What advice would you give to a graphic design student?

Design does not equal client work.

It’s hard to make purple work in a design. The things your teachers tell you in class are not gospel. You will get conflicting information. It means
that both are wrong. Or both are true. This never stops. Most decisions
are gray, and everything lives on a spectrum of correctness and
suitability.

Look people in the eyes when you are talking or
listening to them. The best teachers are the ones who treat their
classrooms like a workplace, and the worst ones are the ones who treat
their classroom like a classroom as we’ve come to expect it. Eat
breakfast. Realize that you are learning a trade, so craft matters more
than most say. Realize that design is also a liberal art. Quiet is
always an option, even if everyone is yelling. Libraries are a good
place. The books are free there, and it smells great.

If you
can’t draw as well as someone, or use the software as well, or if you do
not have as much money to buy supplies, or if you do not have access to
the tools they have, beat them by being more thoughtful. Thoughtfulness
is free and burns on time and empathy.

The best communicators are gift-givers.

Don’t
become dependent on having other people pull it out of you while you’re
in school. If you do, you’re hosed once you graduate. Keep two books on
your nightstand at all times: one fiction, one non-fiction.

Buy lightly used. Patina is a pretty word, and a beautiful concept.

Develop
a point of view. Think about what experiences you have that many others
do not. Then, think of what experiences you have that almost everyone
else has. Then, mix those two things and try to make someone cry or
laugh or feel understood.

Design doesn’t have to sell. Although, that’s usually its job.

Think
of every project as an opportunity to learn, but also an opportunity to
teach. Univers is a great typeface and white usually works and grids
are nice and usually necessary, but they’re not a style. Helvetica is
nice too, but it won’t turn water to wine.

Take things away until
you cry. Accept most things, and reject most of your initial ideas.
Print it out, chop it up, put it back together. When you’re aimlessly
pushing things around on a computer screen, print it out and push it
around in real space. Change contexts when you’re stuck. Draw
wrong-handed and upside down and backwards. Find a good seat outside.

Design
is just a language, it’s not a message. If you say “retro” too much you
will get hives and maybe die. Learn your design history. Know that
design changes when technology changes, and its been that way since the
1400s. Adobe software never stops being frustrating. Learn to write, and
not school-style writing. A text editor is a perfectly viable design
tool. Graphic design has just as much to do with words as it does with
pictures, and a lot of my favorite designers come to design from the
world of words instead of the world of pictures.

If you meet a person who cares about the same obscure things you do, hold on to them for dear life. Sympathy is medicine.

Scissors
are good, music is better, and mixed drinks with friends are best.
Start brave and brash: you can always make things more conservative, but
it’s hard to make things more radical. Edit yourself, but let someone
else censor you. When you ride the bus, imagine that you are looking at
everything from the point of view of someone else on the ride. If you
walk, look up on the way there and down on the way back. Aesthetics are
fleeting, the only things with longevity are ideas. Read Bringhurst and
one of those novels they made you read in high school cover to cover
every few years. (Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great
Gatsby.)

Stop trying to be cool: it is stifling.

Most
important things happen at a table. Food, friends, discussion, ideas,
work, peace talks, and war plans. It is okay to romanticize things a
little bit every now and then: it gives you hope.

Everything is
interesting to someone. That thing that you think is bad is probably
just not for you. Be wary of minimalism as an aesthetic decision without
cause. Simple is almost a dirty word now. Almost. Tools don’t matter
very much, all you need is a sharp knife, but everyone has their own
mise en place. If you need an analogy, use an animal. If you see a
ladder in a piece of design or illustration, it means the deadline was
short. Red, white, black, and gray always go together. Negative space.
Size contrast. Directional contrast. Compositional foundations.

Success
is generating an emotion. Failure is a million different things.
Second-person writing is usually heavy-handed. All of this is too.

Seeking
advice is addicting and can become a proxy for action. Giving it can
also be addicting in a potentially pretentious, soul-rotting sort of
way, and can replace experimenting because you think you know how things
work. Be suspicious of lists, advice, and lists of advice.

Everyone is just making it up as they go along.

This about sums up everything I know.

—Frank Chimero