third Option: the solution that neither of us would have found alone, the one that only exists because we held both ideas long enough to let something new emerge.
That's the both/and. Not compromise. Not capitulation. Something better than either option on its own: the good stuff.
Aurelie Gallagher is the designer behind Irish Eyes Design, a graphic design studio based in the Chicagoland area, working with clients everywhere. She specializes in brand identity, print design, and Squarespace websites.
“Great design starts with knowing yourself first.“
