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Mar 15, 2016
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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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