Because most people I meet have a set image of a graphic designer that is quite distant from, or only part of, the truth, I hope that through this blog I can broaden that view. I thought I might start by telling people a little about my own background a greatly expanded version of what I tell my students the first day of class. My career has been anything but straightforward, zigzagged in fact, and I want students to understand that being a graphic designer can and should encompass more than laying out brochure pages or a website. How they find design-work that is more than commercial, hopefully a public service, is up to them. But having a liberal arts background is a good way to start.
I've now been teaching at Simmons almost ten years and it's the longest employment in one place I've ever had. I love teaching and couldn't be happier. Up until I took a full-time job at Simmons about five years ago, one might say that my career was more about pursuing adventure than following a career path, as long as I could earn a living at the same time. When I graduated from college in the 1960s I drove from Michigan the day after graduation to Washington, DC, stayed a few nights in a YMCA and found a job as the receptionist for Sargent Shriver, the first director of the Peace Corps. One might say of this position -- high profile without any serious responsibilities except being pleasant to all the fascinating people who got off the elevator. I also had to read the New York Times and clip relevant material for Sargent Shriver. The crucial thing was that the position put me in contact with many intelligent and savvy people in Washington.
Within six months, through one of my acquaintances at the Peace Corps, I learned of what would be my next job -- program analyst in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. At this job I researched voter registration policies in the D.C. office and traveled to Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana to assist the department attorneys who were enforcing, case by case, the civil rights act of 1964, recently passed by congress. (On one occasion, when preparing evidence for a trial of hooded Ku Klux Klan members, the worst hurricane prior to Katrina ravaged New Orleans including my hotel room.) This job suited me perfectly as I'd been active in high school and college organizing civil rights campaigns. However, it wasn't long before I felt I needed to get out of offices and be in the field. I knew if I didn't work directly with the people affected by the programs that employed me while I was young, I might not be motivated to leave home again. Because I'd seen much about the Peace Corps as a staff member, I decided to volunteer for the new start-up, VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) and was sent to East Harlem to become a community developer with a non-profit: Block Communities Inc. Each block worker, as we were called, took an apartment on a different block and was responsible for surveying every household there and then facilitating meetings about common problems. We were not supposed to do anything directly for our neighbors or the neighborhood. Our job was to bring the people together, conduct meetings, and try to find a leader in the community who would take over our job -- work ourselves out of a job. We were steeped in the methods of community organizing and group work, and trained by the New York Drug Rehabilitation Department. We were taught how to make things happen without our doing anything but talk to people. Exhausting, but very rewarding if/when a tiny change occurred. I was lucky because by the time I left East 118th Street, two neighbors, a Puerto Rican and an African American, were not only ready, but wanting to be responsible for the one block community where we lived. And the teenagers on the street had developed a summer program for the youngest children after learning in 40 or 50 block meetings how to apply for an Anti-Poverty Program grant from the federal government -- an education itself as meaningful as most had had before dropping out of high school.
I re-enlisted in VISTA for a second year, spent another year as supervisor and training director, participated in a 72 hour (no sleep) drug rehabilitation session as part of our training, got married to a civil rights lawyer I had met in Mississippi, all this while the peace movement and race riots blanketed the US. Suddenly it seemed, that being white, in the predominantly Puerto Rican and Italian East Harlem, I should take a back seat to the people in the neighborhood when it came to working for change. The civil rights movement was different by then. I decided that if I wanted to continue my present work, I should go back to graduate school and become what we were then calling "advocate planners" -- city planners who represented a community, rather than the government, in a public service way.
You might say this ended Phase I of my adult life. I will stop here to see what responses, if any, I get. The next time I write I may explain how at graduate school I changed plans completely, received a degree in graphic design, and upon graduation changed directions yet again. Instead of trying to pursue a career, I ended up in South-East Asia and Vietnam (during the war). This trip was planned to last four months. I didn't return to the US for two and a half years and then only for eighteen months.
I've now been teaching at Simmons almost ten years and it's the longest employment in one place I've ever had. I love teaching and couldn't be happier. Up until I took a full-time job at Simmons about five years ago, one might say that my career was more about pursuing adventure than following a career path, as long as I could earn a living at the same time. When I graduated from college in the 1960s I drove from Michigan the day after graduation to Washington, DC, stayed a few nights in a YMCA and found a job as the receptionist for Sargent Shriver, the first director of the Peace Corps. One might say of this position -- high profile without any serious responsibilities except being pleasant to all the fascinating people who got off the elevator. I also had to read the New York Times and clip relevant material for Sargent Shriver. The crucial thing was that the position put me in contact with many intelligent and savvy people in Washington.
Within six months, through one of my acquaintances at the Peace Corps, I learned of what would be my next job -- program analyst in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. At this job I researched voter registration policies in the D.C. office and traveled to Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana to assist the department attorneys who were enforcing, case by case, the civil rights act of 1964, recently passed by congress. (On one occasion, when preparing evidence for a trial of hooded Ku Klux Klan members, the worst hurricane prior to Katrina ravaged New Orleans including my hotel room.) This job suited me perfectly as I'd been active in high school and college organizing civil rights campaigns. However, it wasn't long before I felt I needed to get out of offices and be in the field. I knew if I didn't work directly with the people affected by the programs that employed me while I was young, I might not be motivated to leave home again. Because I'd seen much about the Peace Corps as a staff member, I decided to volunteer for the new start-up, VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) and was sent to East Harlem to become a community developer with a non-profit: Block Communities Inc. Each block worker, as we were called, took an apartment on a different block and was responsible for surveying every household there and then facilitating meetings about common problems. We were not supposed to do anything directly for our neighbors or the neighborhood. Our job was to bring the people together, conduct meetings, and try to find a leader in the community who would take over our job -- work ourselves out of a job. We were steeped in the methods of community organizing and group work, and trained by the New York Drug Rehabilitation Department. We were taught how to make things happen without our doing anything but talk to people. Exhausting, but very rewarding if/when a tiny change occurred. I was lucky because by the time I left East 118th Street, two neighbors, a Puerto Rican and an African American, were not only ready, but wanting to be responsible for the one block community where we lived. And the teenagers on the street had developed a summer program for the youngest children after learning in 40 or 50 block meetings how to apply for an Anti-Poverty Program grant from the federal government -- an education itself as meaningful as most had had before dropping out of high school.
I re-enlisted in VISTA for a second year, spent another year as supervisor and training director, participated in a 72 hour (no sleep) drug rehabilitation session as part of our training, got married to a civil rights lawyer I had met in Mississippi, all this while the peace movement and race riots blanketed the US. Suddenly it seemed, that being white, in the predominantly Puerto Rican and Italian East Harlem, I should take a back seat to the people in the neighborhood when it came to working for change. The civil rights movement was different by then. I decided that if I wanted to continue my present work, I should go back to graduate school and become what we were then calling "advocate planners" -- city planners who represented a community, rather than the government, in a public service way.
You might say this ended Phase I of my adult life. I will stop here to see what responses, if any, I get. The next time I write I may explain how at graduate school I changed plans completely, received a degree in graphic design, and upon graduation changed directions yet again. Instead of trying to pursue a career, I ended up in South-East Asia and Vietnam (during the war). This trip was planned to last four months. I didn't return to the US for two and a half years and then only for eighteen months.
Keep telling... 4 months turned into 2 years?
Valerie,
Just thought I'd let you know that I've posted Part 2 on the Road to Graphic Design.
Hope you have time to read it and tell me what you think. Next month I will get to what is happening now.
JA