I would like to advertise the fact that I am not studying advertising anymore – I am a designer.
What is a designer? Excellent question. And to be honest, I don’t have a straight answer for you. But it is this ambiguity that comforts me. After first quarter, I went to Hank, the school president, to express my concerns regarding my future classes. At the time my focus was Art Direction in advertising, and therefore (according to him) I was on a path set solely for an ad agency. My qualm was that advertising/concepting classes would not allot me the opportunities to improve upon my design and craft skills. He simply said, “I’m going to switch you over to design.” That was it. He didn’t split my focus between ad and design; he brought me completely from one side to the other. That’s how Hank rolls.
“But what about the concepting classes?” I asked. He said that I should take primarily design classes, and then sprinkle in a concepting class here and there as I go. This way, my career options won’t be so confined to just an ad agency.
I was skeptical at first, but now I find that I’ve made the right decision. Not only am I constantly challenged, but now I fully realize the impact of design. Initially, I had moral issues with advertising. Something in the back of my head told me that there was something wrong with making people buy things that they didn’t need. One could even argue that advertising was the root of our economic recession. Overall, like every naïve grad student claims, I would like to do something to make the world a better place – and the more I learned about design, the more I realized that it was the medium for me.
Let us take for example, the recent presidential race. This election had a
record turnout of young voters ages 15 to 29 with voters preferring Obama to McCain by 68 to 30 percent. Though his campaign was flawlessly executed, I feel that his success was due primarily to his peripheral popularity. In case you were in a coma for the past year, it seemed as if backing Barack was the ‘fashionable’ thing to do. We have all seen this iconic portrait of our current president:
The print is a definitive example of the stylish underground support that propelled the candidate to victory. It is a symbol of how Obama and his optimistic values were/are for lack of a better word,
cool.
And where did this coolness begin? It started from the studio of skateboarder/graphic designer,
Shepard Fairey. This image (which will no doubt go down in history) contributed to empowering a man who will [optimistically] establish balance back into this country. So, is it too much of a longshot to infer that design saved the U.S.? The world?
Now, I’m not implying that Shepard Fairey
directly saved us from being governed by an aging close-minded ignorant Republican. I am simply stating that he
contributed to a movement that put us in a better position in the world. He merely added some lighter fluid to the fire.
That, my friends, is good enough for me.
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