The Send button in my email program gawks at me as I type a few lines worth of comments to a client. Attached to the document is a PDF proof containing artwork that is sandpapered and wrenched to perfection – each vector carefully chiseled and every pixel neatly aligned and cleverly related to their digital neighbors. The type faces sing their settled song from their perch on the page as the taut layout elements poise themselves to bounce the onlooker’s eye around like a pinball.

Several hours have elapsed, several sketchbook pages covered with scratchy marks, several Bezier handles nudged this way and that, and I feel the burn of the button in the upper left corner of my screen as it dares me to click it. A digital piece of my soul now hurtles through an ethereal and intangible network of who-knows-what, weaving its way to the inbox of the client.

This person on the receiving end will perform a couple of quick tasks including a double-click of the mouse, a sip of cold coffee, and a glance at the minute hand of a clock as she waits for her PDF reader to render the digital data into something viewable.

What happens in the next twelve seconds or so will become the fulcrum on which the rest of my week hangs. The judgments assessed in this brief span will either move the project forward into revisions and then production, or it will send it spiraling down the toilet and relegate me back to the empty canvas.

There is a strange and often disconcerting disconnect between the quantities of time, energy, and emotion poured into the creation of a conceptual design and the brevity during which it either destined to become a product on a printed page or a wad in a receptacle. The question to which I am yet to find a satisfactory answer is this: How does the graphic artist pour fitting emotion, thought, and passion into the commissioned design, and yet remain sufficiently detached from the conceptual product to be unaffected by its acceptance or rejection.

Our work exists in the space between art and product, and it is a bit tense in the gap. To design from a posture of detachment can only yield mechanical emptiness, but creating from a stance of passionate, soul-searching inspiration can produce a temporarily immobilized designer (in the case of a harsh rejection).

I have clicked the dreaded button, and I tap a nervous beat on the arms of my chair as I consider all that is about to transpire. Hiding behind my design you will find a slice of me. Somehow weaving their way into each graphic decision are all of the tough phone calls I have fielded this past week, all of the joy of last weekend’s events, all of the agony of suffering loved ones, all of the stress that comes with owning a business… Look closely at the PDF – it’s all in there.

The hash marks are collecting as the years go by and the portfolio becomes overstuffed with hundreds of samples. Though my ability to handle this is not perfected by any means, I am working hard to dial in on breathing life into my designs from the depths of my soul, and then completely cut them loose, entrusting them into the eye of the commissioner. There is something therapeutic about this process; the lesson that is ours for the taking is that even our most grand and carefully crafted output should be viewed as humble and small. No matter how talented we are (or think we are), we must ultimately view ourselves as servants of others and find comfort in knowing that our tiny sector of the world will be touched by our humility.

Accepted or rejected? We’ll see…

Sifting Gems Out of the Daily Grind

I am looking out the window, eyes glazed from too little sleep, at a gray late-morning that is nothing beyond ordinary. From my office perch in the basement, there is not much to see: the right portion of my neighbor’s house and the left portion of the house next to it, some utility apartments lurking yards behind, bramble and weeds choking out what once was fescue in my front lawn, and three telephone wires slicing the scene down the middle. The sky is a dirty blanket, hoarding the much-needed rain without spilling a drop. The house is warmish, but the landscape speaks of a chill that makes me reach for a knit blanket and the boiling pot of tea.

I light a candle, hoping the spiced scent and the gentle jitter of the flame will somehow persuade me into a productive groove. It does nothing of the sort. Instead, thoughts of my plump couch, and the neighborhood cinema, and the freshly-lubed road bike in my garage back the work schedule deeper into the fourth quadrant.

The job tickets are tidily lined up in the PHP queue, waiting for the magic and devotion that each deserve. And here I am, milling around the internet, waiting for the same magic to clock me back to coherence. It is one of those dreaded days where nothing flows freely and much needs to be accomplished.

Sometimes I find thumbing my nose at the project list is the only thing to do. While tinkering with a Saturday project is out of the question, I can always justify a little Photoshop exploration, so I open up the program as well as some random stock photos and start pressing buttons. My only goal is to place colors, textures, and emotions onto the canvas that somehow mirror the doldrums griming up my productivity. I select a washed palette of color and weary textures that seem to call to the ordinary scape outside my window. One click leads to another, and before long a half-hour turns into an hour, and thoughts start to string together into a semblance of coherence that shortly ago seemed so far from reach.

The haunting days with buffets of apathy and overflowing vats of lazy gravy are part of the gig. Anyone can design something when all the pistons are firing correctly; the question is how to dance in the space between inspirations. A true graphic artist is able to embrace the beauty of the moment, however dull it is, and in doing so will find pockets of beauty that look much different from the days of glitter and glory.

The Photoshop file is saved to my desktop, and I glance over my work. My product is not profound or grand, nor would it ever win any design awards. But it is an accomplishment - the first of the day, and now I can move forward.