Creative Education

Creativity

I had an unusual childhood. Well, unusual by todays standards anyways. Both of my parents are still married, and my three siblings are happy and (relatively) well adjusted. To say we were difficult kids to manage would be a grand understatement, all four of us had some degree of attention deficit disorder. Think of a wild pack of savages, put them in white collar suburbia, and you'd have a reasonably accurate idea of how we behaved.

Needles to say, many of my talents were overshadowed by my inability to perform academically, and few teachers were able to identify what it was that I DID do well. I was a comic book junkie ever since I was a kid, probably collecting and trading cards was an outlet for my social nature and my appreciation of good art(many of my trades were not strategic but aesthetic).

It wasn't until high school that I started to see myself as creative. Almo, my bro from back home, spent all of his time inventing comic book series that never went anywhere. So we developed an endless cast of characters as our creative outlet. While my skills as an illustrator are beginning to fade due to a preference for digital art, my skills were definitely developed through the amount of drawing and conceptualization I did in high school.

Education

My experience as a designer is actually relatively short. I never focused on communications in high school partly because the school I studied in was poorly funded and archaic. My perception of design was linked to advertising which was unfortunately a negative connotation because no-one ever bothered to dispel the perception that all advertising is evil. Maybe chalk it up to bad career counseling or a lack of awareness of the booming advertising industry of design.

Rather than risk wasting a degree in fine arts, I decided to pursue Youth and Addictions Counselling as I have always been a calm, trustworthy and social person. I felt that if I could make a difference in someones life that I would be able to enjoy my job. Upon moving into Toronto to study at George Brown, I discovered that the program I chose was not an appropriate fit, but fortunately I met a student studying graphic design while I was there.

That was when realized that if I wanted to combine my skill with words and people with my passion for art, I would be able to do so as a designer because of the collaborative nature of Graphic Design.