How I became a voodoo graphic designer
I found a little piece of art in my ideas box the other day, some hand-drawn art over the whole back of an envelope. I think I drew it back when I was in high school, during one of my church's boring sermons, as it was on the tithing envelope. I look back on how far I have gone since then; I never imagined I would actually make it as a graphic designer or creative person.
Even when I was a kid, I had a love for paper and the printed word. I would make pop-up cards, and make 'Welcome Back' signs for my parents whenever they came home from an overseas business trip.
When I got to school, I started doing bulletin boards and organization charts for clubs. For every club I joined, I became their 'bulletin board decorator', if there was such a thing. Where other people had drawn with black marker pen on manila boards, I had cut fish shapes, and layered them over waves, and layered those over foam double sided tape. A 3D aquarium...for an organization chart. You could always tell which one was mine. I had cotton sheep over green paper pastures for the English club, the aquarium for Girl Guides (we wore blue those days), and silver foil and black for the class board.
All my exercise books were wrapped by colour depending on subjects, and I printed my name on them. The age of Microsoft Word. I ended up doing brochures (in Word those days) for sports events and parent-teacher meetings. Well, I actually did those because I could skip class to go to the teacher's office to do it!
However, I always saw graphic design as a hobby, and not something you could turn into a career. My community tends to gear their kids to either become accountants, engineers, lawyers or doctors. If you are not smart enough for any of those, you became a teacher. I fell into the accountant group, and went all the way to pre-university, only to realize that accountancy truly sucks for me. I was never good with numbers. Besides, I spend more time working on my PowerPoint presentation slides than the contents of the slide itself. My report was the only one with a custom cover (still done in Word) and printed in colour. I didn't do too well, but was an average student. I realized though, that something needed to change. I couldn’t survive 3 years of accounting degree! I needed to escape!
I decided to do a mass communications degree instead. I didn’t think at that time that my parents were too happy with me, although they did not say anything. They are cool that way, open to their kids exploring 'other' career paths. My dad was hoping I would at least get a business degree, which I eventually did as well, and I managed a Grad Dip in International Business before I decided it was a total waste of time and money, so I did not finish my Masters.
I started working for a marketing company by chance - they needed an admin person to fold envelopes. Ironically, I started correcting and formatting their Word documents. I like order and nicely aligned spaces, so I was their formatting wizard. Soon, I started doing some Photoshop work with web buttons, and those became headers. I only knew basic html and css then, but through work and Google I managed to advance my skills. Now I manage their wordpress websites, and get to design most of their marketing materials, and...I still format their Word documents! Colleagues who saw my work at the office would offer me some freelance work for their own projects...and here I am, a professional graphic designer, and loving it!