How I got into Graphic Design

Frequently students presented with a research project of some sort ask me how I got started in the field of graphic design. They’ll also ask how I learned so much in the various fields I work in and how they can do the same. Short answer is most people who I’ve worked with have gone to school, asked questions, paid attention, and practiced.

That’s not what I did though… I did something else.

A little backstory

You’ll probably not hear a story similar to this. It is my own... it’s not recommended that anyone go down this path. One of the first things I remember drawing in Kindergarten was a dragon. I was always drawing dragons. I would get in trouble during church on the weekends for drawing dragons in the bulletins. “No drawing demons in church!”

When I was little my dad had a motorcycle with Snoopy painted on the side of it. He was always painting toy models. He had drawings of cars he had drawn. When I was about 4 (maybe 5) he sold his motorcycle (rather traded it I think) for a computer… an Interact. He labored one night working on a hangman game. I watched as he was using graph paper to plot pixels (sprites) to draw the artwork. When the game was done it had 6 or 8 words. I don’t remember which, but it was cool to see the little guy he had drawn on the screen. Very basic monochromatic graphics, but I was hooked.

The animator

Shortly thereafter we got a Commodore 64, and there were games for it, and it had color graphics. I had to help program the games from the back of magazines like Compute! and Compute’s Gazette. One day after school I was going through the books on the shelf and came across the manual for the computer. They showed how to make a sprite animation of a balloon. I sat down (I had my own floppy disk) and wrote out the program from the book to create the balloon and saved it. I altered the numbers and codes to change the colors of the balloon. Changed the speed and direction. It was pretty cool.

When I was in elementary school they had a “Gifted Summer School” where they had computer programming classes (unfortunately no art), but there we could use the computers to draw pictures with sprites (pixels). During regular school I was always in trouble for talking because I had finished my work, so drawing and reading helped me to stay out of trouble.

The hacker

From age 6 on I’ve been dabbling in computer programming… I guess the official term for someone who dabbles in computer programming for a living once they’re past 20 is a hacker. Around 11 or 12 I wanted to be a spy. I had a database program that I was using called Paradox that I had written my own tables and interface for because I had copied some of the ships from the Navy’s ARPANET site using a BBS. I was trying to catalog everything I could.

The digital artist

Around the same time we got CorelDraw on my dad’s computer. Before that I was using Gem Artline to draw on the computer.  I would draw in CorelDraw everyday and save my files to my floppy before Dad got home.

The car designer

As I got older my interests moved from dragons to jets and fighter planes, then on to cars. I loved the car drawings for concept cars in the magazines. I dug all of the cutaways in Popular Science and Popular Mechanics. About the age of 13 or 14 I really wanted to be a car designer. I wrote to Nissan Design International and asked if they had a scholarship program. They brushed me off and said they were only interested in college students who had their two-year degree.

The engineer

In high school I was heavily interested in programming and robotics. We had CNC machines in one of the tech labs. We had a contest one week between two back-to-back robots to see who could move blocks the fastest. I unplugged the other guy’s robot with my robot, then moved all of my blocks. I designed my CO2 car in an application we had on the computer and used the CNC machine to cut the body out. When it ran it was 3 times as fast as the guy next to me. Some kids at the end of the track picked up the safety barrier and my car blow into 1000 pieces and the CO2 cartridge became a flying projectile. I was disqualified. The other kid went on to win the state championship.

A somewhat formal education

The other classes I took for fun were Photography, Commercial Art / Advertising, and Television production. In Photography we had to use chemicals to process our own film. In Commercial Art it was all by hand (pen and ink, markers, and airbrushes), but we were one of the first schools to actually have a Mac with Illustrator and Photoshop… so when I was done with my work in my other classes I would come back over to the commercial art lab and draw on the Mac or head to the TV lab and do editing or shoot footage. I had a couple of marketing classes by this time over the years (they didn’t even really equate to Marketing 101).

Over the summer when I was 16, I began working at a photo-lab (at Walmart) because I had photography experience with the chemicals.  It wasn’t legal for me to be there (I was supposed to be 18 according to OSHA). This was all fine until I started pranking people and showing up late to work. I lost that job because I tore apart one of the film processors and modified some of the faulty pieces (it kept exposing the film because someone had bent the hinge). They were “afraid I would void the warranty” so I was let go. Come to find out later it’s because I had attracted attention to the fact that I was underage.

