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English 104
Design Autobiography
Describe your design history: the people, places, and experiences that have shaped your interest in art, planning, and/or design.

Why are you here? Why are you doing what you're doing? These are things you want to think about even when you don't have a paper to write about this... Understanding where you're coming from, what influences have shaped your ideas and interests, and what academic and career goals you have will allow you to shape your education around those experiences and goals. This way, everything you learn will apply to your interests and your own life. How can you tie everything you learn into your design major and career goals?

Is there a specific experience that changed the way you thought and highlighted design as a possible career? What was this experience? Why did it have such an effect on you? Explain how this experience shaped your interests. Or, do you have a collection of experiences that sparked your design interest? What were these experiences? How do these experiences compliment each other / build upon one another to construct your design interest?

You may—but don't have to—choose to focus on:

  • experience(s) - describe in detail the events that led to your interest in your major
  • a mentor / role model - is there a person whose work you admire? do you have a parent / teacher / leader who inspired you in some way?
  • a style / genre - do you have a specific interest: Greek Architecture, impressionistic painting, landscaping gold courses, etc.?
  • a hobby - do you enjoy Legos or Etch-a-Sketches, creating models, doodling, etc.?
or any other experience / insight that you feel would show the origin of your design interest. Here is an example I wrote about my own "creative" background...

Design 110 Requirements
If you will also be submitting this paper in Design 110, be sure to adhere to the following guidelines:
  • use 8 ½" x 11" paper - you pretty much have to
  • 12 point font size - because Frank said so
  • double-spaced - so the words aren't cramped together on the pages
  • Times New Roman font typeface - don't choose fonts that look like a Dr. Seuss book or a 1950's typewriter
  • 1-inch margins - you should be able to write at least two pages about this without using 3-inch margins
  • not right justified - this makes reading the paper difficult
  • no dot-matrix papers - these printers have awful quality; I could write better in crayon

This paper is due Tuesday, September 10th.