Talking the talk.

When I was a young boy and I began showing a serious interest in art, my mother called around looking for local creative professionals and eventually took me to visit the studio of a greeting card illustrator in the neighborhood. I can’t even begin to remember his name or what his work looked like, but I clearly remember thinking “wow, you can do this for a living. This can end up being my entire life.” And looking back, that was obviously the message my visit was intended to deliver.

When I was recently invited to speak about illustration and graphic design to the entire 5th grade class (180 students) at Summerville Elementary School, I’ll admit I had pipe dreams of offering that same tiny spark to somebody in the audience. I fear, however, that I gave no such inspiration.

The students clapped and sat poised with wide eyes and open ears as I took the floor, where I proceeded to babble about logos and posters and logos and clients and logos for about 20 minutes. Beads of sweat formed (those who know me know that I don’t deal well with attention, even from 10-year-olds) and I decided to abruptly change gears and lighten my load by turning the whole thing into a Q&A session. “Do you get nervous when you get big jobs,” one student asked. “Not nearly as nervous as I am right now, standing up here in front of you,” I responded.

Things quickly started looking up though. My forehead went from glossy back to matte and I was truly impressed with how thoughtful some of their questions were. Questions like “was it difficult switching from illustration to design” actually stumped me a bit, and made me think “I dunno… was it?” Of course there were some softball questions as well. One of my favorites was when a student asked my age, and I somehow instigated a screaming debate amongst the group as to whether 31 is young or old, with half the room yelling “YOUNG!” and the other half chanting “OLD!” Sounded a lot like the conversation I have in my own head on the subject.

All in all it was a great experience. I talked about some stuff I probably shouldn’t have, like how you have to draw naked people in art school (“ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww,” the kids bellowed), but I think I may have managed to utter a couple things they could relate to, and I’m hopeful that at least one future artist out there will always remember “the day that sweaty guy came to school.”