Tim Kirkman – BEDV ’90

There are so many moments at the College of Design that have affected my life in positive ways. Just to name a few: graphic design professor P. Lyn Middleton’s summer studio during which I learned the powerful design (and life) lesson that “parameters give you freedom”; Margaret Sartor exposed me to artists in her photography classes that still inspire and challenge me, but I’ll never forget the day she shared the work of David Goldblatt, which introduced me (shamefully, for the first time) to the horrors of Apartheid; the afternoon the divine Bill Bayley dusted off a spring-wound 16mm camera in The Cage so I could play and make my first films; Austin Lowery dragging me by the hand into the periodicals and making me look through ID, Graphis, and other magazines to show me “good” design; Martha Scotford’s history class in that wonderful old classroom of hard chairs, watching projections of graphic designers across the years, so many of which I still remember, and of course the fantastic support staff around us… I’m thinking of Hazel and Sharon and Delsey and so many others… but most of all I think of Vince Foote, who took me into his office before I was ever even admitted into the school, and talked to me like an equal, like a peer, when I was all of nineteen years old, and not a peer, and who asked my parents to please wait in the lobby so he and I could get to know each other, which we did, and he told me about what an incredible place the “school of design” is, how it would demand so much of me and would change me in ways I could not yet imagine, and how special a place it is, which at that point he didn’t really need to say, because after five minutes with Vince Foote I wanted to follow him anywhere. To say this place changed my life is the greatest understatement I could make.