To me, writing has always been something that I have struggled with. Even in Elementary school, when we started learning about and understanding grammar, I never quite grasped it or understood why. Whenever I would write for an assignment, I wouldn’t let the concepts or ideas of grammar scare me from writing. Although I was correct in never letting it scare me, I realize now I should have put more work into understanding grammar and its conventions.
Perhaps if I had put more effort in, I wouldn’t write as many run-on sentences as I often do or write sentences in a way where I over-complicate them for no reason. Perhaps I would be a better writer now if I had learned the basics of grammar when I was younger, but maybe…maybe my writing is freer than those who had learned when they were younger? Then again, perhaps not.
No matter what subject or topic I am writing for or about, it is a struggle. I struggle to organize my thoughts in a way that makes sense, and I often request people’s feedback to make sure that my path makes sense.
The one thing I have come to understand about myself and my writing is that, while it may be a challenge for me, I think that I am great at taking someone’s ideas expressed through writing and turning it into something beautiful. I am a designer, and to me, the designer’s job, whether they do graphic design, logo design, illustration, what have you, their job is to express the client’s ideas and goals to the target audience. This year is currently my 6th year of design education (if you count my technical school), and to me, the expression of goals and ideas if the first thing you want to do as a designer.
An editorial illustration must reflect the article’s tone and ideas that it is intended for in order to catch the viewer’s attention. A logo designer is tasked with creating branding for a company that expresses their values to their audience. While this may seem like a stretch, this is how I have connected writing back to my career and goals.
I feel that I strive to get better at writing not just for my sake but for the sake of my future clients. I want, no I need to improve for their sake and mine. Like many who aren’t the best writers, I have realized that there is no point fighting it as writing won’t go away once we graduate college. Instead, I have decided to embrace it. I know that my writing journey isn’t over yet. I will continue to push myself to improve in grammar and other areas such as pushing my word choice/diction and sentence variety, and more.
While I may not be where I want to be yet in this journey of mine, I know that as long as I keep striving to improve, there is no way that I can truly fail. I have learned from many of my design professors that a design can always be improved, there is always one last change, no matter how small that can be made to bring the design to another level, and I understand that the same is true with writing.