Generally speaking, graphic design calls for the designer to step back and denounce all authorship. In contrast, when one scrapbooks it is for a purely selfish and self-sustaining motivation. Instead of sending scrapbook pages out to line the back of benches or handing our work over to a large press and letting the pressmen glue and trim and stamp, we cushion our pages in protective albums and keep them close to our homes, on shelves that allow us to touch and feel the original. It is ours.

Is this what draws graphic designers to the scrapbooking?

Over the past two decades design has been pushed out of print shops and into everything that is digital. Designers are locked behind computers. Is this why designers are drawn to scrapbooking? Their fingers crave the feel of actual paper, actual substance? Is there a joyful challenge in creating with finite materials, ones that cannot be corrected with “undo” or “replace”?

For years I avoided scrapbooking, even questioned those who did scrapbook, because in my high and mighty designer mind I thought, “Why would I ever do that? I can do it so much faster on a computer.”

And yet, here I am.

Am I here because I enjoy the craft? Am I here because I want to hold onto something I've designed and call it my own? Or is it because I long to step from behind the computer and still be able to create something meaningful?

Chris Pullman writes, “Someone who becomes a successful painter or sculptor or performance artist is likely to be a person who derives their energy and intellectual satisfaction from solving problems that come from inside themselves. In contrast, someone who ends up as a successful designer is probably a person whose energy and intellectual satisfaction comes from solving someone else's problems… Throughout one's professional life, the key decision is: Which problems will you use your skill to help solve?”

If what Pullman says is true, I believe that I scrapbook because it allows me to solve my own problems, but in a way that encourages the use of my artistic/design skills.

So, basically, I scrapbook because I've got problems. And they need to be solved. Yeah, that's it. :)

Why do you scrapbook?