This left me looking for work.

A couple of my teachers had collaborated on getting me into a few schools. I wasn’t sure where I was going to go (nor did I really care). I ended up with a full scholarship to MIT through a robotics company (they’re out of business now). When I asked my girlfriend if she wanted to go, she said she had no interest in the cold North, so I didn’t go. I had a couple of partial scholarships for art schools that were way out of my price range, so I kept on working because none of the local schools had good art programs.

Desperate times call for…

I looked all over for a job, couldn’t find anything. One day on her way home from town my Mom noticed a magazine company that shared a space with a horse farm. She said because I had experience with the graphic design that I should try to get a job there as a graphic artist. So I went by, and they were nice enough to show me their cut and paste operation and their stat camera. I told them that I didn’t have any experience working in cut and paste. As I was leaving I asked the owner if he had any jobs for a computer programmer. He laughed and said “No, but you can paint my fences with oil.” I thought he was joking, so I went home.

When I came home my Dad asked me what happened with the job interview. I told him about the magazine, and then I told him when I asked if they had any computer programmer jobs the “crazy guy” told me I could paint his fences with oil. Dad got pretty angry and said “YOU NEED A JOB BOY. SO GO DO IT.” So I went back over to the horse farm, pride in hand, and told the man I would paint his fences. About a week went by before I was done.

After I was done I was looking for more money so I asked if he had any other jobs. He showed me a pile of horse manure and gave me a pitchfork. Told me I needed to get all of the manure in the pile into the back of a trailer. I didn’t know the first thing about shoveling shit and well, the wind was blowing, and somehow it ended up all over me. Another kid comes walking up and says “Why didn’t you give him a shovel?” The owner said “I wanted to see what would happen.” (I asked for a shovel and he said they only used the pitchforks because it broke it up better.) So after I shoveled all of the manure into the trailer the owner comes over and says “You know after all I think I do have a computer programmer job available.”

My first professional programming gig

For three months I wrote a state-of-the-art billing and sales tracking app in Paradox (Quickbooks meets Microsoft Project). When I was done with the project I came into the room where they were making the magazine. I told them it was probably a lot easier to make a magazine on the computer. The owner said “you can’t get halftones on a computer.” He showed me a printout from an inkjet. I told him that the programs they had weren’t suited for what they wanted to do, although I did show him that his laser printer would make halftones if we upgraded it. I started freelancing around the same time for a few other advertising clients.

So I went home, grabbed my whole desktop computer and brought it over to the magazine, set it up, and loaded CorelDraw. Then we brought their laser printer down from upstairs. When we printed one of the ad layouts I created we got really close to what he was calling a halftone. Within 2 months I had setup 3 workstations and upgraded two others in that back room and we were making a majority of the ads on the computer. They didn’t have room in the budget for me to be there fulltime so I had to find another job. My other part time job became a fulltime job. Then I had my freelance work on the side as well, so I had little time for the magazine company anymore.

The referral of a lifetime

After a couple of years I came back looking for work and the owner showed me their expanded operation. They had several computers and a network and were a 100% computerized operation. I asked if he had any work. I was about a month or two too late. He had to go The Flyer in Tampa, so he invited me along. While we were there they gave us a tour of the facility and showed us the presses, imagers, and plate-setters, and all of their graphic design stations. One of the guys who I had worked for at the USF Oracle was working there and asked if I was there for the job opening. So I inquired, the horse magazine owner recommended me on the spot, and before I knew it I was working on The Flyer's largest commercial accounts in tandem with their creative director in the creative services department.

I’ve read hundreds of volumes on the subjects of graphic design, commercial art, advertising, programming, video, animation, and photography since, but it's really difficult to apply unless you have the hands-on experience. As I would tell my students at Columbia College in Chicago, you have to practice whether you have a real job or not. I've also worked with hundreds of design, advertising, and illustration professionals over the years and picked their brains and studied their processes. Everyone has something to offer. The rest is history.

On thing though… every time I’m on deadline for some ad campaign late at night I tell myself, “It sure as hell beats shoveling horse shit.”

-Til later,

Chris