By Steve Spatucci

A designer friend once criticized text I wrote for a brochure I’d been designing - he thought it was too friendly in tone and didn’t have a strong enough marketing bent. I was reasonably happy with my output, and besides - my client didn’t have the budget to hire a copywriter, so he’d asked me to assemble a few short paragraphs from a variety of bullet-pointed presentations he’d developed on his own.

I… guess.

I mean, I had the same English courses everyone else did at college, but it wasn’t my major. I’ve taken many screenwriting courses, but I haven’t sold a screenplay (yet). I’ve always enjoyed creative writing, especially when integrated with my own art and design (websites, comic books, animation - that sort of thing), but I’ve never had been paid JUST to write something - it’s always been part of a bigger design project.

So is it wrong that I still think of myself as a competent, passable, even “decent” writer? Or is that too cocky? I think not.

There’s something magical about being paid to do something that allows others to think of you as a professional. I’m sure that of the thousands (tens of thousands?) of actors in L.A. who’ve studied the craft for years - but who haven’t yet had a paid acting gig - many of them are quite good at what they do. If they get hired for a soap opera tomorrow, they’ll instantly be able to call themselves professional, working actors - even though their skills will be no better after they’ve hired than they were before. And I’d be willing to bet that some percentage of their friends will instantly change their opinions of their actor-buddy, once they get their moment of glory on “As The World Turns”.

These days, we all have to stretch a bit beyond the strict definitions of our jobs. Small business owners are doing their own marketing. Traditional photography studios are getting into digital image correction. And I’m sure there are some writers out there who are designing their own books - why not the opposite?

I acknowledge that this cuts both ways, though - so when that actor from the daytime drama criticizes my designs, I’ll have no choice to but to sit back and accept their critique like the professional I am.

When I told this same designer friend of mine that I was writing a book, he asked, “What? Have you ever done that before?!”

Remember this always: Jimi Hendrix never took a guitar lesson.

© 2007 Steve Spatucci
Steve Spatucci is a designer, illustrator, animator and game developer from Cherry Hill, New Jersey in the United States. He started working as a freelancer in 1997, and founded his company, Plasmic Studio, in 2002. He worships Jim Henson, Stan Lee, and Gene Simmons – in that order.