grafixFarm Designs – one dream realized

As a youngster growing up in Honiara, I never quite enjoyed the typical childhood of every similarly aged child. Firstly, while every kid would play in the rain I would be sitting at the window watching with envy. I was housebound simply because I had “bronchitis” which I grew up dreading until a good doctor told me I would grow out of it. I think I have but it may have robbed me of my childhood. Instead I spent my time in books which is perhaps the reason why I developed a strong vivid imagination which, thankfully, I managed to keep sane and realistic….so no I did not have an imaginary friend.

My older brother was also a very creative thinker and a visionary. It would be safe to assume he pioneered many breakthroughs in our little house but received very little national acclaim. Being a musician, he was already producing music using computers before Solomon Islanders believed it was possible. Before Access Plus built their graphic design empire on Macintosh, he had already identified the Mac as the backbone to a successful graphics design company. Look into the DBSI archives (if one exists) and you would probably find a business proposal on that.

Anyway, one of his earliest dreams was to create The Farm. The concept is simple, unlike specialized farms in the developed world, their Solomon Islands counterpart would consist of a mixture of different types of food crops. So likewise, The Farm would be a single company made up of different subsets that specialized in their own area of specialties. A talented musician, he naturally became Music Farm, I would become the Graphics Farm and our sisters would form their own farms depending on what profession they took in life.

Years later, my brother would become a medical doctor, my older sister a lawyer, I ended up in IT and my younger sister a non-practising marine biologist. The perfect ingredient for The Farm but perhaps only I have gone on to establishing a small arm of The Farm.

Two weeks today, I finally deposited a cheque into an ANZ business account paid to grafixFarm Designs. This simple act capped off the end of my long journey to setting up grafixFarm Designs. A web consultancy business which will also offer e-commerce, e-marketing and desktop publishing. I hope to also create a niche for myself in the advertising industry.

I may never become a self-made millionaire but today I learned that everyone’s path in life is determined by the risks we chose to take, how much we believe in them and persistence to see them through. grafixFarm Designs is not only a testament of a dream, for me it is a proof of concept. People who spend time in thought – conceptualize, but the next step is always difficult, turning those concepts into reality. I believe it has long been the stumbling block to personal development (in my case at least) and on a grander scale, why the Solomon Islands has found itself languishing behind its pacific neighbours. We are great thinkers, articulate and in many cases academically superior but never quite action oriented.

I envision the difficult road ahead. I also see the possibility that grafixFarm Designs may die its natural death or go into hibernation once I choose to take time off and spend the next 10 years of my life serving with the UN. But while I am here now, I must champion something that I will leave behind as a legacy. 14 years ago I wrote a paper for my Form 6 assesment, “Something about Nothing” and in conclusion I wrote something to the effect, “….people may walk on the same footpath, speak the same things, dream about the same dreams and still remain oblivious to the fact that I once walked the same road, spoke the same thought and dreamt the same dream!” So my motivation is that I hope grafixFarm Designs can champion a cause that people will remember well into the future when I am gone. There are great opportunities for Solomon Islanders to champion their own dream, I have chosen IT and web designs. What about you?