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Taylor Barringer

Graphic Design

Junior

When Taylor Barringer started college, West Texas A&M University wasn’t his first choice.

“I wanted to go to a university far away, like New York or Portland, but my parents urged me to try WT first,” Barringer said.

He agreed on one condition – “If I went to WT, I would get to do something like study abroad,” he said. “And it worked out.”

Barringer studied at the University of Reading in Reading, England for an entire school year from the fall of 2010 through the spring of 2011.

Before boarding the plane to England, Barringer had only been on a plane once when he was younger. Then suddenly he found himself on a one-way flight to London by himself.Once he was at the University of Reading, Barringer took classes that offered experiences he wouldn’t have been exposed to had he not gone to the university.

“I took a lot of art history classes and our professors would just pass around 15^th century manuscripts like it was nothing,” he said. “At WT, we’ve only seen pictures of things like that.”

Studying at a different school broadened Barringer’s perspective on his major. He explained that the graphic design department at the University of Reading has a very different take on how design is done compared to that of WT.

“My school in England approached design in a more theoretical way, talking about the psychology of layouts, how certain things work and other don’t,” he said.

Barringer wrote more papers about design and art rather than creating art. He said this method of learning gave him “a new mind set on how to think about design,” which he feels helps projects to be more successful.

“It was good to learn more than one viewpoint and approach to my major,” he said.

During one of his breaks, Barringer had the opportunity to go on a five-country road trip with some friends. He went from Germany to Holland, then to Belgium and France and back to England.

Barringer enjoyed seeing the differences from one country to another from the road, rather than flying to each country.

“It was really interesting to see how the countries changed so drastically right at the borders,” he said. “And even though the road signs were never in a language I could understand, I never had a problem understanding what was going on.”

Looking back, Barringer is astounded that the total drive time through five different countries was equivalent to the time it takes to drive from Canyon to Houston.

Barringer said that he would study abroad again “in a heartbeat” and is considering going to grad school abroad.