Michael Bierut's "My Life as a Font"

Attending Michael Bierut's lecture was very inspiring for me. With each letter of the alphabet, he named and described the many different businesses he worked with over the past twenty-six years of being a graphic designer. One of the statements that stood out the most was about his daughter telling him that when he started on a new project for a client, all he did was "tweak it a little bit and then take all the credit for it." Although I thought this was pretty hilarious, it also got me to wondering... what is the point of a graphic designer? Is the main purpose to just add on to pre-exsisting ideas and then call it your own? Is there anything original left or is there only room to "tweak" what has already been created? I contemplated over these questions for a while and I believe I came up with an answer. Even though it is hard to call yourself "original" these days, it is possible to create something that can be seen and called yours by adding your own creativeness and knowledge to the work at hand. In this instance, it can be called original. A graphic designer with such caliber like Michael Bierut, makes these circumstances look like a breeze. With as much talent and comprehension of graphic design as he has, Bierut can transform any logo or advertisement into a wonderful composition... even if it means only "tweaking" it a little bit.