Introducing ‘ele’ (Prounounced “L-E”)
This is a personal project that I am working on and have been for awhile. It’s been one of the illustrator files that has just been sitting and sitting. I finally decided it was time to dig it out and spend a little time on it. It feels good to be able to make something for myself!
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#ele #logo #brand #design #illustrator
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My new sounds:
Working on a new character to go with SnarphBlat Chronicles.
Their names are Snuglugs!
I want to let all my Tumblr followers know, that I will be moving my blog to Wordpress in January 2012. I am excited to present a new look, portfolio and more interesting features to come in the new year! Please hang tight as I go through this transition and I hope you will all follow me there. My URL will still be the same.
Thank you to all my valuable readers, I really appreciate each of you.
One of the best projects you can take is one that you feel like you cannot complete. That overwhelming, complicated and aesthetically hard to please design. But these projects are only for the brave of heart. Although in the end, can be the most rewarding.
Being challenged in your everyday design life should be taken as gold. Because as you become challenged and pushed to your limits your talent expands and you become more valuable. I believe that as long as someone has a vision for a product, design or idea that they can make it happen.
Designers should never look at a challenge as a setback, but as an opportunity to grow. If you clearly believe that a project is too far out of your expertise be honest with yourself. If you believe it is something you can learn during the process in a specific amount of time, then shoot for it. But with everything, weigh it and find if it is truly worth it for you.
Try not to overwhelm yourself with a challenge. Many times I have gotten so overwhelmed and worked up about a project that I couldn’t focus on anything. Frustration can be such a weapon against us. But going for a walk, clearing the mind, or talking to another designer about your frustrations can really help.
Taking breaks is important too. Give your mind time to rest and process information. Sometimes when you keep working on a design and move things around, everything starts to look the same. Do your best, stand back, and look at your work. Think to yourself on how it can be improved, and if not, then its time for a break. Or maybe you’ve come to a stopping point.
Being under challenged can just be as dangerous if not worse than getting frustrated with a current design challenge. When a designer becomes under challenged, they seem to lose interest in their work, don’t feel used, appreciated, or seen. They know they have talent yet their project isn’t pulling that out. Creative people can feel those creative streams flowing out of them. It’s like water flowing from a steam. But when the challenge becomes stale the water starts to trickle and designers start to feel uninterested in their projects. It’s a dangerous predicament and harder to get out of than being over challenged.
If you’re caught in a drought with design, take breaks, take it by stride and just finish it and move on. It may not be your best work, but put all that you can into it. There will be many projects that you may not want to put in your portfolio. Or even recall again. With every project, hides a lesson and a new learning process.
To avoid becoming stale in your design projects, choose ones that challenge you, are interesting and can see yourself growing. If it’s something you’ve done before, or over and over again, move away from it. If you have too, use those redundant projects as quick ones that don’t take up a lot of your time and you can move away from quickly.
Never shy away from a challenge but stand boldly at the gate. Requesting and wanting a challenge in your everyday work is one of the best things you can do for yourself and for your career. People don’t become great by sitting back and watching people pass them by. They become great by taking challenges that shape them into greatness.
TypeKit, New Friends & The Mistake
I had the pleasure of making new friends at the start of the week due to the AEA conference. Friends that I have met on Twitter, but hadn’t yet had the opportunity to spend time with in person. I’ve come to realize that one of the most important details in life is creating new friendships and laughing. I certainty had a lot of that the past two days. From meeting up with friends at the Media Temple party in SOMA to going to the Typekit closing party in the Mission. The in between stages of dinner, taking BART and enjoying life with people was certainly the highlight of my week
I have decided that instead of just talking about things I want to do, I am really putting my foot down for 2012 and really doing them. It may mean less tweeting (Yay for you guys! I know I tweet often) and less time on social media. But it will also increase social media. By doing, and then displaying what I am completing, it will bring a lot more influence and insight to you. I figure, it’s a win, win situation! So this week, making new friends and going to events was apart of my #DoNotTalk goal. Sometimes I just want to curl up in my bed and watch Ancient Aliens all night. But it’s great to get out and meet new people and build relationships that I’ll have for the rest of my life.
On the other hand, I do make bad decisions. I wore the wrong shoes.
I wore them to work, wore them to dinner, then wore them to the Mission for the Typekit closing party. I am way home, I had an older business man walk me to my stop, to make sure I got on my cable car safely. He said he saw me struggling in my shoes and suggested that I keep an extra pair of flats in my purse next time. Then after said I was an angel. It was so kind and not creepy. It’s amazing the quality of people you meet in the city. We didn’t exchange names, it was very un formal, but he left as soon as my cable car appeared. Almost as if he was an angel. I was really thankful for that, because I was feeling uneasy walking home late at night, in shoes I could hardly walk in. Yet someone, kind enough, took the courtesy to walk me my stop.
Overall, I’ve learned many lessons this week. Which will always some how tie into design, work and moving towards my goals.
Enjoy the photos I have posted above in the slide!
Defining Personal Design Style
(Artwork above is created and illustrated by myself - Snarphblat Chronicles)
I went to CTN Animation Expo last weekend in LA. It was incredible to see so many talented artists. But it made feel somewhat inadequate in my field and also humbled. I started feeling down about myself, but then started to think “Hey, I have a career in this, must have a style that is specific to me, but what is it?”.
