Let me hold my blade and design away!

An article in the New York Times by famed Graphic Designer Michael Beirut speaks about his struggle to accept the change within the field of Graphic Design. What was once a fine hand-craft is now all computerized. As a 21-year-old today, I’ve always known design to be a computer related field. It was mainly how I became attracted to the field. I am very practical when it comes to using a computer. I’m self taught, I began “designing” at the age of 15.

My first project I had ever done for a client was for my Catholic Church which I no longer am apart of do to a personal religious change. However, I will never regret working for the church. They allowed me to explore my options by allowing me to design for them. Once I started I could not stop! After I did there website I became the designer for my school district. Designing everything from posters, flyer’s, website templates, student handbooks covers, calender covers, and even the entire yearbook. It was a small school district and quite frankly they had no one interested and skilled within the design field. There was no design class. There was only one art teacher for grades 6-12 and about 4 different Art classes offered. They were all within the realm of fine art.

What most people would never guess about me is that I am quite skilled technically as an artist but I always think in the mindframe of a designer. My teachers would begin to pick up on this so not only have I ever designed digitally but also by hand. And I LOVED designing by hand. My mother taught me to use materials surrounding me. She at one time was a magazine layout designer. She would layout the photos and text in magazines line by line! As Michael Beirut says in his article, what would take hours for me to do on a computer took days for my mom to do. Yet there was a love for cutting and pasting. She never fell in love with the digital change and was since forced out of her career field.

It’s interesting how I’m on the border. I thought it was funny when Beirut spoke about the interns in the basement cutting out the mock-ups. He spoke about how its now a chore instead of a craft. This was part of what I had to do as an intern over the summer as well (except I wasn’t in the basement) and yet I loved assembling the mock-ups. I love watching how these things come together. I was so skilled at it that not only did Archer recognize my craft, but so did our client Kodak, who took the time to write to us excited about the fine craft and skill they found with the box mock-ups that I created. Jeff , the president of Archer, exclaimed how most interns he gets in the Art Department only know how to use the computer and have no idea how to use a ruler and blade.

Today I feel it is important to have skill in both areas. The best design today is a mixture of both the physical and the digital world. That is how I generally design. I love computers yet I love to build by hand. I always wished more of my classmates thought in this same way. If I can find a job that allows me to explore both and build within both of these fields, I would feel complete.