Fall is a magical time of the year. The light is golden. The farmers’ fields are golden. The leaves change colors, to warmer and richer and even golden hues. There is something going on within us that cause us to adjust our rhythms and outlook.

We might slow down a bit and probably become a bit more reflective, anticipating the greater changes that are on their way.

If we are farmers though, we get busier. It’s harvest time. All of our efforts for the previous many months are about to be paid off. It might be a good return or perhaps not. But we will likely get something and for that we are thankful. We want to be secured against the cold and fruitless months ahead and to be rewarded for the work we have put in. We acknowledge this in what used to be called Harvest Thanksgiving. Now, the urbanites that we are will have mostly lost our connection to where this holiday originated.

I grew up on a farm and loved the harvest Thanksgiving celebration. I loved how the church would be decorated with sheaves of grain and baskets of vegetables. Coloured leaves would grace the interior as well.

What was typically an austere and almost penitent environment would be transformed into a festive display of the bounty of the fields and gardens. It was wonderful.

I sometimes ask my design students what their crop would be, if we were to compare their work to that of farmers. What will they bring to market?

What they produce is ideas. The analogy to farming isn’t actually so farfetched. Both are based on a process with many incremental steps. Designers prepare themselves in many ways for their eventual harvest.

One may be the formal training they get in school. They learn how to use their minds in flexible and innovative ways. They learn the importance of preparation. They learn how to be analytical and reasonable when they need to be, and to be unreasonable and creative when they should be that as well. They learn how, like farmers, to direct their efforts at an eventual outcome.

Beyond or instead of school, experience will also show them the way and reinforce their lessons.

So what is the harvest Thanksgiving festival for designers?

I can’t speak for many of my colleagues, but in the world of furniture design, there are trade shows that typically act as the catalyst and schedule for new design work to be committed to and finally presented. They are a big deal, in a lot of ways and the excitement that they generate is palpable. They are a chance to see and be seen, to feel proud and accomplished. They celebrate the health of an industry and the many players in it. Sometimes, I’ve wondered if they make as much financial sense as the huge budgets suggest, and I know I’m not alone in that curiosity. But we seem to do them regardless. It may be because the needs they service go beyond the strictly mercantile. Celebrations remain important to us.

Other ways we celebrate our design ‘harvest’ is through media exposure and awards programs. The media features may be very ephemeral and the awards don’t usually translate into tangible increases in business, but they are a validation just the same.

Producing something marketable, and taking it to market is a huge part of our professional, productive and economic lives. Our culture runs on this, despite the claims that we are now post-industrial, post-agricultural or in a new world altogether. We can’t just have services. We need goods as well and we always will. They need to be produced and taken to market. We can even say that collectively, our lives depend on it. Whereas agriculture was once the most important and vital activity that we engaged in, now we have others of major importance as well.

I find it to be very gratifying that we, as designers, produce something. If we are the kind of designer that I am, our produce is products. These are based on the ideas we have generated, grown from those seeds, so to speak. They have been selected, nurtured, cultivated, weeded, fertilized and eventually harvested. While we may, within our various industries, celebrate our achievements, we lack a broader, public celebration of those accomplishments. Maybe, when we sit down to our turkey dinner, we ought to give thanks for all of the design efforts as well, along with our gratitude for the cranberries and mashed potatoes.

Paul Epp is an adjunct professor at OCAD University, Toronto, Ont., and former chair of its Industrial Design department.

I used to ask a fresh group of first year students to raise their hand if they considered themselves to be an outsider. Everyone would. Then I would suggest that they look around and realize that they were no longer outsiders, at least not within the environment of the classroom. If everyone is an outsider, then the new normal is ‘outsider’ and the description is no longer applicable. I also asked them to self-identify if they thought they were above average. Many (most) did, and I encouraged them to think that, but that’s another topic, however similar and problematic the math.

It’s usually not so comfortable to be an outsider. We all are social creatures, birds of a feather and all that. But the forces that foster inclusion often also foster exclusion. If you are different enough, you may end up on the outside, whether you want to be or not. This is natural and seems true of all animals.

Designers are a minority sub-species. They are odd enough to be often seen as not quite fitting in. They know that they don’t fully belong and then come to see themselves as outsiders. Of course, many others claim a similar status: the too tall and the too short, the extra-large and the diminutive, the shy and the manic and so on. It’s not that hard to feel either special or disadvantaged. In fact, the normal family (person) has been described as the one that you don’t know very well.

But studies support the student’s intuition. Creative people (like designers) usually have a high intelligence but that distinction doesn’t come without a cost. There is often a higher correlation to a variety of disorders as well, of which depression and anxiety are just two. Attention deficiency is common as well. Introversion, a common designer state, is not a disorder, but it can seem like one in our extroverted culture. And intelligence often comes as a mixed package: high distinction is some areas means a diminishment in others.

