Final Draft

Designing Our Lives
By Derek Halsen

My interest for design started my freshman year of high school. I signed up for a web design class. Beforehand, I believed I could not draw to save my life, but the ideas were clear. I just could not execute them on paper. That web class showed me that with a computer I did not have to draw. I could translate what was in my head onto a screen with minimal effort. I just needed the knowledge of the tools in the programs, which were a breeze to pick up. The only problem was there were so many programs and so many tools. Dreamweaver was the majority of what I knew at the time, with the exception of a little Illustrator. I wanted to become an expert. I was addicted. It was my drug, my passion. I had found something that I could do at school that soon overtook my personal time. The class had two stages web and flash. Your website had to meet certain standards before you could pass over to the flash side of class. The site needed ease of use and to be aesthetically appealing. Ease of use is the idea that your website is clearly laid out and you can use the site full circle. Meaning, you can travel way down many links in the website and still have access to all the website has to offer. Essentially, a navigation bar at the top of the page is the easiest way to achieve this goal. Aesthetics were a breeze for me. It is all about colors and clarity with websites. Colors bring the user in; the clarity keeps them happy and focused. I still had a ton to learn after the web portion and still do to this day as a matter of fact, but the class had ended and I had to move on. 

The flash portion of the class was phenomenal.  You had the opportunity to make your own animation. Granted at that age my topics for animation were not that great, but I had an enormous amount of fun. I was always so stoked to go to that class. You can’t say that for a lot of high school students. Flash really was a big gateway into my design. You had to create character profiles, backdrops, props, etc. Only a fraction of the class was actual moving pictures. Most of it consisted of us creating the bits that went into it. That is what I enjoyed the most. My animations were a tad awful. It was hard to grasp the concept of accurately portraying a person moving. Most of them just slid everywhere they went, but they looked fabulous doing it.
Thus, the foundation for my interest in design was laid. I was hooked and there was not any stopping me for some time. I browsed hundreds of design sites and read so many articles, but I did not have the programs at my disposal unless I was in class, which frustrated me to no end. My interests lay dormant throughout sophomore year. Entirely because I was unable to take any design classes. If I had chosen to, I would have fallen short on other required credits. Plus, I had to acquire the proper programs, at least one or two of them. There are far too many of them for me to have at such a young age.

In my junior year of high school I was able to receive Photoshop and Illustrator for my personal use. It was a dream come true to say the least. Even better, my credits allowed a Graphic Animation class, which turned out to be more graphic than animation. That scored big points with me. The initial assignment was to design our own business card, which at the time consisted of blood splatter and skulls. I was so hardcore back then… not. Regardless, it looked snazzy and I was pleased, as was my teacher surprisingly. That was my reason for going to school junior year. No other class caught my attention like that one did. Graphic Animation offered a lot of variety. One week of the class we did a small portion of Photoshop where we had to demonstrate different techniques that could be used to modify pictures. I was really fond of one photo I took of my friend with his hood up over his eyes with him standing in a corner. I chose to fade him out. I took all the color out of him and added a light mist all around him. Needless to say, in the finished product he looked like a ghost; just a phantom lurking in the corner. The most brilliant part about it that you can make pictures look professional with such minimal effort. It is so ridiculous.

After Photoshop, I believe we did a piece on logos, a contest rather, one with a prize. It was game on for me. I knew I was the best in the class, mainly because no one took it seriously like I did. The logo came out magnificent. It was fitting, colorful and most importantly simplistic. There is no reason to over complicate a logo. Long story short, the company already had a previous logo similar to mine. I was pissed, so was the teacher. It would have been nice of them to include some material on their prior logos if that was to be a problem. All was not lost though, the teacher instilled a lot of confidence in my work after that project and I suppose that is when I truly knew I wanted to be a graphic designer. I had put a lot of hours into this logo that lost to someone that did it in one class period. Though, I was okay with that because I was proud of it. My creation made me happy, regardless of what someone else could say. Plus, I wanted to do it all over again. Not just as a project, as a career.

Graphic design had brought a whole new form of creative thinking to my life. It really is hard to explain. When you are making any kind of graphic, the image as a whole has to be complete. You cannot leave any part out or it takes away from the entire piece. I learned that you can apply that to everything in life. You have to give everything you got even for the smallest things in life or you will not be able to enjoy life as a whole. It changed the way I thought about my life, my music, my work and myself. I suppose in the end, that’s when one of the moments I realized what I really wanted to do with my life and that it was time to mature. That I was the designer of my own life.