Crisis of Conscience

I have been thinking a lot about graphic design lately. This is probably important seeing as how I am a graphic design major but you would be surprised how little consideration most student designers actually give to their discipline. It is a funny thing graphic design and it has been causing me heartburn lately. What do graphic designers do? I am not sure I can answer that fully, although lately I have been feeling like an assembly line worker. By that I mean, I take art from other people and arrange it in the most pleasing manner I can. Now I realize that there is some degree of skill involved in layout, actually quite a bit. There is also the responsiblity of conveying a message, information though visual conjuring. But lately I don't feel so informative or effective.

This past summer I took a look at my work that I have collected or deemed good enough to keep and realized that if someone were to ask me for my portfolio right now, I would be embaressed and say "I don't have a portfolio." It is sort of a half truth. Yes I have done work. Yes I could print it out and put it in a binder. No it isn't good work, it isn't innovative, it shows no sense of aesthetic or style and it is actually quite bland. This vexes me.

What makes a great designer? How do they take nothing and make it something? I say nothing because while I don't believe creativity exsists in a vaccum, every project that I take on literally starts with nothing. Where do the ideas come from? Who knows?! I am currently assigned to design a newsletter for a nonprofit organization. I literally have a blank mind and basically just said "let's try this." Let's try this meaning I want the newsletter to fold up into a square. That's all I got. How do I go from a square to a newsletter? How do I make it engaging? Why would anyone care to pick it up? It may sound silly, but I would ask anyone to sit down and just start sketching layout ideas for a newsletter or a magazine. Do you spontaneously have ideas for how the type should look? Colors? Pictures? the feeling of the newsletter or the "feeling" of the newsletter? There is no creation equation and it can be pretty damn frustrating. Essentially I am given a white rectangle and told to fill in the blanks. Fill it in with what? Can something be graphic design without graphics? Must there be pictures? do I have to take those pictures?

Folks, let's be honest...I know it looks like we push a few buttons on a computer and "BLAM!" out comes a work of art. You may find yourself saying, "that doesn't look too hard, I can do that." Well, no you can't. You can't do it and sure as hell can't do it with Microsoft desktop publishing software. But then how do I do it? Do I use photoshop? illustrator? paint it? draw?

I recently had an assignment for my publication design class. It was one of those assignments to get you thinking and see things differently. By all means a good assignment. Essentially take a household object (we had a list of 5 things) and make it so that it is not immediately recognizable or is placed out of context. Well, it is fairly simple, anyone can do it. I chose to use the apple as my object. You could easily stick in a apple in a place where it doesn't belong, and you sort of get the gist of the exercise. But I am a designer God Damn it! I need to make it unique. I have to be clever. I need to venture down the road of abstraction, which makes my teeth grind and my toes curl. But regardless, I came up with a few simple sketches for composition ideas. All most all of them feature imagery that is recognizable but when combined becomes somewhat symbolic or suggestive or just plain wierd. I can do wierd, I think. I can't do abstract. I can appreciate abstraction for the pretty colors and the way they are applied to the canvas. Don't ask me to gather meaning from a splotch of color on a canvas. I am no more able to do that than make a pebble speak. People who can do it and do it well (and there are people out there who are good at this, I have no idea how...) make it look good and interesting. I am not a Zen master, I can't make visual koans. So I go with wierd. Wierd being a picture of a planet sized apple floating in space with a space shuttle appraoching it. As i type this, it doesn't sound too impressive, which is ironic because it didn't look too impressive either. But that is what I went with. Then as I sat down to actually make this image, I froze.

Why did I freeze? I froze because I had no idea how to begin. Do I draw this scene? Do I manipulate photos digitally? Do I make a vector graphic in illustrator? I DON"T KNOW! I can't paint. I guess I could draw it like a cartoon, but I am not sure it would be as powerful. Certainly humorus, at least to me. I am not really sure how to render in markers. Forget watercolor. So ok, let's use photos. Where do I get photos? Royalty free stock photos? I can't afford them and they aren't my own work so is it ok to use them? If I don't pay for them am I allowed to use them for student work? If the answer to that is no then I am in big trouble because there have been few assignments yet where I haven't used someone else's work for illustrations or pictures. What are the ethics of what I have done? Do designers ever create things or just put them together? Then if I do use the stock photos, how do I make it look convincing? I know how to use photoshop to an extent but I have to turn an apple into a planet and then stick a spaceshuttle in the mix. Color correction? Light balance? Digital airbrushing? HOW THE HELL DO YOU USE AN AIRBRUSH!? Filters? It occurred to me that I don't really know how to do or use anything and that it is all a guess and trial and error every time I get an assignment. It is truly exhausting and frustrating. Speaking of frustrating, everytime I get an assignment the first thing that pops into my head is how to relate it to comics. I hate that. I feel like it is a crutch, but I know it and I understand it. But it isn't making me a better designer. So I consciously choose to steer away from it in my design work, which often times leaves me with a blank landscape of ideas. I can't tell you how scary that is. I sort of feel like I don't know how to do anything and it is really bumming me out. Not to mention I am having trouble getting things done on time.

So much running through my head about this that I am not even sure I can voice it correctly. Can I tell you I still haven't figured out when I should Vector vs. Raster? I have no idea! I have a few clues...but the lines are blurring. I have seen photoquality vector illustrations being used on magazine covers and the first thing I ask myself is"Why not use a photography?" and the real shit of it is that the illustrator who created the vector graphic probably used a photography of the exact image they drew! WHAT THE HELL IS THAT ALL ABOUT!? I am so damned confused and I feel like I have stolen other people's work. I need to sovle these issues soon, or I am going to go crazy!