June 14, 2004

rash decisions

The day after graduate school ended, I promptly went to work.

By 7:30 am the next day i was digging a row of 24" holes with a post hole digger. my grandmother said it was the fastest she has ever seen anyone earn their PhD after grad school. (Post Hole Digger.)

what is even more humbleing:
i took the money in the graduation cards to the doctor's office in case i needed to pay for the prescriptions for the poison ivy on my right arm that became infected while obtaining my PhD.

and as i drove away from the emergency care office with my mother and my poision ivy, i put the passenger window down and hung my itching arm out the window to like drying white laundry you don't want anything to touch.

driving through the slow motion sunset, complete with country radio, my mother's harmonizing hum, and the smell of cut hay fields, i felt -for a moment-like i had set still and deep like a stain in the summertime of ohio.

playing the airplane wing-flap game with my right arm extended out the jeep window, i began to realize that extended stints in college don't equal knowledge. especially when you are studing something as subjective as the practice of making something look- in laymans and professional terms: "cool".

tibor kalman said, "“If you don't have an idea, all you have is style.”

and what's more, i am not sure anyone can be taught either.

i have never learned how to think. or to have an idea. at best i have learned how to make it happen after it seeped up into the the front of my head like poison ivy on my skin, itching at me until i do something about it. i have learned about apertures and f-stops and serif and sans serif. truetype, post script. pantone and hexidecimal. but it all means nothing unless i have something to say. it is like having a case of bullets with no gun. and even with the most powerful of an aresenal, and the ammunition, nothing will happen, unless i pull the trigger.

the keyboard i am typing on has 3 different type faces on it, 46 icons, and a 3 tiered color heirarchy. a living testament to paul rand, sits in the lower right hand corner. the injection molded keyboard is a PMS plastic color, is in the 440-445 range. i often feel like the entire world is a text book on design, and when i start to study the prescription labels on the tube of anti-itch creme and begin to feel foolish that i ever thought going to school to see what is everywhere anyways was what i needed to do.

people talk about "getting it". i hear that a lot. i get it. i get it. or maybe i don't. and so maybe that means that i do. but i have made a concisous decison and effort not to scratch my arm. to be a good designer. to see it like it is. or how it should be. and i ever want any satisfaction: i will have to load the gun, and pull the trigger for myself.

and so riding through the slow motion sunset, complete with country radio, my mother's harmonizing hum, and the smell of cut hay fields, i enjoyed the rewards of higher education, and my tube of anti-tich creme.

Posted by Todd Roeth at June 14, 2004 09:55 PM