For a while I never knew what my life would be like as a graphic designer. It was always something I was interested in but something I never expected to pursue. I remember the first day I got my hands on that Adobe 4.7 disc from my dad. He was always up on the newest technology and software, so when I asked for some photo editing software for my first digital camera he was eager to jump. I remember he gave me 2 discs, 1 was the 4.7 and 1 was the upgrade from 4.7 to 5.0 (or something like that).
From that point on, every time I needed help with something, like making a photo bigger, he would point me in the right direction. Sooner than later, I started building with this application. I remember that I felt as if a new world opened up right in front of my eyes every time I ran the application. There was so many things you could do but so many things you could do differently. I never quite understood what I was making, but I ended up loving every bit of it.
A year or two had past and I started working more and more in photoshop and getting better by the day. Still, this was just a hobby. I remember making my first website in photoshop. It was horrendous, but that wasn’t the point. The entire time, I just couldn’t believe I could build something and in minutes throw it in dreamweaver (Fred would kill me now) and boom, I have a website. After this, I created many websites, even some I got money for. I had a feeling this could be more than a hobby, but how would I tell my friends? I would convince my friends and family, even myself that this was only a hobby and I was going to college for, you know, a “business degree.”
My brain said yes, but my heart said no. After a year of community college, still with no direction, I had a long talk with my parentals. They urged me to tell them, what I wanted to do after college. We discussed maybe going to a graphic institute, but I still was uncertain. A few days later I got an email from my step mom Mary with a link to Platt college. I never had been so excited. I didn’t want to go to a big college, I didn’t want to start from the bottom, I wanted to go somewhere where I had to choose my own destiny. I felt as if this was the right place to do that. Now, I’m proud to say, Hello my name is Peter and I am a graphic designer. And Web!