Favorite Teacher

Last year I participated in an Introduction to Visual Communications course taught by Bill Galyean. The course consisted of the upkeep of a sketchbook in which we would collect all sorts of pieces of visual communication evident in the world around us. There were a variety of sections directing us to look for specific designs evident in society such as typography, signage, and color groups. Galyean is, I assume, nearing sixty years old, and has been involved in the advertising and visual communications business since he left college. He worked for Johnson & Johnson, has hung out with Alfred Hitchcock, and even worked in his own design firm for some time.

            Each day he would inspire us to look to the world around us for inspiration allowing us to notice that everything was designed at some point in time. Galyean served as a source of guidance to me, forcing me to recognize the inherent beauty in product designs, advertising designs, and architectural and environmental designs. He stuck it deep into my brain that the smallest details observed by a designer can make a difference. He introduced me to the Modernist Volkswagen ads and how simplicity is so essential to timeless design. He opened my eye to world as a global embrace of graphic design- Helvetica typefaces are seen through hundreds of corporate logos, street signs, and subway systems and this manipulation of our world to take on an appearance of good design is so crucial to the functionality and contemporary pace of our world.

            This year Galyean mentored me in consulting me on my portfolio for entrance into the Graphic Design Program. A meeting that could have easily lasted about thirty minutes was prolonged to two hours as we ranted on our obsessions with Helvetica Neue fonts, the importance of the simplicity of a concept, and other things, which most people outside of a visual communications career do not see and most of the time understand the beauty of. Galyean pushed me to truly take on graphic design as a way of life, not only a major, and that is what it has become to me. It is difficult for me not to notice a logo on a napkin, a billboard with wrong letterspacing, or a brilliant conceptual idea of a public service advertisement.