career?

I find the concept of conceiving a career for myself difficult. I think part of me just thinks that I'll spend my college years trying to figure out what I love, and then check job listings to see if anything matches up. I do know though that further planning would ultimately prove beneficial to this process.

At the start of this year I was sure I could end up happy as a web designer. One of the things that I'm learning in IM II Design is that there is a massive community of web standards nerds. Web standards nerds are basically a community of people that busy themselves arguing over web semantics and compliance standards. Part of me wonders what they would do if the web didn't have so many limitations (IE typefaces, boxy layouts, etc.) since they would no longer have anything to complain about. Probably they would gripe about the good old days when every graphic designer didn't think they could do web design.

Nevertheless, I still see myself involved in the web. Ideally I would like to be involved in advertising (this is somewhat redundant since all web is advertising). I have a love of narrative - if I could get a job with one of the more edgy web advertising companies that would be ideal. I feel like advertising is one of the few business-related fields where the demand for creativity is still rising.

//start rant

Eventually, I think all media will be advertising. I mean, think about it - all mass media is essentially built to trick the consumer into sitting through hours of advertising. This model is obviously inefficient when faced with the option of making advertising so engaging that it replaces regular media all together. It's already happening - turn on the TV for half an hour and you'll probably be more impressed by the advertisements than the programming. It's only a matter of time before they get rid of the filler.

//end rant

In Regard to the Science Center

So apparently the Baltimore Science Center has a massive basement where they are hard at work cranking out the science center's exhibits - who knew? Frankly, I thought that any establishment of that size would outsource its production. I couldn't help but think that all of those design/development offices were a waste of space - then again, that might just be the New Yorker in me.

The actual job of conceiving kiosk displays for a children's museum did seem interesting - though many of the interfaces present in the museum left me wanting more. A simple touch screen is not enough to motivate a child through a boring slide presentation. The "interactive media guy" did seem to have a lot of freedom in his job, which is definitely nice - however ultimately I just didn't find what he was doing that interesting.