We Make Objects by Samantha Ownby

Introduction The in betweens are such funny places.

Samantha Ownby

As a soon-to-be college graduate, I feel my life traveling too fast combined with feelings of suspension at the same time. People always say we cannot prepare for the real world— as trite as that comment is it is incredibly true, especially for the ever evolving field of “graphic” design. I really do not know what to expect when I graduate— whether I will do traditional graphic design or create my own niche in the design world. I daydream about it, but maybe I need to analyze my past more to understand where I will go from here. The following pages are a combination of objects I have collected over the years of studying design, quotes, classmates expectations for themselves, and articles about transitioning both as a design student to professional and of graphic design.

How prepared do you feel about graduating and transitioning to the professional design world? Why? Do you feel that you have too high of expectations about the design world? Or the job you could potentially get? Are you scared of settling? That you would end up settling? What is “settling” to you? Lastly, what is graphic design/”graphic” design to you?

I feel antiquity because i have made myself that way, and as long as I am happy with what I am doing I dont think I would ever be settling. Settling for me would be staying somewhere i wasnt happy.

I feel like conceptually, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m where i need to be, but technical skills (web, etc) need brushing up. I don;t think my expectatons are too high. They might be higher than others in that I plan to, as much as possible, work with people and companies that I believe in and agree with ideologically. I am scared of settling. i could easily hate graphic design if itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s for companies I have issues with. I don;t want to be one more capitalist peg supporting and promoting mindless and excessive consumption. See answer above. Graphic design is the combination of type and image, coupled with the knowledge when to use or not use one of those two.

Mark Twain

“Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.”

The Future of Design Education / Print magazine, April 2011 /

Andrew Losowsky Anne Burdick may be the chair of the Media Design Program at the Art Center College of Design, but she feels that traditional deisng education is about to disappear. There are three significant areas in which design education has to change,” she says. “Disciplinary boundaries, ideas about clients and audiences, and ideas abou what we make.” Perhaps the most radically,she says that the days of being defined by your mode of output—illustrations, web design—will soon be over. “The consideration will be more whether you are a designer who works on issues of a macro scale, such as global warming, or a nano scale, such as molecular design. Education and skills will be about the context of your work—the body, domestic policy—particularly as the boundaries continue to disappear between a physical space, an information space, a gaming space, and so on.” She says that the paradigms of the 20th century education have disappeared. “That was all about creating an exquisite artifacts in isolation. We tried to make timeless objects. People are now starting to understand the interrelatedness of systems and networks,and we’re learning more from software and labeling designs, even architecture, as version 2.0, 3.0. It’s not just form and function any more, designers have to consider social impact, government policy, cultural habits, sustainability in the creative choices they make. Design education will have to grapple with all of these ideas.”

These societal shifts are so extreme that Burdick isn’t sure if universities will continue to be the primary locations for design teaching and learning. “We’re going to see some crazy experimentation in teaching modes and venues, as we’ve already seen outside universities with Schools Without Walls and the Center for Land Use Interpretation Colleges are already getting worried about the sustainability of the old model, teaching in one way to lecture halls that are two-thirds empty, and university isn’t very well suited right now to what design education is going to require. We need a radical restructuring of the academy.” As major institutions struggle to make this shift, she thinks that we might see “pop-up schools that will appear for a few years in response to a certain movement or requirement, and then they’ll disappear again.” She can already see the seedsof change happening in conventional education. “Graphic design isalready being replaced by more interdisciplinary models,” she says. “And once you start dismantle the factory model of the contemporary university, who knows what will happen? My hope is that it will open us up to all kinds of other possibilities.”

Never Sleep Dan Covert + Andre Andreev

â&#x20AC;&#x153;There is a major disconnect between a design student and the life of a design professional.â&#x20AC;?

What to Expect Out of a Design Career / Graphic Design Forum /

AJ Kandy Young designers often set impossibly high standards and lofty goals. Are they setting themselves up for early disappointment? Here’s our guide to the real entry-level designer’s life— and it’s got a lot of left turns. The Dream: First, you go to a recognized design school, develop your own brand of post-deconstructionist Swiss-grid page layouts which win all the student awards, and graduate with honors. Then, you do post-grad studies somewhere prestigious - Yale perhaps; hobnob with superstar professors and visiting lecturers. You intern at a blue-chip New York design firm, do brilliant work, get noticed. After graduation, you’re hired on as an art director, then senior AD, then partner... You get your own office with an Aeron chair, Bouroullec furniture, the latest G5 computer with 30” Apple flatpanel monitor, big sunny windows and a door that closes. Of course you’re a brilliant team leader, respected mentor and teacher, volunteering after hours and during the summer to teach design to underprivileged, innercity kids. You publish your monograph and have your gallery retrospective. Every so often you jet over to London for drinks with Damien Hirst. You’re on the experts panel at several conferences; judge Print magazine’s regional design awards; do the lecture circuit when you’re not busy tending to your herb garden in Provence...and the alarm clock rings.

