I have seen a lot of articles lately about how being told to 'follow your passion' is bad advice. To some extent, I agree. But I think shutting the discussion down there leaves a lot of people without hope and I think there are ways to follow your passion and succeed. It just takes a little common sense and hard work.
When I started out in design, I had been studying biology for 4 years. Initially I thought I would be a doctor or a veterinarian. After three years working in labs and doing food science experiments on fish as summer jobs, I realized I didn't want to live a life of exhaustion (like my best friend who was now in medical school) and I wanted more than to work in a lab all day. I wanted something that let me express myself. I liked creating things—from pottery to knitting to doodles that verged on art. I took a year off to travel and think about where my life was going.
After about 5 months exploring New Zealand and Australia (I ran out of money for the full year abroad), I decided to go back to school and finish my science degree. I didn't want to leave that unfinished, and I figured it would stand me in good stead no matter what. However, I promised myself I would apply for some kind of art school for the following year.
If I am anything, I am a practical person. I couldn't see myself as a struggling fine artist, with little hope of a job once I had completed an additional 3 years of university. So I started to see what I could find that was art-adjacent. I found several programs for a degree in graphic design. I didn't know exactly what that was, but it sounded like something that I might like, and that could possibly make me money to live on once I was done.
I was accepted at Concordia University in Montreal. It wasn't easy. I didn't have the introductory skills of some of my fellow students. I came from a scientific background and a small provincial town. I was a bit older than everyone else. Everything at the time was done by hand, from initial mock-up sketches to comping and spec'ing type. I learned to cut out pictures from magazines, to wield a marker, to press with just enough pressure on Letraset, and to use overhead projectors to enlarge type from a type specimen book. It was tough to explore all the ideas I had in my head because so much work went into executing each layout. I felt like an imposter, a fish out of water.
SELF PORTRAIT
from my Concordia University Graphic Design days.
By the middle of my second year I started to hit my stride. I had a unique perspective because of my background. My awkward illustration and design style was quirky and "naive" but it was mine. I learned to defend my work and to talk in design lingo—white space, widows, orphans, leading and x-height, complementary colors and the Pantone Matching System all became part of everyday life. I wasn't a natural at graphic design, but I worked hard at it and learned a lot.
While I was studying at Concordia, I worked at Transport Canada during the summer months. They had a desktop publishing system built on an Apollo Sun Unix platform and they had just started producing their hundreds of reports on it. It wasn't my job to use the system. I helped typeset pages using wax and blocks of printed type. I proofread, I filed, I bound reports with the spiral binding machine. But every chance I got, I snuck onto the computer and designed stuff. I drew simple line drawings, I learned how to format type, I spent my lunch hours exploring what I could do.
My curiosity paid off when I got my first full time job as a graphic designer for a magazine about, and produced on, the Amiga computer. I had the design education and they liked both my science background and my resume which had a simple line art illustration of a fish on it (an homage to both my background and my fish out of water status).
The desktop publishing software available on the Amiga was rudimentary, lagging behind the advancements being made on the Macintosh computers available at the time. But the software was good enough to create art, retouch photos and design page layouts for a print magazine and my boss was willing to push the technology to the cutting edge. I had found my niche. I no longer had to comp type with a marker or use a ruler to draw a straight line. Everything was cleaner and crisper and my options now seemed boundless. I felt like I had been set free. The rest is history as they say.
I had found my passion by combining a creator mindset with the tool I needed to make stuff—the computer. Of course I didn't stay on the Amiga. I progressed to various Mac and PC configurations, feeling at home with whichever system I needed to know at the time. I learned Photoshop, PageMaker, Quark Xpress and eventually InDesign and Illustrator, with a little 3D, video and animation thrown in along the way. I designed packaging, marketing materials, event posters, magazines, catalogs, logos, ads, emailers, web banners, websites, fabric patterns, bike helmet graphics, and much more. I learned a lot about print production. I helped teams of illustrators and animators create stock image collections. I learned to pass my knowledge on in person and through tutorials both written and recorded.
There was no way for me to have known when I set out to follow my passion that it would lead me here—to a time when design is till being produced on computers, but where those computers, and the design software installed on them, are being supplemented, and in some cases replaced, by a whole host of online and mobile digital tools that make design even more accessible, portable and varied. The possibilities are still boundless and my curiosity and hard work have made it so that I can make a living from anywhere I choose, with whichever tools I choose.
I may not be able to tell you much about photosynthesis or the life cycle of a fruit fly anymore—but the lessons learned in scientific methodology and the application of my own innate common sense have helped me follow my passion for the last 25 years without becoming a starving artist.