I believe in the power of visual design.

As a designer, I am self-taught.

After high school (pretty much the last place I took an art class) I went off to college thinking I would go on to medical school. I loved art but, I also loved biology.  Well, really, I just loved dissection but, I took that to mean I should be a surgeon because even though I loved art, how in the hell can you be creative every day?  Also, I hated drawing and painting and I thought that's what people who want to do art for a living do.  I liked collage, but I didn't think I could feed myself and pay rent on cutting out images from magazines and pasting them to a piece of paper.  I went to Bates College in Lewiston, ME because it was small, not too far from home (Washington, DC), and known to be good in the life sciences.  Without having a specific pre-med program, it was a solid choice and had a good record for sending graduates off to become doctors. 

For two years, I trudged through the snow to my science classes but, by sophomore year I knew, for sure now, I was headed in the wrong direction. 

Now what?  Art?  Get a BS in art instead of biology?  That would be kind of cool.  Maybe you can learn how to be creative every day???  I took exactly one art class, literally one day of drawing 101.  Like I thought I might, I hated it.  I wanted to take photography or maybe some of the other classes, but drawing 101 was a pre-req.  I knew I wouldn't survive even one semester of that class without trying to put my eye out with my ultra-fine graphite pencil.  I jumped immediately back on the pre-med path and kept going because, well, I didn't hate science.  I was confused.  I didn't get it.  I liked so many different things.  And I was decent at many different things.  I often felt like I could go in just about any direction.  To some this would be freedom.  To me it was overwhelming and left me stuck.

What was the right direction? What was I not just decent at but, good at? 

I took several entry-level marketing positions that were often somewhat undefined for several different companies.  I quickly learned I could take such a position and define it by creating my own projects.  And each place I went I became the go-to, "Oh, have Parker do that.  Parker can make it look nice."  I found that I really liked this, that I liked creating my job, that I liked being that go-to make-it-pretty-person.  I liked making the work I did look good so that my boss looked good. 

The second "real" job I had (after working in the marketing department for an ice cream company and opening and running the first triathlon-specific retail stores in New England, but before pastry school and working as a pastry cook) was as the administrative assistant to the chief of surgery at Maine Medical Center in Portland, ME.  The chief was looking for someone with a "knack for marketing."  He wanted someone to figure out how to communicate with the 100 plus surgeons who had privileges at the hospital but, he neededsomeone to schedule his meetings and manage his calendar.  Having successfully completed a creative project for him my last year at Bates, he looked at me, "Can you do that?  Can you find a way to get all the surgeons to the all-hands meetings each quarter?  And can you get them to listen and act on the initiatives that we're trying to communicate to them?  Get them to meetings with me?  I need you to get in with the surgeons.  Can you do that?  You did that great project for me a couple years ago, so I know you have a marketing way about you..."  I looked at him, nodded, "YES." 

I had no idea how I was going to "get in" with a bunch of surgeons, a group of people known to be arrogant, cantankerous, and impersonal.  But, I did it.  I designed my way in.  At the time, I didn't know that's what I was doing. I just crafted emails, created flyers, posters, and web pages, and even helped design an in-house project management tool.  Whatever I was working on, I made it simple, clean and, when appropriate, with a sense of humor.  I packaged everything up neatly and threw a pretty bow on it.  I was not asked to do things this way, I just did it because I enjoyed it and because I wanted to make my boss shine. Also, I figured the surgeons might actually read flyers posted above the hand washing sinks if rather than just some words on a page in different colors of Arial, or worse, Comic Sans, you present a three-part initiative using the Star Wars trilogy as a theme to draw them in.  At the time I didn’t understand that I was using design to communicate with the surgeons. 

I brought design where design never existed. 

With the very limited resources I had (at Maine Medical Center I used PowerPoint) and no proper training, I created simple logos, spent hours selecting the right typefaces, decided on the best photos and icons to incorporate, often using my own photos, agonized over color schemes, and sought out the text needed to complete the project.  I was the visual brand strategist, the creative director, the logo and print designer, the web designer, the layout design manager, the content manager, and sometimes even the content and copy writer.  Looking back, I have either been creating, helping to create, or desperately urging my boss to create a visual brand or overhaul the current one. 

For a long time, I didn't know there were actually positions out there for people with my skill set and innate visual abilities.  As a result, most jobs I have taken were entry-level support positions.  Because what kind of job can you get, or even strive for, when you have no idea what it is exactly that you do.  When I was in high school design and visual branding were not what they are today.  Many of the jobs I took were somewhat loosely defined so, I got to define them myself. 

I loved being in the background supporting my boss, figuring how things worked, finding out who my resources and allies were, and then finding ways to make my boss shine. 

Over the years I've learned to work with the big three Adobe design tools, but for the most part I use my other strengths.  In high school art class, my favorite thing to do was collage.  I would sit for hours sifting through stacks of random magazines painstakingly cutting out images with an Exacto knife and then giving them a new life, a new and different kind of presence, on a blank piece of paper.  It is exactly how I work today.  I will search and research for hours to find the best and most appropriate elements possible to bring together to draw the viewer in. And it’s not always visual. Often, I’m designing entire events from print materials, to giveaways, to helping construct the menu. Being self-taught and depending mostly on my own intuition, I am inventive in the work I produce.  I intuitively understand good design, but I am still very thoughtful and deliberate in my process.  I also spend a lot of time reading and researching design in all forms. 

Most importantly, I believe in the power of visual communication and I take great care to create good work to showcase the good work of others.