By Ian Hollidae, 2025/02/05

During my first stint in tech (started in 2000), I was eager to get into everything. The web was still wide open and there were plenty of areas to get involved. For me, it seemed the most logical approach to all of this was to be a jack-of-all-trades. And why not. Wordpress wasn't around yet. Dreamweaver hadn't taken over HTML development. Early versions of Linux were experiencing real growth and streaming media was still relatively new. However, there was one area where I completely ran into a brick wall and that was in graphic design.

The First Time Around

At the time, I attributed my struggle to a lack of artistic talent. Don't get me wrong, I never thought it would be easy. Looking back though, it was probably due to the fact that I wasn't really involved in a lot of projects that required it. And it never occurred to me the same focus and hardwork I used in programming/scripting/etc could also be applied to graphics. Regardless of my thought process, I had a full plate and decided to let my efforts on the graphics front fade away. During the rest of my stint in tech (left in 2012), there were a number of occasions where that decision came back to bite me.

Now three years into my second stint in tech, I decided I would make more of an effort on the graphic design front. The biggest reason is I'll clearly need it more this time around. Developed software will need icons and online documentation. Hosted websites will need layouts, logos, etc. Part of my preparation was reading through a couple of highly recommended design books (The Non-Designers Design Book in particular). Additionally, I went through a drawing book which was something I've been meaning to do for a while anyway. I even went as far as creating a private mac app that mimics the basic functionality of ColorHexa and Canva Color Wheel just for the purpose of immersing myself in color concepts.

The process has been interesting.

What Did I Learn?

What it's shown me is how much I didn't know, or failed to learn, in my first stint. The thing stands out most is the question of how to quantify good graphics. Or maybe I should say, how do you answer the question of whether something is wrong. Let me give you some examples.

The first issue would be in dealing with code (software, javascript, etc). You can tell when a bug is present or if your application is running too slow. There are specific things you can do to fix the problem.

Another example would be in HTML/SVG. You can see if things within the layout script aren't aligned and take steps to correct it.

In graphic design, there is no "make it look better" or "this lacks something" tool. So what do you do? This is where I've gained quite a bit of respect for people who answer the question successfully. Fortunately for me, all my graphic design projects are completely under my control so I can use the "I don't like this, I'm doing something else" button. Works everytime.

A Path Adjustment

In any case, the learning process has made me appreciate what I missed out years ago and I've enjoyed alot of it to this point. Of course, that doesn't mean I'm a guru. I doubt I'll be doing graphic design for customers. What it does mean is that I'm no longer looking at brick walls when I approach a graphics problem in the future.

That alone has made the effort worthwhile.