Questioning “Graphic” Design 02

Questioning “Graphic” Design 02:

‘It never existed in the first place!’

By Admin N : Just the other day, I was listening to ‘Susan Cain’ talk about the power of introverts and how introverted people perform best in term of productivity and creativity and it got me thinking, what am I? am I an introvert? An extrovert? Then I realized that I am both. I may have been an introvert at some point of my life, but then society happened and I was forced to come out of my shell and face the world I live in and thus I became an extrovert. But as a design student, you are encouraged to take a back seat and observe things in order to come up with solutions for the problems around you. Your friends noticed you’ve changed, you have become by their own definition: weird! But the question here is: am I weird because I am a design student or am I a design student because I’m weird?

What’s this nonsense, you may ask? But bear with me for a second here. The message that I’m trying to get across is the following: design is not a job, it’s a way of life (come on, don’t tell me I’m the only one who enjoys a good ol’ game of lets secretly bash the menu every time I go to a restaurant!). Well truth is, In order to become a good designer, you have to be on the constant lookout for everything that surrounds, it consumes you body and soul and completely alters your life to a point where simply calling yourself a graphic designer is somewhat offensive to your being. There is so much more than just vomiting a little CMYK mash-up on some adobe software then sticking some vector graphic art to it, design goes beyond the medium in a quest to find solutions. Whether we end up working in a big advertising firm, or founders of our own design studios, or even fulfilling our long lost dream of becoming a waitress in an Italian restaurant on the Virgin Islands, the truth is we can’t shake off the design thinking, once we have it, it stays forever. And that is why my friends, ‘Graphic’ design is dead, for me it never existed in the first place. Design was never just about visuals, it has always been about a message.