How I Became a Graphic Designer

I’ve been a graphic designer professionally for close to two decades but one could probably trace my first work as a paid graphic designer back to when I would draw pictures of Star Wars spaceships and the rock band Kiss and sold them to classmates for 25 cents. From there I moved up the design food chain to posters for school events and designing/laying out character sheets for Dungeons & Dragons using my dad’s typewriter.

Dad was a journalist and I’d watch him type up articles and later see them in newspapers, etc. with his byline. That’s probably when I first had an inkling that there was this profession in which people decided how the elements would appear on the printed page.

I had never thought of art as a career though. It was just something I did – something I enjoyed.

I started college thinking I’d go into science or English as that had been what I focused on in high school and at which I excelled. It only took one class of calculus and one class period of physics to completely dispel any thoughts of doing that for a career.

I quickly shifted to art history and printmaking, loving them both but I knew it wasn’t a perfect fit. I was looking to be something else. That’s when my college introduced an BFA program in Graphic Design. Finally, I found what I wanted to do! What I wanted to be.

After college, I recognized that there was a revolution beginning in graphic design. Paste-up, typesetting and tricky stat camera work was being replaced by a small but powerful device called the Apple Macintosh. I wanted to be on the forefront of that revolution so I found a grad school that also recognized the sea change that was coming and had put together one of the earliest Mac computer labs for graphic design students in the nation, Louisiana Tech University.

I spent three wonderful years there mastering the art/science of computer-aided graphic design.

Fast forward to present day and you’ll still find me trying to stay ahead of the curve (or at least not get left behind) by self-teaching myself each new design tool that came along; hardware and software. I also learned from some of the best in the business – especially when it came to learning web design.

My clients these days are looking for great print design, web design and copy writing. Gone are the days when I could sell 25-cent pictures of R2-D2 but what’s not gone is my love of the media I work in, the satisfaction I get when a client is excited about my work and my continual learning and growing as a designer and writer.

So, if you’re looking for a veteran graphic designer, web designer, art director and/or copywriter, I’m eager to hear from you and face whatever challenges your project has for me.

And if all you want is a picture of Kiss, I’m sure we could arrange something.