The design of my life

When I quit college and started defining my 'career objectives' out of necessity, I left home and soaked it up in a tiny walk-up loft above a garage two blocks away from our old place. The bugger costs me a thousand bucks, but the private space I enjoyed was worth it.

My mom stayed at my sis' place when she got married. I usually drop by on weekends to see how she was doing, bringing a bagful of grocery and a variety of meds she was maintaining. My sis with her new husband were trying their best to start a family, so my regular visits spared her the unnecessary worry over my mom's daily keep.

It was during one of these weekend stayovers that my mom asked me what it is exactly that I do.

"Ma, I’m a graphic designer," almost pretty sure that the statement helped. But she was like blank, so I showed her color proofs of the catalog I was working on. "Here this, some job I did for this furniture company."

"I love these pictures! How did you do it?"
"No ma, I art directed the photographer who took the pictures."
"Ooh, so you wrote the script?"
"No, the copywriter wrote the copy, I worked with her to make sure the words 'flow' with the pictures.""That's a nice drawing there, did you do that?"
"No, I sketched the idea, then art directed the commissioned illustrator to do that."

After a long pause, "Oh, I get it, you printed all these?""No mum, the printer does that, though I supervise them when they start the runs.

"Finally, she gave up, "It's certainly a beautiful catalog. I'm proud of you whatever it is you did with it."

"Thanks ma."

I design for a living. I manage and design information and juggle with different people's creative inputs (and today they call it a skill set?) to come up with a piece that (according to my textbook) arrest, informs, persuade and generate action. I design posters, webpages, brochures, catalogs, magazines, and books. Heck, even a kindergarten classroom interior once in a while.

I've been a graphic designer for so long now I can't remember what else I wanted to do with my life. I coulda swore I'd become an archaeologist, or a biologist, or one of those career manifestations of my passion for science back in grade school. I could even imagine myself to be a writer or an economist someday.

But surely I didn't blurt "I wanna be a graphic designer" when I was a kid. Words like those don't roll easily off a kid's mouth, let alone have any fricking idea what it was. Obviously the next thing I’m gonna tell you is how I came into this ephiphany in the first place.

Believe me, like any rut one gets stuck in, the decision was not really one that came, but which presented itself as a rash alternative in an equally clueless situation. I was having trouble keeping up with my college scholarship, my first course was Engineering (mad science freak, remember?) and I was, well, not doing good, no thanks to my averse attitude towards The Math and any analytical subject. Predictably fuzzy from high school, I didn’t realize that was what Engineering was all about in the first place. (But Father, I thought I was just going to assemble radio sets, why do I have to study calculus?)

So I had to, as the Father administrator advised, shift to a 4-year non-math course to save my clueless ass. My friend Ian, who got to Fine Arts a full year ahead, urged me to follow suit.

And so, wide-eyed me, I did, majoring in Advertising (Ian, unsay major kuno ako gusto?) and proceeded to the next four years of anything-but-shiny-happy college education.

To start me up, I tried psyching up that I had The Gift. Oh boy, I had always been creative, wasn't I? Doodling innocent scrawls in fly leaves, meticulously lettering folder covers, drawing Mazinger Z blindfolded, sketching Mickey on dusted window panes. I really thought hard, but they so escape me.

All I remember from my kiddie days were foot races at nearby creeks on our looong way to spider hunting. Or burning matchsticks under the noisy neighborhood girls' skirts. Or conjuring santelmo or making luthang. Really anything but artistic.

So I rolled up my sleeves and went to work on my 'education'. I read art books, analyzed paintings, imitated Vermeer. I focused on the majors and gave cursory attention to the minors. But I just didn't get it. Our painting instructor says I paint too vividly (There is really no white white, even pure white has color. And don't forget to put more violet.) My illustration coach said I had no depth of field (What, you cut this out and pasted it?) My design teacher said I lacked symmetry (You're still a freshman, give me a Mondrian, not a Braque).

I started drifting away. I joined the school publication which was based in downtown campus, and learned how to layout pages, still another new word for a pretty clueless 'artist' that I was. I got involved with The Grand Social Experiment and became a student radical. I read again, this time to save me and my newly assumed title of 'The Layout artist of The Today's Carolinian'. How gravy. Never mind that I was spending most days in USC Main, when most of our classes was in Talamban.

Needless to say, I skipped classes, submitted plates only to pass the course, and generally made a schmuck of myself to classmates. It didn't help that they saw me in street rallies and radical art exhibits. I managed to stay good enough to reach senior year, and even had a few awards in the annual student exhibits I attended. But I didn't graduate, I had to stop when I felt it was time to move on.

Shifting from classical art to contemporary design, I burned the midnight flourescent, 'my nights were colored headache grey'. I was in the library more than in the classroom. I devoured Paul Rand, Saul Bass and Seymour Chwast. I browsed through magazines in bookstores back when Terry Jones designed i-D, and Fabien Baron designed Vogue; Fred Woodward - The Rolling Stone; and Tibor Kalman - Colours.

I scoured the USIS for UN publications. I was more interested in the shape of letters than the pictures they describe. I grew more curious about impressive layouts than artworks. I read Marshall Mcluhan for technology & culture and began to take interest in William Gibson. I saw everything in a different light: books for their covers, buildings for their facades, shops for their signage.

Yes, I was an agent for the Western neo-colonial visual culture. Pat Gorman's MTV new new thing rocked the 80s and David Carson is god of the 90s.

And so I've always been a designer. Not an 'artist' artist. Design appeals to me primarily because of its problem solving nature. I don't trust my artistic mumbo-jumbo, since I always attack anything I do from a point of function, relevance and usability. Pretty boring mindset for a creative you say. I admit I take my job seriously because I want to enjoy doing it, and I do. Even when people don't know what it is.

Like how this scene always plays in real life:"What is it exactly you do?""I'm a graphic designer.""Oh, like you're some kind of an artist? You must be good at drawing.""Well, yes like an artist, but no, I don't draw anymore."

And then sly under my breath, I remember that Sunday afternoon with Mom.