What is your style?
As a creative person and someone who answers the question, "What do you do?" with "I'm a graphic designer." I am often asked in response something like, "so what is your style."
In all honesty, this questions stumps me every time. I have decided the best way to answer that question in the best way possible is to make a little blog about it.
Short answer: I don't have a style.
Response: No, come on. You have to have a style.
Long answer: My style really isn't important and it really isn't the reason I am a designer.
First, I love design. I love design from a 10,000 ft view and from in the fields of the fly-over states (literally, I live in Indiana). Design frustrates me to no end. Living in a world where everything is designed to some degree leaves me looking at things and wishing this little piece could move just a tad that way or that piece could be just a little bigger. If those changes could be made it would be 1% better, which may not seem like much, but it would be better than it was before. There is too much design out there for me to limit myself to one style.
Second, design is not about me. Design is about you. Design is about creating an experience that impacts people. Sometimes design is about creating a feeling, other times, it is about making someone look at something that they otherwise would pass by. For me to be able to craft an experience for those my designs are intended for, I can't draw a circle in the sand around myself and tell people, "I won't step out of this circle," but I must step out of my own particular aesthetic and into areas I wouldn't hang up in my home as art because someone who cares about design needs to care about the design of those things.
Finally, my answer to the question, "What is your style?" Takes a new turn and ends up answering a new question. "Why do you design?" I design to create solutions. My job as a designer is to help people through the maze of, "What should this look like?" My job is to provide options. To make informed decisions about the visual obstacles others have in their marketplace and land them in a place where they are better engaging their audience.