The following events have been dramatized and hyperbolized in an effort to stay faithful to the truth of this story
Allow me to set the stage. Picture me: age 20, returning to McGill for my third year, fresh out of my front-end internship at IBM. Adobe Illustrator? We were aquainted. Design metor? We stayed in touch. I was the proud designer of two whole IBM community event posters, and I’d just spent a year doing corporate UX/UI mockups. My introduction? Christina Isaicu. Designer.
Enter: My former roommate, sprawled on my bed, scrolling through potential merch designs for the McGill Classics Association. She was their president.
And so: My first design commission. I was about to step on some toes. Not just step; I mean full out pull-the-tablecloth-down-with-you-as-you-come-crashing-down kind of offense.
What does this have to do with the Fridge Door Gallery, you ask?
Everything.
# Trodding on toes
Back in my room, the designs my friend had shown me were good. I could have smiled, nodded, and this post would have ended here. Of course, the story goes on.
In my fresh-faced eagerness (aided by an uncurbable impulse to overachieve), I started throwing vector shapes together. Object > Path > Outline Stroke was my signature move. Within half an hour, I’d set in motion events that would shape years to come. And to be honest, I’m only being partially facetious.
I had made a passable vector graphic that combined the McGill crest with an ancient Greek amphora, and slapped a laurel crown on the McGill martlet. My friend, enacting her role as President, announced to the Classics Association that they were going to use my designs instead. This disclosure caused quite a calamity.
# Little did I know
The committee member who had produced one of the original designs had spent almost a full day perfecting the design. And I don’t mean “work day” day. I mean “twenty-four hours” kind of day. So in I had blundered, barely squeezing my puffed chest through the doorframe. Who was this stranger with no vested interest in classics, doling out redesigns nobody asked for? This was personal, and she made it known.
And the second design? Another committee memeber had paid $50 to commission it from a student.
Like I said, toes had been trod.
# The story begins here
I’ve written enough preamble to suggest I might actually have a recipe buried somewhere in this post. Despite my best efforts to embrace the noble ideal of austere minimalism in my presentation, to follow through would be to embrace a character born of what I think others want to see, lacking any resemblance to myself. Although I intend to use this site as a design portfolio, my purpose is also in part to share the story of how I ended up where I am with what I know.
The story of design is primarily a story of interactions between people. And to step out of the story for a second here, this is also the reason why I’ve chosen a hyperbolic, sardonic tone for this particular story. I’m presenting you with a one-sided account of a conflict, so I’d like to emphasize the narrative elements I’ve built around what is now the mythos of how I came to work for the Fridge Door Gallery. That isn’t to say, however, that this story is false.
# The dust settles
I met with the student I’d wronged to settle our differences. At sundown.
(Maybe one day I’ll be able to resist publishing contrived attempts at humour. I hear writing gets better with practice, so allow me the room to create cringe content while I still can.)
Anyway, it was sundown. It turned out that my adversary was the Executive Director of the Fridge Door Gallery, and she was looking to hire a designer. By dawn, I was Head of Design for the Fridge Door Gallery; tales of that night still echo through the halls of Leacock building (meaning we apologized to each other and went home).
This story is important to me because I was fortunate to learn where my priorities need to be very early into my design career. Together, the FDG director and I turned what started out as a “butting of the heads” into a highly productive and creative partnership that lasted until graduation.
I still have the mug gifted to me by the Classics Association; it bears my design and the words “NOLO VOLO YOLO”. A wise Latin proverb that translates to:
“I do not want, I want… YOLO”.