what am i?

What is graphic design?

This is a question that every design teacher has asked me since I began studying it as a subject. The dictionary program on my dashboard says some sterile, uninspiring bit about combining text and pictures in various fields of communication. I sure as hell hope that there is more to my chosen area of study than this.

I hope, and yet I know. Graphic design brings sanity and beauty to every bit of information that every crosses our plane of vision - if the editor would only let it. Graphic design is the answer to the question, “how do I make sense of all of this?” By organizing and deciding what is important visually, a graphic designer can actually control the way that content is read, understood and appreciated.

Speaking of appreciation, I do also understand that graphic design is one of the least appreciated aspects of communication material. When there isn't enough room in the budget or on the page, design is the first thing to go (at least for most newspapers, magazines, newsletters . . . I could go on). I also understand that the design is one of the most important aspects of a page. When a reader is flipping through a magazine, whether she knows it or not, the design of the page has a lot more weight in the decision of whether or not to read it than the actual content. The appreciation of design is something that the average person does automatically.


What is Typography?

I can't say that I have ever been asked this question before by a professor, but whenever I mention this word to a non-designer, he or she automatically asks this very familiar question. In short, it is the art of arranging, or setting, type.

In long, it is a grueling process of detail-oriented changes and a lifelong appreciation of the subtle nuances and radical changes that typographers have created to the characters that we so often take for granted. It is understanding that the upper-case Q of any typeface is probably the most defining characteristic of the entire alphabet. It is understanding the personality of helvetica as if she were the girl next door. Typography is the arranging of written material with the intent of readability or abstraction, expression or mutability.


What are my responsibilities as a designer?

As a designer, I feel responsible for making the content I produce visually interesting, understandable and aesthetically pleasing, but only when necessary. I am responsible for challenging the average viewer on their definition of beauty and working hard to create my own.

That being said, I am also responsible for my own work. I will never put my name on something that is not my own, and I will never tolerate this from others. A designer’s responsibility is to create new things and not to recycle old ones under a new name.


What can make my classes more valuable to me?

The first answer to this question is, well, me. I have always been the one to decide what I want out of a class and how I can get it. It always helps to have a teacher that challenges me and my boundaries. I need a lot of guidance at this stage in my learning, but I also sometimes need a person to shove me into the water and say, “swim for yourself!”