Old School

I don’t mind being 29. In fact, I was speaking with Gina today about how I think I may have been born in time to enter the design field at just the right moment. My education and experience as a designer started the old-fashioned way: I drew type by hand as a regular homework exercise, I used gouache and Letraset and colored paper to make comps, and my first job involved specifying type for professionally set galleys that I pasted down by hand for a 180-page book which I planned out on a Mac. And when I started working as a typesetter for B.U., I learned how to use a serious, complex typesetting system on which no assumptions could be made. Every decision about typography and page layout had to be considered, so I learned discipline and craftsmanship which served me through the dark times of the desktop publishing revolution. But at the same time, I was right there working with Macs and the Web as they exploded, and I was in a great position to learn as they developed.

So I am old enough to have learned the craft that preceded me, and young enough to be open to — and a part of — the possibilities that are swirling around us now. And lucky enough to have been able to learn how to use the best elements of both approaches. I love me!