Of course so many people are influences in our lives, but there are always a select few that really impact it–True mentors. For me it was a professor at George Brown College, Charles Fisch, RGD. None of the students really liked him, and ironically enough, neither did I until years later.
It was only after looking back on my schooling that I realized what valuable skills and lessons he had taught me. The importance of preparation, planning and research involved in creating effective design.
Some of these steps seemed like a waste of time when I could be saving the world one awesome design at a time. But it was exactly these processes that enabled me to maximize my efforts, and come up with well developed design concepts.
For most design students it is all about how good your final design piece is, but he wanted to see the process–the thumbnail sketches, the roughs, and that the files were properly constructed in the proper programs. He would always say that it didn’t matter how “pretty” the design was if it couldn’t go to prepress and be printed. So now after being in the industry for about 15 years and working in many different roles from a Junior Designer to now owning my own company, I can say thank you Charles Fisch for all the tedious work that paid off!
Three of My Favourite Resources for Design Inspiration:
- Communications Arts—all things communication, arts, design, photogrpahy. You name it, it’s there.
- Colour Lovers-monitors and influences colour trends in design. Really cool site.
- Creattica–news, design, branding, and more.