1999: My Career Begins With an Epiphany

If I were to teach a class in design, I wouldn’t waste my time with all the technical stuff (i.e. Gestalt, placement, etc.) It’s not that those ideas are bad, its just that they give new designers too much of a formula to follow. These ‘tools’ can always be learned later and even then can be easily modified and changed. What I’ve learned form working at Sapient, with other designers, is that the thought process involved where we start to deconstruct and reinvent design ideas. It’s about a sense of growth, a sense of being able to start throwing away conventional design thoughts which have become so much of a standard that we cannot see past dynamic clichés of what is considered ‘good design.’

Designing is all about conveying an experience through experience. How good of a designer we are (or intend to become) is directly related to how well we convey our thought process through (in the case of graphic design) visual imagery. Talking to one of my good friends last night, who by the way is still in college, I realized how far I have come in terms of understanding this concept. In college it was all about competition for me. How good of a designer I was depended upon how much more visually striking my composition was when compared to the other students. However my success back then, I realized how much I had actually failed to grow in understanding what ‘good design’ meant. I was playing off clichés without truly understanding the original concepts behind them. I worked with visual weight and dynamic placement of text, etc. — playing with ideas I didn’t fully understand and couldn’t explain in terms other than learned principles (i.e. placement, texture, white space, Gestalt etc). In essence, what I was creating was a strong piece visually, but a very weak and unoriginal piece conceptually. In other words, what I was creating was bad art, but the teachers seemed to like it so, I thought I was kicking ass. Boy, was I in for a wake up call.

As a designer I realize that there is a lot that I have to learn, and a lot that I have to relearn. I believe that part of the process is being able to say that. To be able to say that I don’t know shit about design, and that I need to learn and take in as much as possible from the people around me is really important. When you start trying to be the best (visually) and start concentrating on learning and thinking about the process is when you begin to realize that everything you depended on, everything you considered to be good visual design, is really good not only because it looks good, but also because it has a clear thought process. One that you can trace and one that is based on personal intellect rather than a mixture of ‘Carson cliché’ or ‘DR cliché’ (Thank-you very much Brett Wickens). They are the only ones who deserve credit for their design for it is with them that the concept was born, and it is with them that it should die. Design is all about concept and experience, and praise goes to those who can break new ground and have people copy them.