The premise of this post is simple:
Expand Your Skills, Expand Your Mind, Expand Your Creativity
A friend of mine has been in the graphic design/journalism industry for more than twenty years. He has formal art and graphics training and is possibly one of the best illustrators I have ever met. You know, one of those guys who can work magic with a pencil andget the same effect in Illustrator.
My friend currently works for a local liberal newspaper, and though his job has its perks, he laments the decline of the elitist recognition once attributed to artists such as him. To his mind, the glory days of graphic design are long gone. After all, how often do you read “cartoonist wanted” in the job ads these days?
I read a great article in the December 2008 issue of Dwell Magazinetonight that very eloquently summed up the current state of affairs:
“Long ago, to be a graphic designer was to distinguish yourself by defining your territory as fundamentally two-dimensional. Unlike artists, graphic designers had clients. Unlike architects, they delivered printed messages. Today, with the meteoric rise of desktop computing, social networking, and mobile technologies, graphic design is the ultimate DIY activity. Or is it? Albert Einstein once said that the secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. So don’t ask us to explain how kerning works: Just trust us.”1
A graphic designer’s best source in cultivating creative ideas that lead to innovation is a mastery of the tools of his or her trade. Today, that means knowing the Adobe Creative Suite inside and out, understanding print versus web design, and being able to deliver a piece in print media and digital formats with exceptional quality and little variance.
If you don’t know a program, download a free trial and get to know it. Look up some tutorials on YouTube, or pick up a book from Lynda. Mastering the tools will automatically open your mind to new ways of approaching creative problem solving.
Expand your mind, expand your creativity. It really is that easy.
1 Helfand, J. and Drenttel, W. ( 2008). An Introduction to Graphic Design. Dwell Magazine. Issue: December 2008, p. 143.
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