Ed Staib

My name is Ed. (Hi Ed) it’s been seven days since my last drawing. It seems to have started when I was five in which I handed in a drawing that shocked my teacher and then my parents. I believe that we were asked to draw a family activity. Naturally being a Staib, I drew the family at the dining room table eating dinner (my apologize to any Staib’s out there who don’t suffer from the eating habits my family does. (I would like to meet you.)) It seems like a normal thing to draw-I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. The only thing was the angle that I drew it. What startled the teacher was the fact that I drew it as if I were looking down on the whole scene. I recently laminated that drawing so that it wouldn’t deteriorate anymore than it already has.

Like I said, that was the beginning. I always excelled in art classes (and music) but suffered in most of my other classes. Some have suggested that I was dyslexic, others said I was lazy-who knows, it was probably a little of both. But I managed to trudge my way through school. Lets skip ahead, it’s long and uninteresting. In 1988 after finding myself making funny drawings of my music theory teacher @ SUNY Ulster, I realized that I should have gotten into art. I discovered a cartooning school named Joe Kubert School of Cartooning and Graphic Design. I thought that was really interesting. I always loved cartoons and thought it would be great to become a famous cartoonist. I wasn’t ready at that time and failed miserably at it. I learned allot though and tucked all that learning away for awhile.

Skipping ahead Many years of dealing with dissolution and disappointment I ended up going back to SUNY Ulster getting my Visual Arts degree and going on to SUNY New Paltz to get my Bachelor’s degree in the same. I concentrated in the fine arts and graphic design. One of the realities I learned at the cartooning school is that it is very difficult to get into fine art(or cartooning for that matter.) That is why I leaned toward the graphic arts. Surely an artist can make a living in the field.

Although the school frowned upon illustration-who seems to be the bastard child of the fine arts I produced drawings with a heavy bent towards illustration. My belief is that much of the classical art they were teaching is illustration. In the graphic arts realm I learned about typography, photo manipulation, and web design, and the programs which entailed each of those subjects.

One subject of particular interest is how text appears on the web. Seeing that many web sites have bodies of text that goes clear across the screen which I found difficult to read, I set out to discover a way to “control” text on screen in such a way as to make it more readable. I learned that it is hard to prove legibility.

It’s been three years since I graduated. While I was going to school I was working at a big box store to supplement my income. It was fine while I was there but I had to break into the business so to speak. Not finding anything right away, I settled for a position within the big box store as a Kitchen Designer. My rationale was that design is design. I thought that it was neat to be able to take an existing kitchen that didn’t function well and make it better. I liked being able to make suggestions to people how it should be laid out and how it would make their lives better. I’ve found out recently that helping people in that capacity only goes so far. I actually had to convince people to fork over thousands of dollars to purchase the cabinetry. So that career move didn’t pan out. So now I’m concentrating my time on getting started again as a graphic artist.