The journey to being a graphic designer began with my visual appetite for looking at images more than reading the text in children’s storybooks. Growing up in a city and being surrounded by hoards of advertisements from the television and more predominantly, print advertisements were part of my Singaporean life. I’ve always felt that images were just as important as words, dictating instructions visually as well as to move the message across almost instantaneously.
For a long time, I’ve felt that graphic designers have been given the short end of the stick. Many say that we have it easy, as all we have to do are to sit in our comfy studios and let our creative minds and hands do the work than ‘anyone can do’. But as a designer, and as one who has been through an art education, graphic designing is more than meets the eye. What interests me most about graphic design is the visual aspect of communication. Being a designer simply doesn’t stop at just using Photoshop to augment or create new artwork, but it is the process of conceptualizing and deliberating that tickles my creative mind. Eventually, such works would be shown to other people, communicating with them visually and to the extent of subconsciously telling what people should and should not do.
Many people think that just having a talent in illustrating and coloring are the only traits that you need to have to become a graphic designer. But I wish to clear that baseless assumption. The study of pragmatics, syntactic and semantics, Gestalt’s theories and the various art movements are part and parcel of being a graphic designer. Till today, I’ve adopted such studies into my artwork, hoping to create a better advertisement, or visual strategy to communicate effectively with people.
The need for better designers is increasing, as bad images are constantly pouring out into public, but good design will prevail.
May Yue
Favorite Quotes
"Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right or better."
John Updike
"Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people."
Leo Burnett
"The real issue is not talent as an independent element, but talent in relationship to will, desire, and persistence. Talent without these things vanishes and even modest talent with those characteristics grows."
Milton Glaser