Well, its been a crazy start to the new year. Started at a new university, changed my major to Human-Centered Design and Engineering, and I've taken on a few too many long-term projects. But ideally, they will be worth the effort. In other news, I have moved out on my own, into my first apartment. I now have rent, electricity bills and phone bills ( I just had to get an iPhone, got to be trendy these days). Quite a lot of responsibilities. But I did find some time to redesign the website and the next step is to put together a more accurate resume and a better portfolio. I'm also going to try using this blog for some more good, rather than it have it be a waste of online space as it is now. Perhaps some articles on color theory or something. If I don't do it by the end of the month someone please come over to my apartment and slap me on the hand. Ok? Thanks. And now for some sweet photos of Bianca's first apartment, a true event in the history of her life.
I told myself many, many years ago that by the time I was 20 I would be incredibly successful. With the new year approaching I have come to the realization that I am just a little over 7 months away. Now, I wouldn't say that at this point I am unsuccessful. I am a freelancer with multiple projects under my belt and an art portfolio that is growing. I am a student with a near 4.0 GPA. And I have a part time job keeping my credit bills under control. But this isn't quite enough. So, in order to reach my almost impossible aspiration I have decided to use this blog to define exactly what I imagine my success to be and how I plan on attaining it.
Success. When I was younger I figured that if I had a lot of money it meant I was successful. And while I certainly feel that money is still apart of it, I believe just being able to support yourself financially is enough. So how should I really define my success. Having a good network of friends and family in combination with a good work network I feel is incredibly important to a growing designer. Also, creating an established identity online as part of that network is extremely important and will only become more important as mobile technology increases. And making something great, creating something that helps someone else and makes their life easier. Hopefully an innovative idea that helps a large mass of people.
How in the world am I going to get there? Learning, observing but most importantly, acting. I want to feel educated about something each day. Whether that's in a class, from a book, on a blog or even a life lesson depicted by my interaction with someone. I want to guarantee I've gained new knowledge each day. I want to to be creative and being an innovator comes with observing the world and asking questions. Not only being a part of the world but closely analyzing its problems. From their I need to act. I need to see what I can do to fix problems and to answer questions. I want to feel accomplished and that requires a lot of effort.
This will happen, at least I'm going to go with that thought. What are someways you've motivated yourself to attain high expectations?
Whenever I go through items in my Google Reader, I star the ones that will be most useful in the future, are incredibly interesting, or perhaps I want to read more thoroughly when I have time. I usually star one or two each day depending on how I'm feeling. Well, I decided to share these with you because it's no fun to keep these wonderful things to myself! You might have seen some of these floating around, but if not, enjoy!
Whenever I go through items in my Google Reader, I star the ones that will be most useful in the future, are incredibly interesting, or perhaps I want to read more thoroughly when I have time. I usually star one or two each day depending on how I'm feeling. Well, I decided to share these with you because it's no fun to keep these wonderful things to myself! You might have seen some of these floating around, but if not, enjoy!
A little over a month ago I came to the conclusion that I needed to create an identity for myself. I had read countless articles instructing me to establish a logo, get business cards with matching t-shirts and socks, etc. After all, if I expect people to hire me to make them look fantastic, shouldn't I make myself look good first?
It took some time. Probably too much time. But I'm a full-time student with a part-time job and clients. There are only so many hours in the day even including day light savings time. Now the process is completely underway. It started with a logo. I'll be doing a post (ideally this week) about the design process of my own logo, sketches provided. The website was designed next and finally coded, I'm really pleased with it. It's different but clean. Let me know if anything seems wrong in your browser, I tried to get all the bugs out. Except for Firefox 2.0 (I was seriously frustrated - like yelling at my monitor enough to concern my relatives frustrated). Now it's on to the business cards and such.
Want to know the article that kick started my action?
Whenever I go through items in my Google Reader, I star the ones that will be most useful in the future, are incredibly interesting, or perhaps I want to read more thoroughly when I have time. I usually star one or two each day depending on how I'm feeling. Well, I decided to share these with you because it's no fun to keep these wonderful things to myself! You might have seen some of these floating around, but if not, enjoy!
I stumbled upon these beautiful backgammon boards today created by the artist Ara Peterson. His use of color is absolutely astounding. He highlights saturated colors by carefully placing them with their compliments. I'm probably going to end up studying these backgammon boards for hours.
Images were found on Ratio 3, a San Francisco gallery.
I'm currently working on a project with the Entrepreneur department at the University of Washington (Bothell). They host an annual conference in the spring to promote ideas and be a catalyst to entrepreneurial growth among not only UW students but the entire northwest region. They came to me asking for help with a redesign of the conference, hoping to create some modern and innovative branding that would accurately represent and promote the conference. We began with a logo.
The old logo for the center, and by relation, the conference, was a lightbulb. So that's where it started.
I realized that networking and growth and innovation could easily be represented with overused images, but that's not what we wanted the conference to represent. We wanted something new to represent the conference.
We finally settled with an abstract play on positive and negative shapes. The logo could visually be many things to different people, and we liked that. To us the logo represented columns or arches of an ancient agora, an open area and marketplace that philosophers, tradesmen, merchants would frequent and exchange ideas and thoughts.
Making a logo is quite the creative draining process. A project I've recently been enlisted for, starts with some identity work, and I had forgotten how difficult it is to be fresh and original when making a logo. I have filled at least 5 sheets of sketch paper with ideas, and only 5 logo ideas made it to the computer screen, and I don't even really like any of them. Must keep working. While looking for some inspiration I did happen to create quite the list of links to share.
Quite possibly my favorite book as a child is becoming a movie, and today I finally found a trailer of it. Not only does the movie look absolutely fantastic, the music to the trailer is none other than Arcade Fire, an absolutely fantastic band. The director, Spike Jonez appears to have done an incredible job and not turned it into just another WB blockbuster. I cannot contain my enthusiasm (:
