Graphic Design As a Mindset

By M Arief Budiman

Managing Director PT. Petakumpet Creative Network
Chairman ADGI Jogja Chapter

Time went by so fast moving, has more than 20 years since I first knew of graphic design as a hobby and profession and mindset (the mindset). Why mindset? Wait, I’ll tell more later about this mindset. When I saw a set of folders on the office server, already more than 8500 creative artwork that has been generated during the period of 10 years (1999-2010). A long journey do not feel tired because of me and my friends at Petakumpet start of a hobby.

Graphic Design As a Hobby

Since the 4th grade (Elementary School), I have helped my dad make a movie cliche that a picture stencil design to the needs of elementary school emblem badge pupils a subdistrict. Using a pen dipped in ink and painted china with extra caution over reams of tracing paper (depending on how many kinds of color). An untold pride when I saw a friend wearing a badge that my school cliches make the movie. “I lho sing Kuwi pictures” (I lho the picture), often without realizing I mumbled as he smiled with pleasure. At that time I did not think how my father advantage over the thousands of silk-screening it, presents a plate of fried rice is not even finished my meal. I am happy, that’s beyond any kind of payment that I can get from the job. The pleasure of drawing and designing things, be it a hobby since my childhood.

As a Professional Graphic Design

As a profession, graphic design has become part of my life since early with friends to create a community called Petakumpet, 1995. So it originally did wrestle Petakumpet graphic design, while the world of advertising in all its complexity then familiar in recent years. Than just a hobby not use complicated-complicated thinker aka sheer fun, graphic design as a profession brings its own challenges: not just how to design, make a lay out, choosing the right typeface, but also how to understand clients, organize teams, menggauli printing machines, glared finishing technique or selecting the most appropriate paper.

Money began to take its role, when graphic design was consciously chosen as a profession. Aka The term graphic designer graphic designer in the business card is a proud moment, even for the layman often raises the question of follow-up: masnya what to make of this job? Eh, emang graphic designer’s job to?

Graphic Design As a Mindset

Then opened the gates of the internet in the late 20th century and begin the shifts occur in almost every facet of our lives. What yesterday’s just a fantasy and a dream has now come true. We do not have to tersandera telephone and cable, we do not have to wait with a wired PC and CPU on the table, we do not have to sit orderly at the front of the television to enjoy a live broadcast of the football world, it’s all expired!

Look at how the magic of our lives today: all that dwell in one place at that time can now walk to follow where we stepped foot. We’ve entered the era of mobile (business, technology, communication, creativity), with the mental attitude stutter.

First semester in college is still one, obvious my lecturers really a story about different graphic design and visual communication design (deskomvis): that is always associated with graphic design graphic print alias alias graphics. To complete it even I learned lectures Graphic Reproduction Methods. At that time professional graphic designer to make design identical in front of the computer and then wrestled with in the printing production process. It should be understood by rote the names CMYK, DPI, LPI, pass, cross, hot print, emboss and such.

Time to Transcend the Conventional Medium

As I have earlier, the tidal wave swept the internet has a lot of things in our lives, folding time and space, the world became flat (flat). The field of graphic design were not spared from the consequences of that invasion.

The question: if today is still Relevankah (20:04 pm, March 9, 2010) words juxtaposed with graphic design and interpreted as a sense? These reflective questions are dangerous because it could destabilize the answer future Indonesian graphic design, as well as the history of my own life who deals with graphic design since childhood.

But as discussion we all, let me convey the meaning of the shift (again according to me): the graphic design industry stakeholders (graphic designers, entrepreneurs, academics, students, related associations) should start thinking seriously about the possibility to transcend the medium of graphic design her (beyond graphic), the type of scientific field or profession initially. Graphic design had to metamorphosis himself into a mindset aka mindset.

Well, it’s time we return to the mindset again!

Mindset is what determines how we see a potential, challenges and opportunities presented by each era as a process that must be pursued with full commitment to achieve certain goals that we set.

What we think determines what we will do. This mindset is not merely a hobby or profession that could be a distraction or merely accessories. This mindset united (integral) within us and affect the character, habits and our creativity. A transformation of mindset must occur, if we want to see something with that viewpoint completely different to capture new opportunities that previously did not exist.

Look at the examples of the case: now increasingly rare wedding invitation printed on paper because it has been transformed exclusively online with a special website or even a content wall on facebook and email (where the graphics?), Letterhead and stasionery sets have been transformed and does not require email templates another paper (graphic where?), newspapers and magazines, graphic design coloring pages for each of his oplaag petered displaced by online media, television commercials can use the animation based on typography, the presence of ebook reader Kindle or Ipad any kind can not prevented again will replace conventional books, papers will be reduced usage and printing machines fatigue pursue unlimited duplication (copy, cut, paste, share) the online world.

Maybe I was too hasty-hasty convey the possibility of this revolutionary shift, things can be dramatic over 50-10 years is not going to happen again. But everyone knows that the acceleration pattern of the spread of this information increases the speed to follow arithmetically rather than geometrically. Even the status column in the typed Facebook 45 seconds ago could be called old post old alias. 45 seconds into the terminology that has been long in the internet age now, compare the meaning of the word ‘long’ time five years ago. Time and space had folded.

So the most logical for those who have been studying graphic design since childhood, from college or when getting to be a professional: his understanding of knowledge, a portfolio of his work, flying hours as a professional should be immediately converted into a new mindset. Not just his type of medium alone.

Mindset Opens New Possibility

By making mindset, we will use the science of graphic design that is more free, not confined to a rigid and narrow definition.

Graphic design will get the biggest opportunity in a century where the barrier instead of medium objects (hard copy, offline) has become very minimal due to incarnate the virtual and online. So that the left is our core competency: creativity without frills and a mask, either in the form of the medium, technology, and cost.

The idea that creativity is the result if that is what will grow into the foundation of a new mindset for people who – once – wrestling in the world of conventional graphic design. Understanding of the mindset that we can make any profession is to maximize the function of graphic design, do not need a graphic designer. We are also free to explore whatever medium produce creative output, do not have to print on paper, offset printing, silk screening, air brush and the like. We had a chance to disassemble-bulkhead bulkhead graphic design association with other sciences (medicine, literature, engineering, dance, theater, puppetry, animation, game developers, agriculture, etc..). Interaction process that will lead to friction, the newness that enrich and synergy with each other.

When we can begin to inject this new mindset as the basis for the development of thinking of creative ideas, graphic design will be reborn by her mother’s old (the offline world) toward a new world of not only the medium of her online. Mindset we should have online. Always on top (on) line (line) our achievements in the shape of the world yesterday, always exploring new territory, leaving the old mindset of the colonized by the medium, leaving the comfort zone as far as We Can.

That mindset is what I mean: the repositioning of the understanding of graphic design into something that inspires progress, not a cart dragged by a speeding era into the future. A platform that frees creative thinking graphic design from the confines of his old understanding, to open up spaces of possibilities we have never previously fikirkan.

I would not mind to go back to being a kid and starting everything from scratch again, I just need to believe and enjoy the process without having to know the ending.

My eyes lit up to end this paper. How wonderful if this will happen in the future in graphic design Indonesia!

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Tags: Cliche, Cliches, Creative Artwork, Creative Network, Folders, Fried Rice, Graphic Design As a Mindset, Long Journey, Managing Director, Mindset, Office Server, Petakumpet, Printing Machines, Professional Graphic Design, Pupils, Reams, School Emblem, Silk Screening, Thinker, Tracing Paper, Typeface