Blake Novotny

One of the people that have influenced me the most would be my incredible high school graphic design teacher, Blake Novotny. When I was a high school freshman registering for classes, I had no intentions of really focusing on the necessary art credits that I needed to take in order to graduate in four years, however Mr. Novotny changed that. From the first day in class he pushed our class to express ourselves through our work, which I never had truly seen before in any class. His teaching style was strict, yet very straight forward, which kept all of us focused on our work without much confusion. If there ever was a topic that we were struggling with (for me it was when we learned how to use the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator) all we would have to do is ask and he would walk us through the solution to our problem in such a way that we would never have to worry about that skill again. Again, this was an ability that I had never seen in a teacher before.


Near the end of the first semester of that year, Mr. Novotny let us “loose.” He made it clear that we had come far enough without the need for his continued assistance, and that we were ready to take on any project with our own skills, no matter what ability level we may have been at. I was stunned and a bit frightened that he had made that decision; he had changed in an instant from mentor to basically a client. However, I shortly found out that this only pushed my creative skill and drive to succeed further. By the end of the year, we had all improved from barely being able to draw a circle to being able to create attractive vector designs and commercial product layouts with ease. In the following years, I took a web design class with Mr. Novotny, and following that a student teacher under him for future graphic design students. I cannot thank him enough for showing me that if I actually care about succeeding enough and put a large amount of effort into my work, anything can be done.