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DON BAKER ILLUSTRATOR
DON BAKER DESIGN SEATTLE, WA
62-63
In high school I had a job as a custodian in a drug store. While sweeping the floors and emptying the trash, it seemed like I was always looking at the various product packages, some of them elegant and alluring, others flat, empty, and uninspired. The most interesting designs tended to be in the cosmetics section. I’d study them to try to
understand what it was that I liked --- colors, type, white space, well-designed logos, the relationship of the elements --- and wonder how they could evoke such different feelings. My first year of college I took a drawing class, where the same still life was assembled for us day after day. At one point I realized I just couldn’t draw it again, and decided to pull something else from it. It was at that moment I understood that was the point all along: to take from what was there and do something of my own with it. When I got into commercial art school, we had to keep a sketch book, and