Reading 1: Becoming a Graphic Designer.

Preface - pgs 7-9 

Just because  you've goofed around with software and had fun, doesn't mean you can become a designer. It ain't easy. 

Lazy people don't make for good graphic designers. There are many many areas of design that each require a specialized set of skills to work in.

Being good with a computer might mean you can make "clean" or "professional" work. But that is not the core of good design. Good design comes from talent, and technical does not equal talent.

Design is always done for a client, but people become designers because they want to be creative not always because of the money.

this books is a survey about all the various fields of design and interviews with professionals not a how-to book.

The languistica franka of design is type, and we are all expected to know that language.

Web and motion design are slowly taking over the design world as we keep on the march forward with new technologies making it necessary to design the interactions of humans and screens. 

This book will teach you the expectations of the job title, but you must have your own expectations of the field.

Good designers will know their design history and be able to adapt old processes and ideas to new ways of technology and make super awesome solutions. So it's not necessary to have a degree to design, it is however necessary to study the history of the field. 

So You Want to Become a Graphic Designer - pgs 10-23

Computers have changed design forever.

The computer is a tool, I am its master. The computer works for me, this is the first important lesson to learn. Do not let what you know how to do in the software determine your solution to the problems, rather come up with an amazing solution and then MAKE the computer make your idea look great. 

A design degree is not necessary to become a designer. But design is not commons sense, doing requires some knowing of the industry being designed for. Because design is ever evolving a commitment must be made to keep on studying even after college or grad school.

Designers have to stay sharp inorder for their work to rise above the hack-work that floods the market. 

Design is business but knowing graphic communications is the most important skill. There is potential to become trapped in the repetative formats of one design or confined to a single style but there is also the potential for great innovation and revolutionary thinking all within the same project. 

Anyone can download a template, the fine work of a creative commercial artist is grown and developed over time. Design is commercial art but the word commercial does not negate the following term ART. creative thinking is as important to graphic design as to a painter. 

The only difference between design back in the day and today is the type of work available.