Hey design community! My name's Nicole and I'm a graphic designer based out of Edmonton, Alberta working for these dudes in Lacombe. I'll be blogging every so often on matters close to my heart: print design. Above all, I'd love to facilitate a conversation on design... so whether you agree or disagree with me, please just speak up!

It seems every other week, a web designer tells me the jig is up, my days as a print designer are numbered. Didn't you hear? About this thing called the internets? It's going to make print design obsolete. Some days, amid facebook and twitter and the increasing amount of time I spend online, I worry they're right.

But most days I smile smugly and let them talk, secure in knowing that my job is safe because one thing the digital world can't replicate is tangibility. They can't manufacture the emotional resonance that comes with turning pages or holding a well-designed business card in your hand.

More than that, print design is evolving. They said that television would kill radio. It didn't, it just serves a different purpose now. As print designers we need to focus on doing the things we do, and doing them better. With purpose. Let's not get hung up on what the internet is taking away from our livelihood and instead look at the needs it's creating, what it can't do. Some schools of thought in design say simplicity is the key: you must remove, remove, remove. If you don't need it, it shouldn't be there.

Let's remove the antiquated practice of mass mail-outs and create better promotional materials that our audience will want to hang onto instead of put out with the recycling. Let's remove the idea that the web and print have to compete, let them work in tandem. By removing the excess that web can obviously do better than print, we can all focus, redirect our clients' energy (and budget) and instead showcase print design's strengths.

I have been asked to take an editorial role here at the GDC National blog, one which I am delighted and honoured to take on. All I intend to do in this first post is introduce myself and explain a bit about what I intend on writing about.

My name is Davin Greenwell. I am a designer / photographer / musician from Victoria, British Columbia.  I have a long standing interest in taking ideas from one media and extending the ideas into others where it makes sense. I got hooked on graphic design in the mid 80s when I came across a program called SuperPaint. I learned the rudimentary principles of the program - in monochrome - and it has provided a basis for understanding more complex graphic programs ever since. It was not a big stretch from there to start using Adobe Photoshop when it came out, and I used it extensively with Illustrator while I worked at a graphic design shop in Victoria in the mid 90s.  I went on to do web management and design at a number of organizations including government and a couple design firms, as well as various contract work under my own name.