Emotion By Design by Greg Hoffman EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Author: Greg Hoffman
- Language: English
- Genre: Business
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 33 MB
- Price: Free
MY JOURNEY INTO THE ARENA
My friend saw that I was struggling and handed me a glass of water. It was
true my mouth was dry, but that was nothing compared to my nerves. The
extrovert who loves sports, competition, and hip-hop just wasn’t showing up
that day; today, it was the introvert artist. The art, my art, wasn’t the problem.
The problem was telling the story of my art—more accurate, my designs—to
the audience in front of me.
The dozen or so sets of eyes that belonged to my
professors, my classmates, and other designers whose work and craft I
respected and which had guided and informed my own, were turned on me,
waiting to be impressed, to be amazed, to decide if I was truly one of them.
One set of eyes in particular I felt boring into me, judging and weighing
whether I had what it takes to enter this elite world of design. On the line was
nothing less than the dream I had four years earlier, when I entered the
Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
I was in the middle of presenting my senior thesis, an exploration between
the visual arts and the liberal arts through the medium of design: a story of
the contrasts and parallels between those worlds as told through my imagery.
This was highbrow stuff, a journey in design meant to be taken in by the
creative community.
But if the journey is to be taken, then it must first be
accepted as worthwhile, as meeting the highest standards, not by following
the rules, but by pushing beyond everything that had come before. And the
set of eyes I most needed to take this journey with me belonged to Laurie
Haycock Makela, head of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, which is
one of the most respected and most visited contemporary art museums in the
world.
A month or so earlier, I had applied for one of the highly coveted Walker
internships in the design department. Despite my heightened anxiety the day
of my senior thesis presentation, I didn’t lack confidence in my talent.
I knew
I was tracking toward being one of the top designers in my class, and so I
wasn’t surprised when Laurie called to let me know I was one of the finalists
for the spot. She also suggested that I invite her to my presentation. Of course
when the head of the Walker “suggests” you do something, it’s not really a
suggestion at all. My senior thesis wasn’t only a presentation of the talent I
had honed while at MCAD; it was now an interview.
Joining the Walker, even as an intern, would have been the culmination of
many dreams and efforts since I was a child. Born of a Black father and white
mother, I was adopted by my white parents and grew up in a nearly all-white
suburb of Minneapolis called Minnetonka.
Surrounded by the natural beauty
of the land, and feeling more than a little like an outsider with my mixed
heritage, I turned inward and mined my imagination. By the time I was five, I
was accustomed to hearing from my parents and teachers:
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