Back in 1993, when What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) became a reality in the desktop publishing world, I got my first gig at an association. CorelDraw was all the rave, and if you owned a set of PostScript fonts, you were sitting on a goldmine of creative possibilities.

Then, there was a fine line between technological savviness and graphic design skills. With minimal art skills, learning how to use the tools boosted your ability to render almost any design, and added more flexiblity to the work. And almost anybody could do that. As a result, because the tools were so widely available, the majority of pieces created in the general office place for publishing lacked good design sensibility, and originality became all but obsolete.

Now the tools have evolved even more, and these days, it takes real graphic design skills to impress today's audience, and to stand out from technological designer-hacks. I know, because I was one of those hacks. As a production artist in the mid to late nineties, I learned how to use almost every graphics program available, from PageMaker, Freehand, and CorelDraw, to the entire Adobe suite. I challenged myself on my ability to copy impressive designs using the tools, and as a result, I simultaneously began to learn design as I honed my skills in the applications. And it worked...for while!

But it seemed that I hit a roof with my designs—the limitations of the applications became my limitations. This became evident as I browsed copies of Communication Arts and explored the design world a bit deeper. So out of a growing sense of dissatisfaction with my limitations I decided to get a degree to refine those loose graphic art skills into real-world design abilities. I wanted my designs to not only be original but also world class. So, with the help of my proficiency in using the tools, and gaining a firmer foundation in art I aced my design courses, and 18 months later I held the paper.

Now I'm in the process of continually improving my portfolio, and adding additional disciplines to it as well, such as audio engineering, and motion graphics.