Design Thought Leader

I have never properly regarded myself as an artist. In fact, I have been taught to scoff at the idea that anybody could make a living by doing what they like. Life, in my parents’ worldview, is a process of sustained suffering, whereby the successful reap the rewards of their anguish in the form of BMWs and Caribbean cruises. Artists suffer for their craft. Like Kafka’s archetype, they starve themselves to death in the pursuit of misbegotten visions of transcendence. Art is something you do to get yourself into college, not what you rely on to pay the bills.

During a year off from Princeton, I worked as a sales executive for a mass distributor of blank DVDs. You know that person you want to tell to go shoot themselves when they call trying to sell you something you don’t want? That was me. I had accounts ranging from a Brazilian bootlegger to a belligerent drunk who would yell at me for an hour before buying anything. Aside from teaching me how to sell a B-grade product, the job was quite meaningless. The only saving grace was that my boss wanted the company’s website redesigned. I went to Barnes & Noble, bought myself a book on web design and created what I thought was a masterpiece. In retrospect, it was terrible, but from that moment on, I’ve been hooked on graphic design. Unable to draw or paint to save my life, I found myself slowly capable of using Photoshop as my canvas and my laptop touchpad as my brush.

At Princeton, I spend about five nights a week making or editing posters for the Student Design Agency. Like Kafka’s hunger artist, I am a slave to graphic design because I do not know anything else more fulfilling. I know it may seem pathetic, but setting type on a poster in a perfectly aligned way or creating the ideal visual for an event poster seriously makes me happy. I work with artists and visionaries whose talents far exceed my own, and I despair when I realize how stunningly mediocre I am at something I love so much.

Andy Chen
Designer

We owe it to the fields that our houses will not be inferiors of the virgin land they have replaced. We owe it to the worms and the trees that the buildings we cover them with will stand as promises of the highest and most intelligent kind of happiness.

Alain De Botton
Writer