"She is the prom queen I'm in a Marching Band" "She is a cheerleader I'm sitting in the stands"
Even in Swift's song she's in band.
And in the music vids they even have this same comparison where the "cheerleader" is in a red car and the guy she likes goes from her to the "cheerleader."
Well as they say let’s start from the beginning. But which beginning? The beginning of my life? The beginning of my college career? The beginning of design? The beginning of art history?
Well if you want to learn about art of design history, there are better sources for that. So why not start with me. Not my life. How about my first day of Graphic Design 1? And then we can rewind and fast forward from there.
I’m going to start with a little self-humiliation. When I signed up for Graphic Design 1 in 2007, I honestly did not know what that meant. I guess I thought it was computer-oriented and having to do with art, so I was aiming sort of close. My prior art experience was the Paintbrush program. I took some art classes in elementary school, but the last visual art class I had was in 8th grade. Since then I was in band and choir in high school, so those took up all my art credits. I took one interior design class and one multimedia class where we used Dreamweaver and Photoshop; but since that was around 2004, I’m guessing that was CS… yes, just CS. CS1, before they even started numbering them.
This first day of class my teacher gave us a stern speech about how “you have to be precise” and how “you could lose a lot of money to a client if you couldn’t get things just right.” “It is a very competitive industry.” But I knew better. I knew he was just saying that to test us and weed out the scared ones. I wasn’t going to give up. I don’t drop out. I was straight-A student. My mother expected nothing but A’s and would question “WHAT HAPPENED?!” if I got anything less than that. I wasn’t going to be intimidated. I didn’t even know what I was supposed to be intimidated about!
I had no concept of symbols, logos, packaging, posters, interactive, web design, print design, all the many branches of Graphic Design, let alone GD being a branch of Design in general. At that time I had no idea what Bridge was. I had no idea what bleed and slug meant. I didn’t know how to zip files or compress files. I tried emailing my teacher 50mb files and then got confused as to why it wasn’t working. I didn’t understand why my Illustrator files would crash when I tried saving files that were bigger than the space left to save it in.
Kim of 2007 had NO idea what was going on. I always knew I was going to be an artist. I didn’t realize it the whole time. But sure enough, in 3rd grade we were asked to dress up as what we wanted to be when we grew up, and I dressed up an as artist. It wasn’t even planned out. In fact, I forgot to dress up that day. However, ARTIST was the first thing that sprang to mind. So my classmate and I started looking quickly around the room because the teacher was coming in the room soon. I put on one of the paint shirts all students were to wear to protect our clothes from the paint, which most kids just brought in an over-sized men’s shirt that was probably just my dad’s old work shirt. And then we borrowed the art supplies from under the sink: paint brushes and a white plastic palette.
I’m not much of a painter today, but it’s not as if I could bring in my MacBook Pro to school in 1995. It’s no wonder why it was hard for me to imagine what I was going to be when I grew up though, because it had not really even been invented yet. Of course, graphic design was around before the 90’s, but not the way it is today. I also enjoyed computer class, but computers back then were more set in our minds as a secretary or some sort of office assistant.
So then I was really good at typing and English as I went on throughout middle school. Then I crossed the idea that I would become a flight attendant because I liked to travel. And then I liked this one interior designer class I took in high school, because that girly-girl stuff came naturally to me: Colors, textures, arranging furniture. OH! How I loved re-arranging my bedroom as a kid too.
Seemingly like an unrelated topic, I really enjoyed watching Disney Pixar Films. Who doesn’t right? But how many liked to watch the special features in how they were made? I was being fascinated by the RGB system, seeing Cowboy Woody appear in all red, then adding the green, then blue. Then I looked into CalArts, but that was dreaming big… REALLY big. So big it would be biting off more than I could chew. Plus, Kim of 2005 has zero art foundations when I graduated high school. I was preparing for the “real world” and learning chemistry, calculus, writing a 10-page research paper. And you know how often we do that on a day-to-day basis. So next I looked at Minneapolis. Toured at MCAD actually. But even that was too intimidating. Did I mention I grew up in a 100-population town? So then I applied to one college and got in. A story of me, country mouse, in the BIG CITY of Mankato! They had 3 McDonald’s!
So I’m really just a baby designer. I’m learning a lot in a very short amount of time. It’s 2010 and I already graduated with my BFA! How time flies! I have definitely come a long way in 3 years. And it makes me wonder how much further I will be in 3 more years. Look out world! Here I come!
I am a recent graduate of MSU for Graphic Design. I got my BFA in 2009. Before graduating I started out as a creative writer and when I tell stories or write them down, people have told me they find what I say to be entertaining. So I thought I should blog about design and document the things I'm learning.
Also, check out my "Home Page"! It's my art portfolio!
