my name is maurice woods and i am a graphicdesigner. design for me accumulates from a lot of differentplaces. design is really about a process of thinking creatively and critically about howto solve something in a way that not only makes sense to people but produces a solutionto a problem. i was born in richmond, california, that'swhere i am from and i was always tall and that was you know a one of the things in myneighborhood that everyone was doing was sports and music.once i got into basketball, you know, i started growing a lot more and i was a lot tallerthan everybody else so it became sort of a more of a viable career option for me.it allowed me to get a scholarship to play
basketball at the university of washington.and, through that scholarship at the university of washington, that's how i got exposed todesign. i had a experienced two years playing basketballthat i came to the realization that i was probably not going to make it to the nba.me and my mother we were sitting down and i was telling her about how i didn't knowwhat i wanted to do and we're searching through different majors and she said, "what aboutgraphic design? you used to like to draw when you were a kid."and i did used to like to draw. so i ended up going back to graduate school and that'sreally how i transitioned from basketball to graphic design.i generally work in both mediums. both uh..
uh.. handwritten stuff - drawing and then also softwarelike adobe photoshop, adobe illustrator, indesign. all those different programs often times,specially when i'm working in print i try to get away from the computer and i end updoing a lot of sketching. sketching is really the best way to develop ideas. they thinkthat the computer can enhance their creativity and it's faster and it's more efficient. ijust find that the best ideas come when you're able to sit down and you're able to sketchand sketch a lot of different things. and you get ideas on the table and the computeris really a tool for manifesting those ideas. the inneract project specifically is a programthat, um, i started in 2004. the premise behind the program is simply put to educate youngpeople in the community about careers in design.
what we try to do, uh, with this program veryhard is to give young people a sense of what it means to be a designer and how designerscan use their skills in this world. "how long did it take you to do that?""a long time. we were just doodling that's all.""not very long..." "and you too?""let me see yours!" "no"also let them see and feel like what it feels like to be on a college campus which is reallyimportant, specially for middle school kids that are all sort of from underpriviledgedareas. one of the skills that helped me from basketballthat i took in design was teamwork. i'm used
to being able to be on teams that where thereis a lot of compromise that needs to be made and on teams where you're working on designstogether we are all submitting certain things and we're getting feedback.you need to be flexible. i want to be remembered for giving back tothe community. giving back to young people... and being able to use the skills that i haveto develop a young person to be better. i get more joy out of that than anything projecti work on.