Cool Cat: David Bieloh

Q&A by Laura Allen, photo contributed by David Bieloh

David Bieloh, senior lecturer of design, has been working at Central Washington University for 13 years and primarily teaches upper-division design classes. Before he got to CWU, David lived in several places, including Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Colorado, where he balanced being an educator and a designer. With an illustrious career in design, he brings industry-relevant insight for his students, helping them to unlock their conceptual thinking and become smart designers. Here is a peek into David’s background, his design philosophy, and his best advice for aspiring graphic designers.

Q: What brought you to Central Washington University?

I came here from the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design in Denver, Colorado, where I was the chair of the design program. I heard of an opening at Central from my friend Gregg Schlanger, who was the chair at the time. He invited me to apply, so I applied and was picked by the faculty and moved here in 2013.

Q: How did you come to select design as your career path?

I started out wanting to be a comic book illustrator. This was after I got a degree in marketing from Oklahoma State University Business College. But when I went back to design school, I learned that I was most likely going to need to become a designer and would not end up working as an illustrator. That’s how it all started in Dallas, Texas, when I went to the art institute and started years ago as a beginning design student. I liked the emphasis and focus on process, conceptual thinking, and talking a lot about ideas.

Q: What is your design philosophy?

They used to call this profession commercial art, and I very much agree that there's an element of commerce. It's a big part of what we do. We're helping to promote and sell goods and services, but my focus has always been on the idea and coming up with interesting, innovative, unexpected, wild concepts for those ideas …That's how I've always approached design, and it's what I've always tried to teach my students to do. There's always an element of humor [in my work], and I want the people who see my work to get it.

I recognize that business, technology, methods, and materials are all certainly a big part of design, but I really try to keep the emphasis on the person and solving problems for people. In the end, I think what's most important is that it is not really about the design of things…we should be focusing on the design of experiences for people. That's kind of my philosophy.

Q: What disciplines within graphic design are you specialized in?

Logo design was a big part of my career. I've done a lot of corporate identity work, and I've won different awards for it or had it recognized and published. I also worked for many years in publication design. I designed books and book covers for a publisher out of Tennessee…Now my career has shifted over to doing posters, so for the last several years, and what I'll be working on probably till the end [of my career], are posters that go around the world at these international poster exhibitions and invitationals.

Q: Can you give a brief overview of your background in design?

After I graduated from school, I got a job immediately as an in-house designer for a packaging machinery manufacturing company and worked there for four years. And then I went to work for a studio in Dallas called RBMM, which was the design affiliate for the Richards Group. During that time, I started teaching at the Art Institute of Dallas at night. I was teaching in the evenings, but my teaching career started to take shape shortly thereafter. I worked as an in-house designer for a couple of other places in Dallas, too.

Q: If you had to pick one of your favorite client projects that you’ve worked on in the past, what is it and why?

I branded a running store in Benicia, California, located right in downtown Benicia, called The Run House…It kind of encompassed everything I liked to do. It let me use a little bit of humor in the work and come up with an aha solution to a logo, which made people feel like they were in on the joke. I got to do a bunch of stuff on top of that, including a lot of the branding materials and advertisements for the store…Since then, I've had fun doing these posters [for international exhibitions] where we have a theme for a poster. For example, one of them was the theme of consumerism around the holidays, and we had to interpret that and come up with a solution.

Q: How did you get into teaching?

I was working at that packaging machinery company, and I got a random phone call one day from the director of the graphic design program at the Art Institute of Dallas. She said she was speaking to another person who was a painter who knew me and had remembered me saying that I thought I might want to teach one day…She said, “We just thought we would like to invite you in to teach a color and composition class. What do you think about that? It'd be on Tuesday and Thursday nights from 6 to 10.” So I thought, that sounds good, when does it start?

…At the end of the quarter, the director called me into her office, and she said, “David, we need you to teach again in the next quarter because all the students who just took your class only want to take Color and Composition 2 with you, so you have to teach the second one.” I hadn't really planned on it, but I really loved it, so I taught the second one. This went on for a year, and then the school invited me back and offered me a full-time position. I completely switched over to teaching full-time at the Art Institute of Dallas, and my employer at the packaging company let me clock in and work part-time.

…That's how it started. Then I prepared my long-term plan and wrote a list of all the things I need to do if I want to become a university professor. I was teaching at the Art Institute, a for-profit trade school, and they didn’t have any degree-credentialing requirements…If I wanted to teach at a university, I had to go back to school and start thinking about a master's degree. I figured it would take me 10 years to become a professor, and it took exactly 10 years.

Q: Is there any advice you have for students who are considering graphic design as their career path?

They should research this as much as possible before they start. If they can figure it out a little bit before they come to school, it would be helpful because most of the time, it's not what they expect. Many high school students’ only experience with graphic design is all software-based…Then they come to school, and they see what design really is, which is about conceptual thinking and problem solving, and software is just one part of it.

My advice would be to learn what design is and start paying attention to the things that you see around you, from logos to package design to posters. Try to really see and articulate what it is about that stuff that you think is cool or good, and start to develop an eye for it. Then you'll have a greater appreciation for things, and when we start getting into why you should love letters and typography, you won't be so horrified.

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

The most important thing is that designers make ideas come to life. We make thinking visual. We're like visual communications consultants in a way. People have to sell, promote, or raise awareness about something, and they need help making that happen. But it always has to come back to the strength of the idea and the concepts that you come up with to try to communicate it. We’ve got to keep the idea at the top always and then do it with a high attention to detail, make it beautiful, and just be smart. Do smart work. I think that is my best advice.

This Q&A has been edited for clarity and length.