A (Weirdo) Librarian's Guide to Graphic Design
I can easily say that I am at my most happy when I am doing something creative. Having downsized and lost my large workspace, my desire to create is bigger than what my space allows, so writing and graphic design have taken up residence as my outlets-du-jour. They are both passions that take up little space and bring me endless joy.
I will say that there is nothing more glorious than the feeling I have when a string of words assembles themselves into a beautiful sentence. Sure, I help it along, but when it's coming, it just flows from seemingly nowhere for me. When that flow is interrupted (which is often), I auto-switch into editor and rework, rephrase, and rearrange almost all lines above. I just rewrote this paragraph twice…
Inner-voice-of-doubt on 10, I still love it.
I am fairly sure the only times the voices turn off and I am truly at peace is when I am creating art and when I am reading. I love words. Words are powerful and I hold them in a very high regard. I’m reading Silver Star by Jeannette Walls and I am so Liz, Bean’s 15 year old sister! “Liz couldn’t resist playing with words...and loved saying words backward-like calling Mark Parker ‘Kram Rekrap.’ She loved anagrams. And she loved spoonerisms. She was also a killer Scrabble player.” This explains me pretty well. Words are so important to me that letters and words are artwork themselves to me.
I found Canva about two years ago, then somehow forgot about it. I refound it last year, so you could say it was love at second sight. I have been carrying on a torrid love affair with Canva since then. I purchased the pro-account (I NEVER buy the pro account) and have used it as a postgrad student for presentations, as a librarian for signage and as FaceBook group admin to make Seinfeld and Golden Girls memes. Talk about one stop shop!
Falling into that magical space where nothing else matters is how I feel when I am creating graphic arts. The act of choosing a color palette and evoking feeling from carefully chosen shapes and words assembled just right is absolute Zen to me. That is when I am truly chill.
So Canva for me is pretty damn near spectacular. It has been a long time since I have been so positively affected by an app! Over the next few days, I am going to share some of my library designs with you so you can perhaps be inspired to check Canva out for yourself.