Journal #11, Design Matters: William Drenttel & Julie Lasky

As a graphic designer myself, I feel it is important to hear from other designers out in the world that have been designing far longer than I have. It is true that the world is all about technology but what will happen with print starts to become a thing of the past? I hope it never does. For me, it is hard to read a lot on a computer screen. Yes, I can spend most of my day designing on the computer, but when it comes to absorbing information, reading, understanding, learning, I find that a nice design reference book that I can hold in my hands is better. I am waiting for the day that the FDA will come out with new studies on how staring at the computer for hours upon end causes cancer. There must be something wrong with my macbook pro. It must be causing me some damage through all of the hours I spend on it.

But for now, I will continue to do what I love on my macbook and hope that one day I won't lose my eyesight.

It was interesting to listen to William Drentel and Julie Lasky talking about how design is going totally digital. Print, though it probably won't go completely under, is slowly leaving our society. And I do agree with a comment made thatt designers aren't just coming out of school to make corporate logos. Design is all about connecting with different parts of the world. I think, this generation, those design generation needs to understand that we are called to connect our world to other worlds in order to make this whole earth better.

Debbie Millman the President of the design division at Sterling Brands, an international design consultancy. She has been there for fourteen years and in that time she has worked on the redesign of global brands for Pepsi, Procter & Gamble, Campbell’s, Colgate, Hershey and Hasbro. Debbie is President of the AIGA, the professional association for design. She is a contributing editor at Print Magazine and the chair of the new Masters in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts. In 2005, she began hosting “Design Matters with Debbie Millman,” the first weekly radio talk show about design on the Internet. She is the author of two books: How To Think Like A Great Graphic Designer (Allworth Press, 2007), and The Essential Principles of Graphic Design (Rotovision, 2008). Her new book, Look Both Ways: Illustrated Essays on the Intersection of Life and Design, will be published by How Books in Fall 2009.