Reality: “Breakfast” is an energy bar purchased at the newsstand. You pull up to a faceless glass office-park building and tumble blearily through the revolving doors: These are the Midwest offices of Acme Inc, your employer for the past three years since graduation. Your office is a cubicle lined with outdated Post-It Notes and soundtracked by unavoidable gossip from Sales, one row over. Your latest pay stub sits on the desk, but you don’t open it; your $35K salary hasn’t budged since the last round of layoffs. You design data sheets and catalogues for Acme’s line of industrial plastics equipment, with all the thrills that it entails. Though you didn’t train for it, you also handle the company Web site. Every six months or so, the CEO asks if you can make the Web site “more blue,” and makes worrying noises about how “a Flash intro would be really cool.” Your computer is an aging, underpowered PC, and you had to fight with the IT department to get a 19” monitor. The CEO has the latest Thinkpad hooked up to a 21” IBM flatscreen because he’s the CEO, and no one can have a bigger monitor than him. You suspect he uses it for Minesweeper.

So You Want To Be A Design Superstar? We live in, arguably, a fantastic time to be in the design profession. The pages of STEP, Wallpaper, ID and HOW 13

simply drip with hot, new, young influential designers who do cool stuff. They thrill us with their revolutionary aesthetics, impress us with their multimillion-dollar design/snowboarding/music businesses, and how they just won a plum contract to add some hip to a staid old Fortune 500 firm. It’s heady and inspiring, and like MTV, an endless procession of youth and novelty. Presented in this carefully edited, glamorous way, design seems so easy, ripe for the plucking for anyone with a bit of talent. If anyone can play guitar, the democratic access to design means thousands of students take up Rapidograph pens, CAD software and the Adobe Creative Suite. But are their superstar career expectations setting them up for a fall? Reading some design forums online, I waded into several threads where junior designers chafed at having their brilliant ideas passed over by senior art directors, as if recognition was a right and not something to be earned. Others, more realistic, felt trapped by boring work that paid the bills; in an economic downturn, it’s not as easy to quit when you have debts and dependents. Both groups want creative satisfaction from their work, but what’s been lost somewhere in the rush from mechanical to digital systems is the fact that what we do as designers is more often closer to Craft than Art. Craft implies an apprenticeship, literally years spent learning from the masters. Those young kids in the glossy magazines are talented, but they’re also rare, more like

child prodigies, gifted at 20 with a 50-something art director’s insight. They’re either demonstrating way-aboveaverage drive, fierce competitiveness, or they really, really love what they do. The rest of us? Well, we’ll get back to that .

The Senior AD: Michael Bierut Michael Bierut is a senior partner at legendary design firm Pentagram. He’s arguably one of the top graphic designers and art directors on the planet. I asked him about his early years, and how he got from school to where he is today: “While I was in school [University of Cincinnati], I interned once at an old-school ‘commercial art studio’ that I found very depressing; I was lucky afterwards to do other internships with Chris Pullman at WGBH in Boston and Dan Bittman in Cincinnati, two guys that I found very inspiring. “My first real job out of school was working as the lowest-level design assistant at Vignelli Associates - mixing solvent into rubber cement, making photostats for other designers, taping tissues on the top of mechanical boards, stuff like that. My first real ‘design project’ was a price list. “I never had any illusions about why a client would come to Vignelli Associates. It was to work with Massimo Vignelli, not some kid from Ohio. So while I was working there I was scrupulous about doing things as Massimo

would do them. Over time, I started developing opinions of my own, which Massimo endorsed enthusiastically, to his credit. “I always kept very busy outside of the office, saying yes to any paying or non-paying job I could get my hands on. These projects became a vehicle for experiments, often disastrous, where I tried things I didn’t think would meet with approval from 9 to 5. “I find it amazing that to this day I work with clients and other designers who I met on that first job. I feel I have been very lucky in my career.”

