I’ve been in print design all my life. My father was a commercial artist for Shell Oil and I still remember the rub-down lettering he used in headlines, the blue pencils, the overlays and the hydraulic table. After he went into the printing business, I would spend my summers helping my parents and wearing every hat in the shop. I would have to manually cut out type from the linotype machine, stick it to a layout with rubber cement, shoot a picture of it in a darkroom, strip the film and tape it to a grid for burning on to a steel plate.

Within the short time span of graduation from college to the end of my first year of working in the early 90’s, I saw design technology jump from the typeset machine to a computer at my own desk. The learning curve was steep as I had to learn everything from how to use a mouse to mastering Quark Express, Illustrator and Photoshop. In another five years, another medium was available called web design. In order to prepare myself for the next big thing, I took my first html class. It didn’t have the desired effect that I was hoping for. I’m a designer, not a code cruncher and I found it very limiting. After stumbling my way through Adobe GoLive and Dreamweaver, I finally hung my hat and said that this platform is not for me.

Fast forward another decade plus. In the past couple months, I’ve been asked by 5 different clients to create a web site for them. It couldn’t be avoided any longer, because everyone wants and needs to be marketed over the internet. I decided that I needed to join the 21st century and include web design to my list of services. I will become my own client and design my site before working on my clients’ sites. I thought that would be the case, however, it’s all happening at the same time. I’m learning and working simultaneously and I find that I really love it. Despite the huge learning curve, there are so many tools out there that have allowed designers to concentrate on the design and the client, not the code. It reminds me of learning how to snowboard after skiing for the past 25 years. It’s scary, but thrilling. Let me know if you need a site. I’m kind of addicted to it.