Amy Chua, the infamous author of the Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, went on to define the traits that characterise an orientation to accomplishment, defined by her as the Triple Package (and I paraphrase): arrogance, insecurity and discipline. That certainly fits designers. To be one at all requires a strong sense of superiority. We claim that our way of doing things is the best and we want our vision to prevail. And we actually believe that. If we didn’t we couldn’t keep doing what we do. And this is, ironically, coupled with a deep sense of insecurity. Designers are outsiders and that is, by definition, an anxious state. And then comes the discipline to keep working, even when others don’t believe in the value of what you are doing.

And a popular belief in the value of design is less than certain. Many non-designers will voice their appreciation of the creative efforts of others, but actually have only a nominal regard for the accomplishments of designers. This is often experienced as a reluctance to pay for design. However valuable it is, it’s not that valuable to them.

Perhaps there is an erroneous sense that what designers do is easy for them and therefore may be slightly unfair. And it can seem easy. A good designer’s mind will generate a seemingly effortless abundance of ideas: wheeling, twisting and performing a dizzying array of mental and creative gymnastics. But like all forms of accomplishment, these are only achieved once the time has been put in, the hours of hard work and frustration and self-doubt.

Designers typically don’t choose to be designers. Design chooses them. They design because it’s what they can do. They are typically not that well suited to other jobs. They don’t fit in elsewhere. Design was once described to me as a social offering, an expression of a desire by these outsiders to make friends.

Another question I used to ask my first-year students was why they had chosen to come to collegs. The typical answer was that they just wanted to make things. In some readings of Greek mythology, Prometheus is a god whose tragic efforts to improve human existence through technology are relentlessly punished. This makes it sound like the story of designers as outsiders is a very old one.

Paul Epp is a professor emeritus at OCAD University in Toronto, Ont., and former chair of its Industrial Design department.

Every picture tells a story. So does every object. And we know that some have a more important or interesting story to tell than others do.

A lot of these stories are very personal. The objects we use take on a meaning that is a story that only we will know. I have a knife I use when I’m camping, that I’ve sharpened many times. I feel as though I’ve made an investment in it and I kind of treasure it. To someone else, it will only be knife, not so different than others. To me, it’s a reminder of many nights of cooking over a campfire. My marks are on it, the polish of use and care, and they carry a sentimental story for me.

Our homes are usually filled with things that are weighted with memories and which we are reluctant to part with. The toys our children played with, for instance. Or things we bought when we were first married and money was tight. Things we made in school. Trophies that we won. The candlesticks that helped us celebrate the important holidays.

Objects can gain a patina through use, like my often-sharpened knife. Handles become shiny, from the oil in our skin and the polish of many handlings. These sometimes represent an improvement and antique stores confirm the value of things that have been used and valued.

Most things will not take that path though. Garage sales testify to the fact that values can be very ephemeral. The stories of those objects tend to be very quiet. Thrift stores are even more poignant, especially those that are near where people tend to retire. The often-used things are merely old and worn, not now treasured and valuable as they evidently once were to someone else.

For many of the objects, the story is only personal. It doesn’t reach a broader audience, it doesn’t speak to others. For those objects in antique stores and especially those that are in museums, the story is much more accessible. These objects become representatives of cultural histories and values. They speak too and for all of us.

For designers, this is an interesting topic to reflect on. What makes something valuable? There are many routes to that objective, some of which are deliberate and some of which are happenstance and luck.

Brands do this, at their best. They tell us a broader message, often about what things cost and also about how well made they are, or how coveted they are, or if they are signifiers of leading edge knowledge.

Beauty can do this too. When objects are intrinsically lovely, we like them better.

When our objects serve us well, we value them more as well. The knife that is balanced and fits our hand well, for instance. That is also true of pens and cell phones. When our inanimate servants serve us well, we like them better.

But there is a whole other category of story telling that we don’t seem to have so much of but of which we can identify examples. For instance, Native Americans, and particularly those on the West Coast, had a material culture that was unusually rich in story-telling. This may have been, in part, because there wasn’t a written language to record stories. It may also have been an expression of deep skill and sensitivity. As a designer, it’s hard not to envy it. Many of those artefacts depicted or represented animals and those animals, in turn, represented values and stories. And these messages are widely known. Over time, these animals became highly stylized in their representations. It’s like a type of ‘short-hand’ was developed, and this became a tool for designers to use, which, in turn, bestowed value on what they made. The stories that are told go beyond the personal to the general – they are understood by everyone and become everyone’s stories. The overwhelming success of this approach is that other cultures (Western, European) have found these objects to be very visually satisfying as well. And this satisfaction has been enduring.

I’ve often wondered about the scarcity of this kind of value in the overwhelming majority of the objects that we have. This may be part of the price we pay (or don’t) for having inexpensive things that are impersonally machine made.

Paul Epp is a professor emeritus at OCAD University in Toronto, Ont., and former chair of its Industrial Design Department.