The Solo Entrepreneur: Christina Hagopian Christina Hagopian is an award-winning New York City designer with her own one-woman firm, hagopian ink. A ‘90sera graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, she outlines the differing terrain of the dot-com era: “I attended Carnegie Mellon’s Summer Design program the summer before my senior year; while still in high school I worked on the yearbook, I designed every swim-team TShirt and school phone book cover. I entered in contests all the time, just to get work published. “Carnegie Mellon gave me a solid foundation in problemsolving and design theory, and I was surrounded by overachievers, incredibly talented classmates (who are still my support group today) - it automatically gave me an edge in the workplace. But it didn’t necessarily prepare me for the realities of the working world.

“After graduation, I had major ‘stars in my eyes.’ I thought I would make a huge salary right out of college, be a star, get published in all the design annuals and have my own agency some day: that was the goal. “My first job out of school was at a 5-man studio in Alexandria, VA. I worked there for a year; my boss paid me $25K with no benefits and made me feel like I was lucky to even have a job with him. Anytime I made a mistake, he’d say ‘See? This is why I pay you the big bucks.’ I learned what I needed and moved on as quickly as I could. “At another place, I had a boss who made me do all the cutting and pasting for his jobs because his hourly rate was ‘too expensive for that kind of work!’ Meanwhile, I was working overtime on his stuff and he was going home at 5:00...There were so many low points. Having a client tell you they can’t continue to pay you, or worse, refuse to pay you for something already delivered; being laid off in the dot-com era with no jobs in sight I could go on. “That said, every job advanced me in a new direction. First at a small firm, then a year and a half at a mediumsized print/branding/interactive firm, then my third job was at global Internet consulting firm Razorfish. I needed to make each stop along the way in order to advance to the next, and gain the skills to have my own business. “I achieved my goal, but it took a lot longer than I thought, and I had to pay my dues for a good four years before I achieved a position of respect. It also took at least my 3rd job to feel like I was living comfortably;

I had student and other debts. It only took 7 years to be profitable!,” she says, laughing. “I dreamed of having a big company, and today I’m a oneperson business. Your goals change as you see the reality of it all. I’ve won awards, been published, but I’m still just trying to make my next project better than the last.”

Superstar, or Super Career? The truth is that design superstardom is exceedingly rare - a flashy artifact of the media’s attraction to novelty, discontinuity, the exceptions to the rule. This focus on a selected, lucky few distorts the everyday truth of most designers’ work. What we do is more akin to a craft or profession, and in a craft tradition, a lengthy apprenticeship, lifelong learning, and becoming a mentor to others are all par for the course. But it also implies no instant rewards. If you’re a prospective design student or graduate, rest assured that attention to craft can earn you a very good living over time, even achieve a level of wealth if you are skilled, hardworking, have an ounce of vision and good management skills. It will most likely not rocket you into a six-figure salary until you’re well into your 40s. Even then, the work will often times be obscure, repetitive, and unglamorous, but it still needs to be done, and done well.

If you define success in broader terms like a lifelong career - then you would be wise to heed the words of Michael Bierut: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Do good design every chance you get, and surround yourself with people - bosses, coworkers, clients - who feel the same way you do.â&#x20AC;?

Visions of the Future / Print magazine, April 2011 /

Andrew Losowsky

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The future is now, tomorrow, and the next day. In each case we may have an educated idea, but really do not know what is coming next. So it is much more comforting to look at the pastfuture. The future is pretty clear when seen through a rearview mirror. Rather than attempt yet another prognostication, it is safer to look back to see why the future was so exciting and then to reflect upon what those futuristic promises became.â&#x20AC;?

Found Design I have always been a collector. Whether that was my collection of Sailor Moon toys or arcade tokens, I have always found interest in even the smallest things. When I began design, I started to collect not just interesting design work I found online into my “inspiration folder,” but I started to collect what most people would consider trash such as a piece of a pizza box, a ripped up cardboard that happens to look like a “g,” or what appears to be an insect eaten paper. Yes, I will admit that these are trash, but each of these has smart design or design-like aspects to them. Through studying design, I am learning to have new eyes.

Gifts from Friends Two of these were made by classmates and the other two were given either after a lesson or as a lesson. As designers we make objects, but through the objects, we create experiences for ourselves and others that become the signified for these signifiers. It is because of these that I see the â&#x20AC;&#x153;graphicâ&#x20AC;? designer not just as object-maker, but experience-creator.

