SKILLS FOR BILLS
Beyond the creative and artistic satisfaction involved in creating digital images, graphic design skills can also translate into financial profit for students. Hsieh currently holds a paid position doing Photoshop work for the Harvard Graduate School of Design, a job which builds on the skills he gained doing volunteer graphic design work for student groups and friends. Ding has also found gainful employment, as she is currently paid to work on the Harvard Student Agencies’ Rover iPhone application. The application, which was developed by Winston X. Yan ’10 and Alexander G. Bick ’10, is an iPhone version of “The Unofficial Guide to Harvard.” “I’m a Computer Science concentrator, so I do a lot of the programming for Rover. But since I also do graphic design, I redesigned the user interface and overhauled the look with new icons,” Ding said. “As a programmer, it’s easy to get caught up in the technical aspects and forget the aesthetic elements which make technology beautiful.”
Opportunities for graphic design work at Harvard require a bit of scouting, but these positions can be surprisingly rewarding. “My freshman year, I would just do freelance graphic design work that I’d find on the Student Employment Office website,” Ding said. “But more recently I was hired by Finale Desserts to do a small graphic design project.” Two summers ago, Finale gave Ding several images of desserts and she turned them into icons for the Facebook Gifts application, so people could exchange digital Finale desserts online. In this way, Finale was able to use Ding’s graphic design skills to gain a valuable marketing tool and Ding, in turn, was sweetly rewarded. “They gave me a few hundred dollars of Finale’s gift cards—I bought everyone birthday cakes for the rest of the year!” she said.
Despite the opportunities to profit from graphic design, actual careers in graphic design aren’t necessarily what these students have in mind for the future. “I’m planning on going into law,” said Guo, “so I don’t really see my graphic design skills factoring into my career. But in college, these skills are incredibly useful.”
Guo’s observation rings true. While having such talents has already been noted as an asset in student groups, these skills can further be utilized in students’ individual pursuits. Recently, Hsieh designed the logo for Legata, an Internet start-up business he created with classmates Sasank Konda ’12 and Calvin McEachron ’12.
GRAPHIC GRADS
At the undergraduate level, student groups and paid employment offer aspiring graphic designers a chance to further explore their art. At the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), however, slightly more structured programs exist. In the spring of 2009, world-renowned Norwegian graphic designer and publisher Lars Muller joined the faculty of the GSD for one semester as a guest lecturer in the Department of Architecture. His course “Building Books” examined print media from a perspective of layout and graphic design, and was accompanied by a student exhibition of book projects in the GSD library. While at the GSD, Muller also worked on graphic design for “Ecological Urbanism,” a collection of writings from Harvard professors and other design leaders about urban development and ecological planning in the modern era.
Aspiring designers at Harvard can also learn about graphic design through GSD student publications. For instance, “New Geographies,” a doctoral student journal distributed by Harvard University Press, has featured a different emerging graphic designer in each of its four issues of 2009. In this way, GSD doctoral students are able to highlight new talent in the field of graphic design and enjoy a fresh aesthetic for each issue.
Thus Harvard students interested in graphic design can draw from a few resources for inspiration and support, but ultimately the University provides little support for aspiring graphic designers, particularly those in the College. Still, these students do find artistic satisfaction in their independent pursuits. “Graphic design is great because the time commitment is manageable, and it’s still a creative role,” explains Ding. “It’s really rewarding work.”
—Staff writer Clio C. Smurro can be reached at csmurro@fas.harvard.edu.