You may have a really ambitious idea that you want to realize, but you just can’t get it right. You might have a number of different paths to take in terms of developing your skills or style, but it’s hard to choose one because all of them seem tempting.
When you’re stumped, there’s no one better to give you direction than the best in the business. Before any famous graphic designers got to where they reached, they had to wrestle with the exact same problems you face.
The best way to get an idea of what values to keep in mind when working on a project is to examine how people at the forefront of the design movement think, what their background and artistic motivations are.
What follows are comprehensive biographies of five very different designers – different in terms of their backgrounds, the way they tackle projects and promote themselves, belonging from different eras.
Milton Glaser
Passion can find cultivation in all sorts of ways. Milton Glaser, the granddaddy of graphic design, first received patronage for his art in a way that is identifiable to many visual artists – he was around 8 years old when his friends asked him to draw nudes of girls for in exchange for a penny a piece.
Image by Sam Haskins from Sam Haskins Blog
Milton, who was amazed as a toddler by the ability of a sketch to recreate life, had the fortune of being one of those people who’d always known what they liked doing the most in life, in his case, it was drawing things on paper.
After graduating from the prestigious Cooper Union School of Art, he applied for and received a Fulbright scholarship that allowed him to study etching in Europe. Milton had the profound experience of living in a war-torn Bologna that was only building itself back up together.
Till date, he credits the very act of living abroad as being immensely transforming and enlightening and recommends anybody considering it to go ahead and do it.
Throughout the course of his career, Glaser aimed to focus less on matters of style, and instead be more direct with his design in terms of inciting emotion and attentiveness in his viewers. Which is why the most trended piece of design ever, is four characters long. Which is why the psychedelic Bob Dylan poster designed by him, despite merely being a silhouette is not only unmistakable but also speaks volumes about the musician in focus.
Image sourced from David published under Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) on Flickr
Milton is adept in communicating moods and perspectives through clean design that has a traditional feel to it, an aesthetic he developed due to his rigorous fine arts education.
A recent work of his that illustrates this perfectly is the bacchanalia filled poster he made for the final season of Mad Men – and who better than Milton to capture the ’60s advertising scene? He practically defined the standard in those days.
Image from Milton Glaser
“All the things you’re not supposed to do at the beginning of your professional life – transgressiveness, arbitrariness and violating expectations – you find more attractive at the end of your professional life. “
Chip Kidd
You can’t talk about book covers without mentioning the Kidd who created the landscape. Easily the most versatile designer of book jackets and comic book covers alive today, Chip Kidd likens designing covers to “solving problems”.
Image by Luigi Novi under license CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Chip Kidd was born into the ‘Silver Age of Comic Books’, in 1964, and his love of comic books defined his childhood and manifested as an undying passion in his adulthood, it is what led him to become a designer. It’s no surprise that he has designed numerous comic book covers over the course of his career.
Kidd’s portfolio ranges from comic book covers for notable DC characters to paperback covers for novels by Murakami, Bret Easton Ellis – and the instantly recognizable T – Rex skeleton from the posters of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park.
Image from Amazon India
When questioned about his creative process, he states that he relies on the author to write a good book, and if they’ve done a good job he gives his all into doing justice to the manuscript with an evocative, iconic cover.
Although self-deprecating and humorous when talking about his work, the intensity with which he approaches his project is evident from his semi-autobiographical novel “The Cheese Monkeys”, based on his time learning design in college.
Screenshot of the portfolio of Chip Kidd
Chip studied graphic design under the instruction of Lanny Sommese at Penn State University, who is notorious for his highly demanding, eccentric, and gruelling teaching style. Here’s a quote from “The Cheese Monkeys” that hints toward the attitude that lends Chip his boundless creativity and versatility.
“Never fall in love with an idea. They’re whores: if the one you’re with isn’t doing the job, there’s always, always, always another.”
Kate Moross
A tinkerer for as long as she remembers, gluing things together for the heck of it, Kate Moross found encouragement for her talents from her high school art teacher – who spurred her on to learn computer editing software like Flash and Photoshop. She admittedly spent all her time in the art department at school, and particularly loved playing around with rotoscope art, something that is evident in her style today.
