The think (here) Blog

Image Credit ShellyKayCullen

The Early Years:

As I reflected on the moments that brought me to my sentence, it became evident that I've already lived a lifetime influenced by design.  Though it may have been called other things at the time, the pieces that played into my passion, my drive, and my success for what I was doing can all be traced back to design. Every. Single. Time.

At a young age, I was a builder. I made it all: radios, dams, zip lines, go-karts, skateboard ramps, roller coaster tracks, rube goldberg machines, and even fireworks.  It was not that I was passionate about listening to the radio, or creating artificial (albeit miniature) lakes.  I gravitated towards learning the 'why', the 'how', and 'what if' of just about everything. To make things that worked, you needed to understand design. These were, unknowingly, my first steps in my 'design' shoes.

When I was a little older my energy shifted from making things to drawing them.  Nothing felt more natural, or came to me easier. I loved the seemingly limitless possibilities of a blank piece of paper. For an art piece to flow, to 'work', to 'not suck' you needed to play with elements of design.  However, it was never owning the end result that drove me so much as mastering the process that would yield it.

I focused on art for a number of years, but I grew tired of doing the same thing over and over.  It began to feel empty, hollow, and stale.  No matter how I seemed to push the envolope art was missing a rooted, practical, functional application in reality.  Art is more a reflection of design than an application of it.  I had developed the process and had a true love for art as art, but understood that at my core, I was not just an artist... I needed something else, something more.

Tomorrow: Growng Pains (Part 2)