I’m a Graphic and Web Design student at John Abbott College. I’ve also been freelancing on the side since 2020. Becoming a designer while doing both at once has taught me more than either one alone.
My name is Tiffany Gantman, and I live in the Montreal area. It started with small favours for people I knew. Over time it became a habit of taking on projects and building things of my own. So I’d call myself a young entrepreneur as much as a student. This blog is where I write about both.
How becoming a designer started for me
At first I liked design because I liked how things looked. What kept me interested was seeing how much one small choice changes the way a business feels. A different typeface makes a bakery feel warm or cold. Add a bit more white space and an offer becomes easy to read. Crop a photo differently and the room turns into a place you’d want to sit.
My first paid jobs were small, but the questions behind them were not. Why would anyone trust this business? What should a visitor see first? Which part of the page has to work? Those questions turned an interest into a way of thinking. I still start there.
What school is teaching me
School makes me slow down. Typography is the clearest example. On a deadline, it’s tempting to pick a typeface that feels right and move on. In class, I have to explain the pairing, the sizes and the spacing. That explanation is what lets me repeat the choice next time.
Critique matters just as much. Having a room of people react to my work taught me to separate a design I like from a design that works. This semester I’m taking Logo and Pictogram Design, Branding Studio, Book Design, Photography and Web Publishing. They keep backing each other up. For example, hierarchy in a book spread is the same problem as hierarchy on a web page.
What freelancing is teaching me
Client work teaches what a brief can’t. Real projects come with opinions, small budgets and deadlines set before a designer was involved. When a client changes their mind, there’s usually a good reason. Listening for that reason has improved my work more than any tutorial.
Working in Quebec adds one more layer. Almost everything I make has to work in French and English. A headline that fits in one language can run two lines longer in the other. So I plan for both from the first sketch.
What I keep coming back to
Photography shapes most of my visual thinking. I pay attention to how a frame is composed, how light changes the mood of a product, and how a set of images holds together as one story. Fashion interests me for a similar reason. A collection has a point of view, and every detail either supports it or weakens it.
Restaurants are the third. A restaurant is a whole brand in a small space, from the menu and the plates to the website and the photo someone posts after. When those pieces agree, people remember the place.
Where becoming a designer is taking me
I want to carry a project from the first conversation through to launch. I also want to explain every decision along the way. Creative direction is the version of that I’m working toward. Building my own projects is part of the plan, not a distraction from it.
Becoming a designer while studying means most of the interesting work is still in progress. So this blog will stay a working record: projects underway, decisions I’m unsure about, and what I learn from getting them wrong.
If you’re a student building a creative career too, what made you start?
There’s more about my background and how I work on my About page.