My love for design software began at the age of fifteen. I began my first graphic design classes and immediately fell in love with adobe illustrator. It’s so clean! It’s pristine, the mathematical equations behind it that keeps the system running makes pixels invisible – in fact they’re not used to be technical.

I’ve compared my design process to my classmates. It’s different. I start much more paper based than any of them – all immediately jump to the computer and start playing out their ideas, while I grab a pen (g2 .05 is my favorite, a 1 is also nice) and a sketchbook. I start drawing for a good 30% of the project time before I even touch my laptop.

This is great! My research is thorough, my explanations without gaps. However, by the time I get on the computer and start actualizing my designs I start to tread water. Time management is not one of my best skills – in fact, I wouldn’t even consider it a skill. I’m lacking. I change my mind often always wanting to improve. I’ve done it this way but I can do it better. There’s a saying in the design community, you’re never truly done with a project. Great.  With that I’m never meeting a deadline. Eventually we have to take a step back and say for now, for now, I am done.

I have some learning to do, especially when it comes to crossing the finish line while I am still running, not rolling over the tape broken by previous runners. I want to be the one to brake the tape.

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