A Line in the Sand
What I was working on in September 2001.
It’s hard to believe it’s been 25 years since 9/11. It feels like forever ago and yesterday at the same time.
Life was simpler then. Society was at its pinnacle, in a sweet spot with advanced technology but before human connection disintegrated from smartphones and social media.
How does this relate to design? It doesn’t. Not directly. Only that I was designing when it all happened. I was 23, working my first design job at a marketing agency in downtown DC.
As I was settling at my desk in a fifth-floor, windowless suite, one of my coworkers casually asked, “Hey, did you guys see that a plane crashed into the World Trade Center? Huge hole in the building. Crazy!” No cause for alarm, it was just a news story.
A few minutes later, someone else called out that another plane had hit the second tower. This was not an accident. Not long after that, another colleague ran down the hall shouting, “They’ve hit the Pentagon!”
What was just a news story became tangible. My office was less than five miles from the Pentagon. Curious, I walked around the block to see the vibe on the street. I stopped at the ABC News Bureau on DeSales Street, watching through their windows alongside other onlookers. Every screen was broadcasting the horror in real time.
DC emptied in a panic. The buzz was that the Metro should be avoided, so I hitched a ride out with some colleagues. Apparently, everyone had the same idea. It took three hours to get home.
Forty-eight-year-old me is a little calmer, a little more suspicious, and would have stuck around to see how it played out.
9-11-01 was a line in the sand. So much has changed since then, and I question whether the quality of life is really better than it was back then. Easier and more convenient in some ways, but a whole lot harder in others. Life is still good, just different.
This piece—bad file quality aside—holds up. Except for that CTA, which is way too close to the red bar.
One thing that has come a long way since 2001.