Big Sweater Graphic Design

Remembering high school dreams.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 24th, 2009 at 2:09 am.

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It has recently been brought to my attention that I had goals in high school.

The reason I chose graphic design as a profession in school, besides loving it, is that it would allow me to work, ideally, in music. Somehow, in some way, connected to the music industry. I’m no musician, but I’ve always loved album art and concert posters, and I’ve always had an intense love for music–in fact, I rarely do much of anything without it. So it made sense to me, in high school, to aspire to be a graphic designer who worked for musicians and labels. I would love to be the man behind that beautiful concert poster you wanted to take off of the wall at that bar or small venue because you instantly adore it.

I sort of came into websites by accident. I did a site for a local business, and I decided to turn it into a business. It’s worked well for me. My bills get paid and I always have a little left over for fun things. My clients like me, as far as I know, and pay my invoices promptly for the most part. And I love websites–I love the code side of things almost as much as I love the design side of things (and in fact, I strongly believe that they are inseparably related: good design demands good code, and you have to design good code to work as beautifully as the aesthetics). All more things than any one designer could really ask for–all blessings, you might say.

But I was recently speaking to a friend who works at a well-known Atlanta record label, and I mentioned in the course of conversation that in high school, I had the goal of working as a designer in the music industry. He said, “You should start doing Myspace layouts. Bands don’t have websites anymore, they’re all on Myspace.”

While the snob in me cringes at the thought of doing Myspace layouts (all tables, all the time), and I immediately said to myself that my current business is good enough–it pays the bills, I like my clients, and what more do I need?–I tucked his suggestion away in the back of my head. Maybe later, I thought. For now, there’s work to do–for now, I have to be realistic.

Then today, I was at another friend’s house, who also has some connections to indie bands. They had screen-printed, by hand, a number of concert adverts, and they were beautiful. Simple, clean, and elegant, and I was reminded of my conversation from a few nights before. I was struck with the thought: why not? Why have I not made any moves to work in the industry I dreamed of working in when I decided to be a designer?

Lots of reasons, I suppose. Lack of confidence, mainly–lack of experience, and the fact that the web design thing sort of fell into my lap. But these are all non-reasons. There isn’t any reason that I can’t do work that I love, work that I’d be proud of showing in my portfolio, work that will get me more of the type of work that I love doing.

Again, it’s not that I don’t love designing and building websites for small businesses. I love my job, and I love my clients. But it’s not what I originally wanted to do. It doesn’t help that most small businesses–especially those with marketing departments–have no appreciation for proper design, whether on the web or otherwise, but that’s a typical designer complaint: it’s hard to sell impactful, original graphic design to a business who wants a site up in two weeks, oh and by the way, we need this and this and this feature.

Not that people in the music industry are necessarily any different. It may, for all I know, be a worse gig, working for musicians, who have a strong propensity toward prima donna syndrome themselves. But the fact is, I see far more striking, timeless design in the music industry than I see elsewhere. There’s plenty of crap, of course, but when it’s good, it’s good, and why am I not doing that?

The reasons above are non-reasons. Excuses, really. We lose sight of goals and get distracted and most of us don’t think to keep track of the goals and dreams because other things get in the way. But if Eric can put out work that he adores and turn it into a business, why can’t I?

I can–and I suppose that’s the point of this meandering post. There’s nothing stopping me. I have connections to people in music that I could exercise if I so desired, and at this point confidence in myself is less of an issue than it once was.

Maybe I’ll make that a goal–to change the direction of my work over the next year or so. I won’t drop old clients or contracts–I’ll still take care of them. But why would I keep doing work that I like when I could be doing work that I love? For that matter, why not both–one to pay the bills, the other to keep me creatively sharp? It seems a silly waste to leave that part of me unexercised.

Perhaps it will start with the redesign of my own site.

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