Interning—Or Free Labor + Verbal Communication I agree with Experimental Jet-Set that bringing interns is not beneficial for the already set up studio and the issues with the inherent hierarchy between the intern and their boss, but I also believe in learning from those who have more experience than one’s self. However, with internships, I have always looked more to the business side of it such as having to deal with clients and discussing design with non-designers. Both of my internships were very different from one another. One involved dealing with many people and communicating via different media. The other was mostly just within a small design setting and only really talking to my boss, the two other designers in the firm, and the secretary. Their differences has me considering different ways to talk to people about my work. I am learning to “design” my language to tailor my design talk to the person to whom I am explaining it.

Collecting from Those Who Also Seek Knowledge We learn from others and not just by those who are necessarily older, but my classmates have taught me through how they interpret the world and express it in their design work. I personally tend to be too serious and often have a level of objectivity to my work even when it comes to the most personal topics I sometimes use with in my work. In school, I am able to observe othersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; processes and see and experience how they involve more play, personal view, and sometimes even humor into their work. I collect many of my classmatesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; projects, both those created for class and others for fun, as a reminder to let loose a bit more.

Innovation (or Limited Funds) As a design student, I have had to learn how to “Go Green” not to save the planet, but to save money. Resourcefulness becomes second nature when one has to have enough money to print huge posters and a twohundred page process book and some how pay rent within a few days. This tape has been reused for at least four projects— always recording over previous work that I have already uploaded onto my computer. Having monetary limitations forces one to be clever—use the xerox machine if one can get away with the project being zine-like or referencing office material, incorporate old work to save time in the design process if time is an issue whether it is an illustration or a strong grid, or develop good pen skills to trace type or take a screenshot if it is for digital use if one cannot afford to use in a logo or title. Being a poor college student has taught me to think outside the box and find ways to do or achieve something that may not be the typical way to go about it, but works (and is cheap or free).

Battle Scars + My Work Ethic My favorite key on my keyboard is the 7/Ampersand key. I lost it in a freak box-fell-out-of-my-closet-bounced-offmy-bed-and-the-corner-popped-off-this-key accident. Though this damage to my computer was an accident, it got be thinking about the actual abuse I put my computer through with all of the work I do. I lug it around almost where ever I go so I that I can work on projects every where. There are dents and marks covering it. I often have three to four programs running at once and my internet browser usually has a plethora of tabs open as well as using more than one browser to organize my actual research, cool stuff I found on some design site or blog, and whatever in another browser. This does not help out my failing logic board and constantly dying batteries. Though, I have put my laptop through a lot, I think it reflects how hard I constantly work or at least my craving for more and more knowledge with how much I am constantly reading about and looking up online.

Breaks + Experiences Sometimes breaks are needed. —Or to at least attempting to have one. I go to shows and the movie theater a fair amount to try and let my brain have break from design, but I notice that I never really turn it off. During a bands performance I consider their demeanor, dress, or the curation of their songs. In the theater, I pay attention to the lighting choice, the set arrangement, and position of the actors on screen. I end up questioning and trying to decipher why they were “designed” the way they were—it never really turns off. I believe that breaks are needed, but I have realized that the only break I can give myself is from the context within which I was originally working, which I believe is equally beneficial in its own right. I see design in more than just typical graphic design, which could and has inspired me to look at graphic design in different ways. This in turn has me working in ways or with topics that I either would not usually work with or others would not think I would work with within my field.

The Studio Family One of the most important aspects of my design education is the “family” I have developed with my classmates. Like any other family, we have our issues, but I could not imagine my time in college without the experiences I have gone through with each of them whether it was within academics or personal. This photo is of my notebook from last year and on it is a sticker of my classes “mascot”—Puppermelon. As silly as this puppy/watermelon hybrid is—he reflects a lot on my studio family. He is something that one would think could never really exist or should not, but he does for us. He is created from this peculiar sense of humor many of us have and often changes himself to best suit various situations. This leads to him often being miss understood because of his peculiarity and ever changing nature, but he always tries to be true to himself and tries to find some kind of happiness regardless of his situation— —even if the situation gets complicated —and possibly involves lasers.

Mao Tse-Tung

â&#x20AC;&#x153;let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend.â&#x20AC;?