As I wrote in a previous post, I often “practice” graphic design on a crowdsourcing web service. I have not learned graphic design. I just like it. As far as I remember, my earliest selected graphic design work was the cover of a “publication” of my fourth grade class. I think it was a collection of compositions. Everyone in the class submitted a “design”, and mine was voted as the best one. One of my nicknames during my elementary-school days was “図工の先生 (art-and-crafts teacher)”. By the way, in my earliest memory (probably it was before going to my kindergarten), I was drawing imaginary cats, like cats fishing on a boat. My parents proudly and generously posted those drawings on a wall of our living room, if I remember it correctly.
Today I revised some pages of my portfolio web site, and revisited some pages that I have not revised for a long time, including some early “design” works that I made before learning industrial design at the University of Calgary which is my first official design education. Those works include early “graphic design” works like this one, this one, or this one. Surprisingly (or not surprisingly), those early works look way nicer than the recent works that I submitted on the crowdsourcing service like those ones. Why? Probably because I forgot a beginner’s mind. Now I focus more on technique than design itself. But this expression is a little weird because I am still a beginner, or even “less than beginner” since I have not learned graphic design.
It sounds like now it’s time to go back to basics.