Opportunity in Tension
A Personal Design Philosophy
by Julia Hewitt
This presentation was given at Senior Symposia 2023 in the South Carolina School of the Arts at Anderson University (SC) on November 30, 2023.
Presentation Transcription
Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for being here tonight. My name is Julia Hewitt, and I’m going to be talking about my design journey and philosophy through my experience of finding opportunity and intention.
I grew up in a household that nurtured constant creativity. My siblings were always singing or playing several instruments or even writing their own music.
When my mom wasn’t singing, she would cook these elaborate meals either with no recipe or with a recipe she used more or as a suggestion. My dad was nicknamed Iron Man by my friends because he engineers these intricate and robust machines seemingly out of nothing. In each person’s unique way, creativity was and is interwoven into my family’s dynamic. Growing up in this environment deeply influenced my reception and interaction with creativity in a really positive way because I loved being around my family and seeing the outpouring of this creativity and watching their creative processes grow along with them.
I have always loved any kind of messy craft. As a kid, I preferred coloring outside the lines. I would get the bit inside the lines out of the way first and then spend double the time kind of illustrating around the margins. Maybe the coloring page just had a house on it, but I was putting my Crayola set to work and illustrating this lush mountain background with the sun setting on the horizon.
I remember one day coloring with my cousins and everyone was coloring very lightly within the lines. One of them even had the system of outlining the shape really dark and then filling it in and it looked so clean that everyone started to copy her. As much as I love scribbling and making up my own narrative of what I wanted to see on the page, I assumed that that clean, realistic and orderly work was valued rather than my improvisation.
Without realizing I carried this belief into adulthood and it influenced my pursuit of a design degree.
Rather than embracing my more haphazard and exploratory creativity, I tried to make myself fit into this box I had created in my head of how I saw others succeeding. I assumed there was this learned set of rules I needed to succeed as a creative. I quickly learned that copying the thought processes and methods of others not only led to lackluster results, but it stifled my joy for design and the process.
This desire to create enjoyable, useful and helpful work began to produce tension because the fruit of my labor was not exemplifying those qualities. Design, in general, felt tense to me. The disconnect between what I sought to achieve in my head versus what I was producing was something I viewed as bad and worrisome.
I was getting work that got me sufficient grades, but not much more. This phase in my life was confusing and honestly dismal, but I needed it to have all of those presuppositions that were so limiting of what being a designer and being a creative person could be. I needed those torn down so that I could have a much more fruitful way of thinking brought into my life.
I can’t pinpoint what happened or how my mindset changed, but I was shown that design can be much more than my own anxieties.
Something outside of myself compelled me to pick up this new confidence in my convictions towards design. The tension of design became an opportunity to stretch the possibilities of creativity rather than be the source of intimidation. Each project became another chance to try my best at expressing my thoughts, ideas and dreams I curated in my head.
The tension is still there, sure, but now I see it as a challenge. Instead of the tension tempting me to belittle myself and my abilities, I see it now as this new chance to explore who I am, what excites me and what’s possible.
There was a noticeable shift in my pursuit of design when I left room for my values and interests to be at the forefront of my process. Instead of forcing myself to fit within a brief, I look for ways to stretch and fortify that brief using what I have to bring to the table.
Design was no longer a question to be answered, but a question to be examined, probed, reworded, expanded, multiplied, answered and answered again, and answered again. Creating more room for myself to explore and design has made me a better designer because rather than simply answering the question I was given, I am able to decipher what the most important question to answer is.
Rather than only providing answers, I am able to provide reasoning for why the design solution is valuable, and I’m able to explain why the question was necessary to ask in the first place.
Previously, I felt the need to resist exploration and follow the rules of design I had set for myself, when in reality I need exploration to succeed in a design challenge.
A lack of exploration for me creates a project with a lack of depth. If there’s no journey with twists and turns towards the end result, what do I learn? Even if a more adventurous journey in a design challenge leads to more hiccups along the way, that ensures that every possible avenue was considered or tried out, and the end result is the most efficient and exciting of the directions considered.
This ensures a result that is not only exciting to me and the recipients, but the processes continue this pursuit of finding opportunity and tension, and it brings joy to me throughout the journey.
Exploration has led me to the most effective and helpful outcomes. Exploration has given me room to push and renew design when I feel worn and burnt out. Exploration has given me the access to the thrill and joy of what design can be.
I began to see the tension that lies in the absence of what I desire to see in the world as an opportunity to explore and create. This led me to feel deeply connected to my design process. Every project was a chance to further express myself and people interacting with this expression resulted in a level of connection and pure joy that’s honestly still new and exciting to me.
We were never meant to create with this belief that we should all be operating the same way to produce the same results. Freeing yourself from these expectations allows for a new level of expression. Listening to yourself and what you dream of is vital not only for your own satisfaction, but to the cultivation of a glorifying and thriving community.
The form of your creative spirit carries no more or less worth than mine. The worth is in our effort and hope to build a community through our creativity. Trusting yourself and your creativity creates a deep connection with those you share it with, and it also multiplies the connection you feel with yourself.
I feel this connection deeply in printmaking.
In the last year, I began allowing myself to broaden my horizons of what design is and who it serves. This resulted in a hugely positive shift in my mindset. I began experimenting with linoleum block prints about a year ago. Printmaking initially is a self-serving act. It’s an outlet for me to play, but sharing with others creates a system of bonding and encouragement towards one another to pursue their creative endeavors.
The process of printmaking has allowed me to also get to know myself on a much deeper level. The planning of the design is an exciting and expressive stage, but then the next step of carving requires me to slow down and really get to know my work on a more intimate and tactile level. Allowing myself to explore the more irreverent methods like layering or leaving my designs intentionally messy has led to an expression of myself and my creative spirit like I never expected to reach.
Design allows me to not only communicate, but connect with others. This way of connecting helps me to realize that learning and sharing with others is a strength, not a weakness. There’s calmness that comes with the realization that we all strive towards connection and the more vulnerable we are as human beings, the more genuine and valuable that connection is.
This connection brings order in my mind to things that feel messy. I can acknowledge the messy process of design and deem it good, helpful, and necessary because of what I learned along the way.
Design has taught me to trust myself in a way I never anticipated being capable of. The journey of tension, exploration, and connection is beautiful and it is a blessing.
I’m thankful for the fact that I can rest in the comfort that I have been called to interpret this life through design. Therefore, the outpouring of that effort is something that is pleasing and is worthy of celebration.
Since learning to embrace who I am in all facets of life, including design, I celebrate being the kid who likes to color outside the lines.
If you guys want to continue this conversation, please reach out. And thank you so much for being here tonight.
Senior Symposia
Senior Symposia is an annual event for the Department of Art+Design in the South Carolina School of the Arts at Anderson University (SC) where BFA Graphic Design Seniors present personal Design Philosophies, synthesizing and summarizing their experiences and perspectives over the course the program. These presentations act as markers in their developmental journey, bringing to light what they believe to be true about design, what design can do, and what they hope to do through design.
