a co-worker and i were talking about mentors this week at lunch. i spoke of several men i counted as mentors over the past decade or so. i realized that although i've had no lack of spiritual mentors arriving then leaving with impeccable timing one after the other—like so many well-placed vines along an edgar rice burroughs novel—i've never really had a design mentor in the way i've wanted. not that i haven't had guidance. that lady at texas photo type taught me about kerning and ligatures in the early 1980s; yvonne, jo, and others taught me about AP style; pam taught me about ragging type and how to hold your own during a press check; terry demystified early desktop publishing in the late 1980s while john taught me the foundations of color, line, rhythm, tint and contrast; earlier in high school, my editor michelle taught me about specifying type and giving direction to photographers ... the two eds downstairs at illustrative services gave me a caricature of what an old school designer was, and taught me about mechanicals, rubylith, non-photo blue pens, and the importance of taping down your illustration board properly; by 1992, pete and ansen were giving me Photoshop tips and tricks in my first job. jill taught me what a well-designed design studio might look like and gave me something to aspire to; my mom taught me to love letterforms—she, the calligrapher—and to love clever wordplay; and my journalism teachers taught me how to write a good headline now and then. my 7th grade yearbook adviser showed me how to crop a photo in my mind before wasting a stray grease pencil mark on on a photo print; my dad and his business partner showed me what cool architectural all-caps handwriting looked like; lee showed me a lot about art directing magazines; lisa and claudia reminded me of the importance of proofreading and seeing things from the client's point of view; then there's magazines, lectures, books, hard knocks, trial and error, etc. if you count freelance and internships, i'm about twenty years into my career and in the words of karen paris, feel like i'm always beginning the world. huh. maybe i have had mentors along the way. it just didn't come to me in the form of a recurring 先生 who called me grasshopper.
how about you. who were your mentors? who have you mentored?
Actually, I just wrote a note my one of my mentors this week. My favorite college professor was named one of the best profs in the city in some local magazine, so I wrote her a note to offer congrats. She, too, taught me kerning and typography and all sort of fun design stuff. Mostly she taught me good writing and reporting skills and to never, ever, let a fact error be your fault. She gave "slash/Fs" for misspelled names, places, or other factual errors.
Who have I mentored? Hopefully a few of my high school journalism students. Hopefully my own kids. Jury's still out.
Posted by: Chelsea | Sunday, January 14, 2007 at 07:23 PM