Student of the game

I've been reading and writing a lot lately. Reading, mostly about how to become a tv writer. And writing, the tv show that has been nagging at me and brewing in my head for the last 2 years.

When I first started studying advertising and design, at School of Visual Arts (SVA) in 2004, I quickly realized that I could never completely enjoy a commercial break, billboard, poster, sticker, book cover, tshirt, shoe box....Anything that had to do with design. I found that I couldn't go without noticing the kerning (the space between two letters), the tracking (the space stereo words), color combinations, or how crooked something looked. I blame SVA.

I was taught to see those things other people didn't. As Bruce Willis' character in 'The Six Sense' describes it: "I see dead people." I don't see dead people. Well, maybe i have. I've seen a lot of weird people in New York. Anyway, I started seeing things that the average person could care less about.

This becomes frustrating because sometimes I want to have pure enjoyment in whatever I'm experiencing. It's similar to how kids enjoy baseball before they learn the rules of the game. To them, hitting the ball + running around = a successful day at the park.

But...just because the average person doesn't care about the rules of design and can't see "dead people," doesn't mean they can't feel that something's wrong with a book cover, tshirt graphic, or the typeface used in a menu. They can. And that's why we, as designers and art directors, have been trained to notice those nuances. So people can completely enjoy the items that they come into contact with.

I've been reading about how to write for television because I want people to enjoy and to be entertained by the stories that I write....And it would help if they didn't feel that something was wrong.