Prologue

This is the first post I think of a blog that could become substantial in my life. Or at least become read by people other then myself. I don’t know what to expect fully, or what the hell Im getting my self into…

But..

I think it beneficial for myself and others in situations like mine to feel that we are not alone in our up stream battle. That dignity and recognition in a field we feel so passionate about, or at least or interested ( or in my case: Entangled)

This will be the telling of my own struggles and inspirations as well as information that through my massive internet trolling, blog reading, and information scrounging I have amassed. The field in question is the wonderful Graphic Design. To be more specific that of primarily Web Design, with the intention of branching into Branding and Print media.

Let my start with some professional background so we can all discover why it is I’m the way I am.

The Beginning

So lets start with some basics. First I’m a left handed, right minded individual. I’m also some what of an autodidact, meaning I learn and store information on many different subjects, and somehow manage to retain them very well. Honestly I think it’s a slight form of autism, or dyslexia, or something of the sort. As soon as I find anything that interests me I engulf everything that I can about that subject… I’m no “good will hunting” but I know a lot, about a lot. But still somehow get killed at jeopardy by my girlfriend…

This also leads to serious problems, as I get bored with subjects very easily and tend to procrastinate about everything. It is a huge personal battle that I think I will defeat only as adulthood continues and I develop the skills to force my mind to do what it needs to do beyond its desires to absorb. Being left handed also tends to allow me to think and process information differently then most people. I was once given this analogy:

A Single Blue M&M is placed into a jar with the rest of the other colors. 2 men are then asked to find the M&M Without breaking the jar.

The first, a right handed man takes the jar and meticulously scans each individual line and row looking for the M&M, moving the jar only when he reaches the bottom… Eventually he finds the M&M.

Then the second man, left handed, is given the same task. He picks up the jar, dumps in out onto the table, spreads the candy around and looks at the image as a whole and instantly finds the blue M&M. Both methods give the same result but the steps are far different.

OK! ENOUGH OF YOUR LEFT HAND BS!!! WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH DESIGN!!!

OK! OK! Well, what this means is I either did homework so fast, or put it off so much that when the street light comes on, and I have 3 hours before I’m supposed to go to bed that I’m doing NOTHING. Sometimes I would read, or play killer old video games… My step-fathers tolerance of this only lasted so long and eventually invoked a confrontation between the computer geek and the 13 year old teenager. As a casual interest of any computer or tech minded person in the 90’s my step-father had been messing with HTML and these concepts. He told me, that if I wasn’t going to be doing homework each night, that I would HAVE to learn something. His tool of choice was HTMLgoodies that he himself was using to learn.

Within 2 days I had learned everything he had learned and beyond. I had started writing code on free hosts and started reading everything that I could. This lead to JavaScript and java.

“But how do I create the cool images?”

In comes photoshop 5.5 and COUNTLESS photoshop tutorials and HOURS upon HOURS of working on projects.

“Well how do they do those cool animations?”

Flash was still version 4, which I started on.. and Then in the middle of my Flash infancy the world got Flash 5 and the mighty Action Script which felt oh so familiar to the JavaScript I had learned the year before.

This lead to CRAZY amounts of amusing designs and movies at a level I would not yet appreciate.

I eventually went with ASP as my first language, then went to PHP as my serverside of choice

I was in High school, in both the Architectural design path as well as seeking honors recognition in ART (An Art background Helps A TON!)

I Lead a club of Draftsman, Designers, 3D teams to many state competitions which we won, or were disqualified because our approach was yet to be understood (IE we turned a local college lab into a 3dsMax render farm to render a movie, with sound, whilst our competitor was still on one machine.)

I was winning awards for design, logo development, technology (IE the use of browsers and PHP to develop a interactions without user direction.. Ajax before HTTPrequest) I designed the schools letterhead, and permanently hid a piece of my self in every letter ever sent from my High School.

I worked freelance with a few different companies, trying to hide my young age so most of my work went unaccredited..

And then suddenly it ALL stopped.

Why? I don’t know. My creative side has gone many other directions over the past 4 years. I did some cool stuff with High end cars, and even learned to build guitars from scratch. Architecture is still my #1 passion, and in the end is what I hope my life ends up with… But alas I don’t have all the answers. I think that when I graduated high school the TV was flooded with ads for technical schools teaching web design. I felt that the pool would only get tainted, and the world was going to move a way that I didn’t want to go creatively.

Now Im 22 years old, and it seems the world pushed the weak aside and stayed on its natural course. Flash is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO strong now its incredible. I wonder if designers that have come in the past few years even remember shockwave. Or for that matter Macromedia for which I was such a fan. The speeds of internet technology have caught up to graphic and content ability. Sites are more complex, larger in size, and far more astonishing. Of course we call it Web 2.0 and I think that this was what invited me back to design. I see a lot of amazing work out there and I think that I may actually have some potential to do some good work. I’m not saying I’ll be groundbreaking or astonishing. Hell I’ll say I’m not even that good in comparison to my peers that have stayed with it when I abandoned the internet. I’ve had no formal training, and this annoys some of my friends who HAVE and have spent A LOT of money to learn things I figured out at 13. But I don’t think this world needs you to learn everything in a classroom. The classroom is the stage and blank document and like every skillful profession it requires seat time to learn.

I’m going to try and teach those that want to learn like I did. Through the world of information that is surrounding us. You can learn as I learn, We can learn together. I find its my peers that I revere most, and take in more from and I suggest the same. Find someone’s work you really admire. Maybe it’s a painter, or Photographer, or a great writer, and talk design, or thought process, or read their books, and their explanations.

BTW I LOVE the comma. Get used to it.

Only through constant emersion will you learn anything.

Don’t stand there holding the jar trying to figure it all out. Pop the top, dive in and nock some things around. In the end there will be a blue M&M that made it all worth it.

I Promise.

-Dennis Smolek