It was my graduating year, graduating month to be precise. My course coordinator said something to me that would affect me deeply for the next ten years… “you’re a good illustrator, but you’ll never be a good designer”. I graduated my course that year, got a great response to my finishing folio… then went and got a job managing accounts at a printing company. I was too scared to show my folio to prospective employers, I thought they’d tell me I was no good as a designer. So I worked soulless jobs dealing with arsehole client after client, all the while wishing I could hang out with the creatives. Five years later, my itch to design hadn’t subsided so I started freelancing to re-bulid some sort of folio. Three years after that, I finally had enough confidence to apply for an actual design job… I got the second one I applied for. Package design for a toy company and developing products.
Now, I’ve always been over sensitive, it’s a fault of mine. But I still to this day believe that that “teacher” who shattered my confidence in one fell swoop has a lot to answer for. I realise now that he’s a miserable little shit who was a crap designer himself.
So this is the story of how I finally became a “designer”… and to show that YES, I am a great illustrator.
As an adult, I can’t imagine anything worse than rolling around in grass clippings for an afternoon. But as a kid, making piles of cut grass and jumping on them, covering yourself and your brothers in them… getting them down your pants and underwear in your eyes and ears and up your nose was a fabulous day. Sometimes it makes me sad that we grow up and start caring too much, we get too precious and caught up in the things we need to do rather than just doing things for the sake of it. Although you won’t catch me rolling around in the grass any time soon… maybe I could take my shoes off and enjoy the feeling of the grass on my feet every so often…
