I’m sitting in my kitchen thinking about the year that has gone by… I try to count up the goals I had set for myself last year and how many I actually completed. Fortunately, this blog was one that I did manage to complete – even though it was in the latter part of the year. I wanted to have a way to quickly get my thoughts to the internet in a clean and (hopefully) standards-compliant way.

I’ve been thinking about the things that help make me the kind of designer that I am… So here’s a bit of history, a bit more than that on my “About” page.

There are some people that think that designers are born as designers and that going to school for it is unnecessary. Personally, I don’t quite subscribe to that totally, in that I think it’s good to get education if you can, but I also believe that a person is a designer before they have the title.

Some would say that I’m a technical designer. There is something about machines & electronics that is alluring for me. When I was a child, my parents found me messing around with the computer at about 5am one morning, and the next and the next until they told me that this habit couldn’t continue – it was too early and about 7am was acceptable.

I was pretty much hooked from the off. I don’t remember any teething troubles such as using the mouse or modifier keys. FullPaint became my little world. I distinctly remember how frustrating it was that PageMaker 3.02 couldn’t rotate text or put it sideways. I also remember that it annoyed me that the text from Fullpaint was pixellated – and so I found a way to get round the problem. That was on a Mac Classic… Later on I progressed to a Mac IIci with a (gasp) colour screen! We bought PageMaker 5 and things really started heating up.

Around that time, I didn’t know about design. I didn’t know the terms Graphic Designer or Illustrator. I was thinking that I would have a career in cars. I had an epiphany when I saw an advert in MacWarehouse catalogue. I saw a stamp-sized picture that was created in Ray Dream Designer – “One Fast Mousetrap.” The one at the top of this post.

I owe my career to that image. When I saw it, I realised that pictures – high quality ones – could be made on a computer. I also realised that making them was I wanted to do. It was a crystal-clear decision. I had no doubt that this was what I was going to do.

I bought all the MacFormat Magazines I could and started to read Computer Arts Magazine. There wasn’t much I could actually do on the IIci, but I read every page, including the adverts. Soon, I was able to get an Apple clone from Umax, an Apus 3200 (when Apple licensed the MacOS to other vendors…) and at age 16/17 I was fortunate enough to get a place at college for Graphic Design. This was where I first understood about speed in artwork. Whenever we received projects we were allowed up to about two weeks to complete them. I normally finished mine either that night or the next day. It seems that my talent/skill/mindset or whatever was that I could somehow come up with a picture of the whole design really quickly and improve the design while on the way to completion. (I must have been a frustrating student – my teacher ran out of things for me to do. Fortunately they had Photoshop, so the time wasn’t wasted.)

Basically that process still operates in my mind… I tend to hit more than my fair share of home runs in very early stages of production. Maybe I just understand what the project needs easily, or maybe I’m a good listener. To be honest I’m not sure what it is. What I do know is that I can supply high quality design work in a very short time.

I’m very fortunate. There are many designers that can claim:

• Lots of experience
• High quality design services
• A wide range of skills

But not everyone can add “I’m really fast” to their list. Maybe I should start using a slogan – “Blue Eye Graphics. Design that’s really, really, really fast.”

What do you think – catchy, no?