I never considered myself an artist. The permanence of paint and pen felt like a crushing weight, with every movement eternally etched into my identity as not only a creative but also as a person. I was immobilized by the pressure of physical art, unable to access that crucial flow of experimentation, practice, failure, and improvement. Then, I became a graphic designer.
Suddenly the world opened up. Paper was replaced with artboards, pens replaced by a track pad, and pressure turned into possibility. Mistakes could be taken away with one click and there was no waste, no failed attempts balled up in my trash can. While this potentially sounds like the start of a Black Mirror episode during which I get so lost in the digital world that I ban pencils or do something else wholly unreasonable, what I am trying to get at is that I finally discovered a way to be creative in a medium that worked for me.
Art teaches you lessons, not just the message behind a work itself but the process, right? Painting with acrylic teaches you discipline, sketching teaches you precision, and so on. And while physical mediums brought me stress, digital art felt infinite. As I taught myself graphic design, I turned to the world around me and saw it everywhere. I began to recognize that design involves more than font choice and color palettes, it’s also about spacing and flow. It’s cohesion and balance…and equity and accessibility. In a way, all the lessons that physical art could have given me felt tangible with digital art.
What I’ve Learned
1. You have to give yourself breathing room.
A telltale sign of a novice designer is an unintentionally dense and busy design, e.g., crammed-in text smooshed up against large visual elements. As a designer, when things don’t have room to breathe, the message behind your art won’t come through.
That can be said about life too. Think about having too much clutter around the house, too much noise when trying to fall asleep, or too many people demanding your attention. I fall victim to all of these. So as I stretched my design muscles to make my art less cluttered, I looked around at my life and did the same. I started getting rid of old clothes more often and responding to texts less. In turn, I gave myself room to breathe.
2. Balance leads to stability.
A good designer has a firm grip on their sense of balance as a tool for expression, not as a barometer for perfection. I used to think balance (in design and in life) just meant equality and symmetry, almost to the point of obsession. I meticulously planned my symmetrical tattoos and center-aligned all my text. But as I grew as an artist, I discovered that uneven distribution does not equal lack of balance; weight and value need to be appropriately placed in accordance with what has the most importance. Maybe it sounds obvious to you, dear reader, that balance ≠ equal distribution, but I assure you that epiphany was life-changing news to me. In my day to day, I had been attempting to put equal emphasis on work, social, sleep, joy, and tidiness. This, as you can imagine, subsequently led to missing the mark on each of them. Now, I look at life as being an uneven—but intentional—balance. I realize I can have different focal points and distribution as it makes sense in my hierarchy.
3. Contrast is a magnifier.
If I wanted to draw your attention to something in a design, contrast was the first tool I would pull from my arsenal. Contrast is the reason a pop of color or a bold font can spark your interest. It grabs your eye and says, “Feel that?”
The same applies in life. A meal tastes better when you’re hungry. The first light switch you turn on in the morning burns your eyes. But that doesn’t mean we should wait until we’re keeled over with hunger to cook dinner or stumble around the room until the sun comes up, right?
I was giving advice to my friend the other day, observing that maybe the new good thing she has in her life only feels that good because it’s in contrast to so much that was (or is) bad…that the constant ups and downs make the highs feel so much higher. And while steady can be boring, maybe it could be a good thing—a healthy thing. Contrast is a magnifier, making it unclear what’s actually good and what is just relieving something bad. I try to carry that lesson with me every day.
A More Perceptive Life…By Design
Perhaps what I’m sharing is too vulnerable. Maybe I would have learned these lessons along the way regardless of the emergence of digital art. But now that my whole life is about design, I realize that art, in any form, teaches us valuable life lessons. And for that I am grateful.