By Richard Moross under license CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Moross took a foundation course in graphics from the Wimbledon School of Art before going on to get her undergrad degree from the uber modern and experimental Camberwell College of Arts.
She started freelancing since her first year of college and was featured in magazines like Vice, Creative Review and Dazed & Confused as a breakthrough designer even before she graduated at 21.
Image from the Advertising portfolio of Kate Moross
Kate is known for creating vibrant and ebullient design that’s bursting at the seams with energy. She started Studio Moross in 2012 and has worked as an art director on music videos, had her own clothing line, and has had boast-worthy clients like MTV, Paul Smith and Ray Ban. One Direction hired her for their “On the Road Again” Tour in 2015.
Image from It’s Nice That
Recently she has authored the book “Make Your Own Luck: A DIY Attitude to Design & Illustration”, and always presses on the importance of working hard to set yourself apart from the crowd, in terms of both dissidence from stylistic norms and having superior creative output.
“There’s lots of graduates and lots of people out there, and you have to really know what you’re about, and work harder than everyone else to make that bigger step.”
Jacob Cass
Another designer who started early and has gained a prominent online presence in the logo design/branding business is Jacob Cass. Even before stepping foot in his 20s Jacob had set up the foundations for a successful freelancing career, designing and blogging at Just Creative Design.
Image from Jacob Cass‘s Twitter
What started as a hobby website while he was in school, became a platform for Jacob’s design aspirations, and Just Creative Design is now the first result that shows up on Google on searching ‘graphic design portfolio’.
After being introduced to design through a high school course, Jacob studied Visual Communication at the University of Newcastle all the while freelancing through his website.
Image from the portfolio of Just Creative
Jacob is currently leveraging the freedom of his digital nomad life, by being on the road on the road 24×7. With the help of his wife Emily, Jacob maintains the blog and works on design projects, with the duo spending every week in a different country.
Notable work by Jacob includes designing the website for Jerry Seinfeld’s show “Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee”, and a number of websites for video games by Nintendo.
Screenshot of the website Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee
In terms of advice for graphic designers who are starting out, Jacob has a section on his blog that journals a number of interviews with designers. And here’s what the man himself has to say on the matter:
” [Online design resources] are limited, you should be connecting with people & brands. Follow them on your favorite social networks.”
David Carson
While all the examples before have been people who were always artistically inclined and started design at an early age, there are outliers in every trade. If you have found your calling to be graphic design and want to create a legacy, then no age is too late to start.
Image from David Carson Design
Carson is a fine example. Although he is now considered to be the biggest name in the world of design, David Carson started off on a different route entirely. Having grown up in Florida, Carson was a surfer and had always been industrious.
After high school, he graduated with a degree in Sociology from San Diego State University, and his first job was as a high school teacher. He also went on to become a pro surfer, ranking 9th in the world at the same time that his design career was taking off.
Image from David Carson Design
At the age of 28, while still at his high school job, Carson was dabbling in design on the side. He allowed himself only a modest amount of formal instruction in the art, and jumped onto the market, working without pay for Action Now skate magazine – combining his affinities for extreme sports and design together.
Consequently, Carson art directed a number of skateboarding and surfing magazines for almost two decades, before moving to New York City to start David Carson Design studio. Quite early into his career, he had become known somewhat as a disruptor, with his usage of “dirty” type and collaged photography creating the grungy look that many music publications featured in the 90s.
Image from David Carson Design
Having worked with big names like Giorgio Armani, Bose Audio, MGM Studios, Mercedes-Benz and even the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, it’s no surprise that David Carson is the most searched graphic designer and has been called “our biggest star” by the American Institute of Graphic Arts.
Image from 1323 Parker
Being comfortable with taking risks and venturing into new territory with just your gut as a compass, is a trait that can pay off well. Carson talks about his lack of formal education and surfing the waves of public opinion:
“I’m experimenting in public. At the design grad schools, these are people sitting around in groups, putting their work on a wall, analyzing it and putting it back in a drawer. I think there’s little risk in that.”
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This article was written by Mickey Thibault. If you want to contact him for feedback, send him an e-mail.
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