Son of a Teacher Man

I never wanted to be a teacher. My mom taught elementary school, my dad taught biology to high school kids, and just about everybody else in my family—cousins, aunts, uncles—eventually found their way into the education field (even my little sister’s a teacher now). But not me. I was going to be an artist.

So I went through college, majoring in art. When it came time to decide upon an emphasis, I picked graphic design—I joked that I chose design over fine art because I didn’t want to have to eat ramen noodles my whole life, but the real reason was that I felt like design played a more integral role within society than painting did (I don’t know if that was a commentary on contemporary art, or on culture in general… anyway). The general public actually saw design. Design communicated. Design persuaded. Design… taught? Oh man.

Of course, throughout my first few years as a graphic/web designer I was enamored with the flashy, hipper-than-thou, watch-the-logo-catch-on-fire visuals surrounding me. Design seemed to be all about creating something so interesting-looking that people said “wow.” Then the dot-com bubble burst, and that economic shift forced a lot of creative people to rediscover a fundamental design principle: design is more than pretty pictures. Good design not only inspires, but communicates. In other words, design should be both smart and compelling.

I started off spending all my design time on the compelling side of design; as I’ve gotten older (and hopefully wiser), I’ve become consumed with creating smart design. Here’s an example: We recently created a Change Management Primer for a client. While it’s a beautiful and engaging piece, my favorite part of it is how we were able to layer relatively large amounts of information into a non-threatening and easily digestible system. By making the information easier and less confusing to access, we’re raising the chances of the end user actually receiving the information we’re trying to communicate. We’re not making people say “wow” anymore; we’re getting them to say “aha!” (To see what I’m talking about, visit the Primer. The diagram in the “How” section illustrates my point.)

At our best, good designers really are a lot like teachers—the most important charge for both is to communicate information to their audience. It’s taken me almost thirteen years of studying design to realize it, but I have finally come to the conclusion that I’m just like my parents. Except I can’t give out detentions.