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Intro-duction

The in betweens are such funny places.

Samantha Ownby

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As a soon-to-be college graduate, I feel my life travel-

ing 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, espe-

cially 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 profes-

sional and of graphic design.

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How prepared do you feel about graduating and transitioning to the professional design world? Why?

Do you feel that you have too high of ex-pectations 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?

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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, I’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 it’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.

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Mark Twain

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

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

Andrew Losowsky

Anne Burdick may be the chair of the Media Design Pro-

gram 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 educa-

tion 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 be-

ing defined by your mode of output—illustrations, web de-

sign—will soon be over.

Education and skills will be about the context of your

work—the body, domestic policy—particularly as the bound-

aries 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 educa-

tion have disappeared. “That was all about creating an

exquisite artifacts in isolation. We tried to make time-

less objects. People are now starting to understand the

interrelatedness of systems and networks,and we’re learn-

ing more from software and labeling designs, even archi-

tecture, as version 2.0, 3.0. It’s not just form and func-

tion 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.”

“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.

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These societal shifts are so extreme that Burdick isn’t

sure if universities will continue to be the primary lo-

cations for design teaching and learning.

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 sustain-

ability 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

She can already see the seedsof change happening in con-

ventional education. “Graphic design isalready being re-

placed by more interdisciplinary models,” she says. “And

once you start dismantle the factory model of the contem-

porary university, who knows what will happen? My hope is

that it will open us up to all kinds of other possibili-

ties.”

“We’re going to see some crazy experimen-

tation in teaching modes and venues,

“pop-up schools that will appear for a few years

in response to a certain movement or require-

ment, and then they’ll disappear again.”

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Never Sleep

Dan Covert + Andre Andreev

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“There is a major disconnect between a design student and the life of a design professional.”

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

AJ Kandy

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 profes-

sors and visiting lecturers.

You intern at a blue-chip New York design firm, do bril-

liant 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 flat-

panel 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, inner-

city kids.

You publish your monograph and have your gallery ret-

rospective. 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.

Young designers often set impossibly high stan-

dards and lofty goals. Are they setting them-

selves 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.

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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 de-

sign profession. The pages of STEP, Wallpaper, ID and HOW

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simply drip with hot, new, young influential designers

who do cool stuff. They thrill us with their revolution-

ary 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 For-

tune 500 firm.

It’s heady and inspiring, and like MTV, an endless pro-

cession 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 de-

sign 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 sev-

eral threads where junior designers chafed at having

their brilliant ideas passed over by senior art direc-

tors, 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 mechani-

cal 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

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child prodigies, gifted at 20 with a 50-something art di-

rector’s insight. They’re either demonstrating way-above-

average 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 de-

signers 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 Bos-

ton and Dan Bittman in Cincinnati, two guys that I found

very inspiring.

“My first real job out of school was working as the low-

est-level design assistant at Vignelli Associates - mix-

ing 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 Vi-

gnelli, not some kid from Ohio. So while I was working

there I was scrupulous about doing things as Massimo

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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 de-

signer with her own one-woman firm, hagopian ink. A ‘90s-

era 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 T-

Shirt 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 problem-

solving and design theory, and I was surrounded by over-

achievers, 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.

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“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 Al-

exandria, 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 cli-

ent tell you they can’t continue to pay you, or worse,

refuse to pay you for something already delivered; be-

ing 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 medium-

sized 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;

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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 one-

person business. Your goals change as you see the real-

ity 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.

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, re-

petitive, and unglamorous, but it still needs to be done,

and done well.

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 oth-

ers are all par for the course. But it also im-

plies no instant rewards.

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If you define success in broader terms like a lifelong

career - then you would be wise to heed the words of Mi-

chael Bierut:

“Do good design every chance you get, and sur-

round yourself with people - bosses, coworkers,

clients - who feel the same way you do.”

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Visions of the Future

/ Print magazine, April 2011 /

Andrew Losowsky

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“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 past-future. 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.”

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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 inter-

esting 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 ap-

pears 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.

Found Design

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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 “graphic” designer

not just as object-maker, but experience-creator.

Gifts from Friends

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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 cli-

ents 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 talk-

ing 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.

Interning—Or Free Labor + Verbal Communication

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We learn from others and not just by those who are nec-

essarily older, but my classmates have taught me through

how they interpret the world and express it in their de-

sign 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 others’ processes and see

and experience how they involve more play, personal view,

and sometimes even humor into their work.

I collect many of my classmates’ projects, both those

created for class and others for fun, as a reminder to

let loose a bit more.

Collecting from Those Who Also Seek Knowledge

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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 two-

hundred 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, incorpo-

rate 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).

Innovation (or Limited Funds)

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My favorite key on my keyboard is the 7/Ampersand key. I

lost it in a freak box-fell-out-of-my-closet-bounced-off-

my-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 com-

puter 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.

Battle Scars + My Work Ethic

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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 arrange-

ment, and position of the actors on screen. I end up

questioning and trying to decipher why they were “de-

signed” 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.

Breaks + Experiences

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One of the most important aspects of my design educa-

tion 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.

The Studio Family

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Mao Tse-Tung

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“let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend.”

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