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Adobe Community Professonal Highlight
I'm honored to feature "Eugene Tyson" as our community superstar for this month. Eugene has been a part of our community for more than 13 years now. Eugene is an expert in multiple Adobe products like InDesign, Illustrator & Photoshop. Eugene has contributed to over 11.4K posts and he has received more than 2k likes 👍🏻. We are thankful for his contribution to our community. He is a second degree Black Belt holder in Karate 💪.
In his own words:
"Hello everyone, my name is Eugene and I'm from Ireland. I've been in this industry for a long time and don't really remember when or how it started, but I've been on a journey for the past 25 years 🥳
How do I start this - I suppose at the beginning where I was very young when introduced to computers. I was born deaf and required surgery to correct my hearing loss which I received when I was about 3, meaning I didn't start school at 4 as others, but at 5. At the time to help with my speech and to help me before I started school, my father bought a ZX Spectrum 48k. He taught me to not only read and write but also how to use the computer and input the text. We would sit for hours and when I was between 4 & 5 years of age I'd read out the Basic computer language and he'd input it. And then I'd take turns typing it in while my father read it out to me. This leads me to school, when on my first day the teacher was genuinely amazed when I could read and write already, and when mentioned it to my mother she just said: "Sure, that's nothing he wrote a computer program before going to school."
Needless to say - my future lay somewhere on computers.
Fast forward years later when I was about 12 - my father had surpassed the Spectrum 48k, it was 8 years later! We got a full-fledged PC for the family along with a printer! We were delighted. My eldest brother was acting DJ for the local community hall - so I jumped on the computer and whatever freeware was available to me - as I was only 12 and had no idea - and I'd create some posters for him to put up in the hall to advertise his gigs. This was my first unknown adventure in Graphic Design. (Big stories start with little chapters.)
In school, I had zero idea that Graphic Design was even an option - I was already sort of doing it - but not really. I didn't know it was a profession. I was always good at Maths and English but besides that... who knows you could combine these into a viable career. Even, When I left school at 17 I still had no idea what I wanted to do. But at the time I was hanging with my friends and having a great time and not really in any great rush.
At the age of 16, I have taken up Karate with some school pals and it was a great way to spend time together. The club had decided to go to Athens for a European Championships. At 17, I had no money, no job, no college.
To make ends meet and to get to these tournaments with the club and with my friends I managed to get employed at a local Textile Factory, they are a well-known brand of sports clothing in Ireland. I was working with the seamstresses in fetching garments, boxing up clothes, and general work, and this lasted for about a summer. Towards the end, I was asked if I could cover some holidays happening over in the Screen Printing portion of the factory and I agreed to this to try to extend my pay and get more money to go away with the Karate Club and enter the European Championships.
I started on the promise of at least 6 weeks' work to cover staff going on holidays, which was great. After the 6 weeks were up they asked me to stay on, which came as a suprise. Within 6 months I was running my own screen printing machine. And within a year I had progressed from single colour printing to multi-colour printing.
This involved all sorts of work, from prepping the inks, prepping the paper, taping screens, cleaning, and a lot to it actually. But I was working with an amazing bunch of people who were nothing but fantastic to learn from. Aside from the work - it was great fun to be heading home at 17 years of age covered head to toe in different ink colours, I don't know it was always fun.
One of my greater success stories happened quite randomly - one morning that they were short-handed and had nobody to mix the inks to match to certain brands, so I requested I be trained on this, as I always looked to put myself forward for anything. As I was shown, it was to mix a bit, dry it, and see if it matches the previous samples. And this was the same procedure in matching all colours, just get as close as possible.
When this was going on - I started to write down the pigments and weights being used. I was asked why I was writing it down, and I just said the next time I need to make that colour I can just use the same pigments and weights, then the colours will be identical... it was a bit of a lightbulb moment for them. And we talked to the supervisors and they agreed to create a book using the weights of the pigments to get exactly the same colours each time. I was very proud of this, as it seemed logical rather than guessing. I'm not sure if it ever took off, but it was a good moment for me.
How I got into graphic design was an extension of where I was working, unfortunately, there was talk of the factory being moved to another location that would have been impossible for me to get to and reluctantly started looking for other opportunities. I came across a Desktop Publishing Course that was being run locally and it was full time. It was great course and met some great people there. But it was only for 6 months. I used these 6 months to build up a portfolio to apply to other printing companies. And I managed to showcase a basic knowledge of design, impositions, logo design, image manipulation etc. to a point a company offered me an apprenticeship, which was then called an 'Originator' - but nowadays called a prepress operator.
From this point on I was pretty heavily invested in Karate and I participated in many tournaments in Ireland and around the World. Along with training in my day job, I was also training 7 nights per week in Karate - it was pretty full-on for 4 years. At the end of it all I was a fully qualified 'Originator' and I had also achieved my 1st Degree Black Belt.
My background is quite varied, I've worked as a screen printer, as a prepress operator, in-house graphic designer, typesetter, scanner operator, platesetter... and much much more.
I've often joked that I have designed and printed everything and on every substrate, but it's not to far from the truth! Over the years anything from stamps to milk cartons, to books up to 3,200 pages, magazines, posters, billboards, building wraps, packaging, office fit-outs, events and staging (including video graphics), cars, trucks, buses - even once for an airplane. From the experience I've gained over the years I've learned how to tackle nearly any type of task - it's truly been a very wonderful journey so far.
I honestly have to say that I started Adobe InDesign I didn't have a clue how to use it. It is with huge thanks of InDesignSecrets (now Creative Pro) - David Blatner, Anne-Marie Concepción, Mike Rankin, Bob Levine - and the late Theunis de Jong - through their support over the years I would not be where I am today. And believe it or not, I've never met any of them in person, but the support they offered to a completely stranger and through their never-ending help is amazing. I am eternally grateful for all the support they gave me in my early years learning InDesign.
And it's basically why I volunteer on the InDesign forums - as I think it's good to pay it forward!
These days I don't practice Karate any longer, however, I did manage to get achieve 2nd Degree Black Belt before hanging up my gloves. When I'm not on the forums - I do like to go running and I like to go jogging about 4-6 days a week, I'm currently in training for a half-marathon which is due to come up soon, so wish me luck!
Thanks for having me!”.
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