Manifesto - Graphic Design
Self-publishing my own comicbooks was my first real taste of compositing, typesetting and dealing with printers. I soon discovered that there was a lot more to producing a book than just creating the content for it.
Later, having illustrated for the fledgling Zoom magazine, unhappy with the designer they had laying out the magazine at the time, then editor Julian Edgar asked me to advise on the art direction and compose article layouts. At that time I still did not own a computer, so I would prepare schematic roughs on paper - collaging photocopies from slides and print-outs of suggested fonts, scrawling measurements and notes all over them.
I would use these mock-ups to demonstrate how to create this particular photo feature, article or masthead - and send them over to the designer in Sydney who would follow my instructions in his Corel Draw. In hindsight this turned out to be a fantastic grounding, but it soon became frustratingly apparent how much I needed to invest in a PC so I could finally do it all myself.
When I landed Edgar's first major automotive reference book "21st Century Performance" featuring many of the illustrations and diagrams from the magazine, I purchased my first Mac G3. I enrolled in a Quark Xpress course at nights to compose a 350-odd page hardbound by day, with the pressure of a deadline always looming. I discovered master pages, tags and pagenation the hard way, by trial and error. But I survived, and I learnt to appreciate the merits of a layout program for creating posters, business cards and letterheads, instead of resorting to an imaging program as I did initially when I was inexperienced.
Today I am an art director at a major hospital, responsible for the graphic arts section of the medical illustration and media unit. Creating a product for either offset or digital press, for the web, and for the novice officeworker, I use the Adobe Creative suite in a networked studio environment, generating PDFs for the bureau or building Word templates and Powerpoint presentations for simpler home and office printers. Mostly, I myself print large format prints of conference posters, large display visuals and signage on an Epson 9880 inkjet. I also recently completed a Colour Mangement training at the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne.
Much of my graphic design today appears at the Flinders Medical Centre and affiliated SA Health centres, Flinders University, and in other Government of South Australia department. I also design the childrens' books I illustrate. I now enjoy being able to not only create the content - such as an illustration, but also then assemble it into a design which can be utilised properly and professionally.