For about two months I have been trying to redesign my website. It’s been a contestant struggle for me. Asking questions to myself like “Who am I, what do I look like, what is my style?” It’s hard to represent yourself when you are so familiar.
After studying artists over the weekend, I noticed that each person had their own style. Something that fit them and they were very good at portraying. I realized that my struggle wasn’t that I didn’t have a style, it was that I was struggling to be so many.
I’ve been trying to be myself, instead of just being myself.
It always bothered me when people would say to me “I love your Style!” I would always appreciate their compliment, but deep inside I would ask myself “What is my style?”.
The past few days, I have started drawing again. Drawing my characters and objects that I enjoy. I started to study my own style. Realizing that this whole time, it’s been staring at me in the face. I went and looked at what I made last year. Again, the style was there. Complimentary color pallets, bright colors, cute characters with big eyes and textures. I realized I love simple shapes, with subtle details. I use texture and color to make it more complicated. A lot of my work is simple and clean. I have never analyzed myself before. But it’s been eye opening to study myself.
I went through a lot of my files last night, starting from the earliest to latest. I watched how my work progressed through the months and how my ideas shaped. But there were always small indicators of my style. Doing research on myself, has really helped me personally. In a way my style just comes naturally, as I am sure yours does. This process has really helped to evaluate myself and it will help to make my style even stronger.
It’s also good to be well rounded and do other types of styles. But even that can be easier, because you can just study that style and copy it. But to define your own, I believe is more of a challenge because you are so close to it. It’s like you have to mentally pull yourself away, detach yourself from your work and look at it with fresh eyes.
Clients hire you and me for our particular style. It’s the colors we use, the shapes we put together, and the way we present information, that is unique to each of us.
Take projects when your client expresses that they love your style and you can see yourself creating what they are requesting. it saves for less iterations, better communication and the client knows what to expect. Perfecting your design style will bring work and you will be recognizable to people in your network.
Style is like a niche, it’s important to create, recognize and iterate it. It’s also good to try new ones, but still incorporate yourself into it. Designing what you are naturally drawn to will make you happy and your quality of work will greatly improve.
After discovering that I have synesthesia, I have been more aware and open verbally about my everyday happenings that are normal to me. But, somehow none of my friends experience. I seem to also get the negative spectrum as well. I have partly felt that I wish I had kept it to myself, as the negative feedback has been daunting and at times hurtful. Sharing these stories with you are not easy, and it is indeed opening a very deep side of myself.
Today, I had my first ever chocolate chai at a favorite cafe in downtown SF.
Taking a sip of my chai, I exclaimed to my friend how delicious it was. Then after a few sips I blurted out without thinking “It tastes like a rainbow!”.
After seeing so many colors while sipping my chocolate chai, I was starting to wonder why a rainbow. Why all the colors? I was strange because even though chocolate to me is a bright green, that color was not appearing at all.
Upon leaving the coffee shop, I dug deeper in the taste. Filtering through rainbow colors schemes and something that would relate to the taste. I suddenly came upon a vague image of a cereal bowl with “rainbows” in it. As the image got clearer, it was an image of me eating Fruity Pebbles at my Grandmas house in New Jersey. There was my rainbow! I was amazed at how clear the image was, and instantly after realizing the color, I tasted what was really Fruity Pebbles. The chai, reminded me of the taste of Fruity Pebbles, but instead of my brain instantly relating it to a taste, it related it to a color. Which is very common with synesthesia.
In the book Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens, the author stated that syntesthetes may have a (example:) purple H or a blue O due to a color hue when they were growing up. Or a certain color to a taste. This is what happened to me today. I first saw the colors, and then was able to trace it to a source. I cannot do this with every color or taste. It was an odd way of searching for the information. I had to go to the back of my mind and filter anything with rainbow colors and that specific “taste”. I wish I could explain exactly how it worked, but it was also a large combination of memory as well.
I had a friend last week tell me a title of a book “Pillars of the Earth” on a camping trip during a hike. I instantly saw the text in white with a drop shadow on a red background, moving from right to left. In my minds eye words or sentences are read backwards. That to me, is perfectly normal and makes more sense than when I read left to right. Somehow I was able to remember the book title, see it later in the week and find the book! It’s like a movie clip that plays over and over again. All I have to do is find it.
foryourpiesonly
Anyone who knows me know that I am not one to poo-poo on ready-made products. There are times you want brownies/cookies/cake and instead of rushing around to get all the ingredients, letting the butter soften, measure and mix and stir and pour…it feels easier to pick it up in a box (especially if you’re in a hurry), I get that.
When I first started making pie, I bought all my crusts. I had a freezer full of ready-made Pillsbury. I was scared of making the real thing. I worried I would screw it up and it would be a nightmare. My fears were dissuaded after just a few tries and I encourage others to try making their own crusts too. However, if the only thing standing between you and making pie is the crust? Buy the crust and make the pie!
I’ve been eyeing this box of crust mix for a while now. I’ve been wondering how a flakey crust, usually created with pockets of delicious butter bits could come out of this “non-perishable/just add water" item.
Pouring it into my mixing bowl out of the box, it was already wet and able to clump together just a little. I poured the water in and mixed as it told me to. It had the smell of homemade play doh and about the same consistency. I started getting dubious.
The directions then said it was ready to roll out. Normally I chill my pie dough for an hour before I roll, but I was following directions this time.
Oh the rolling.
Oh my frustration levels.
This pie dough did not roll out well. It tore often, stuck to everything, and felt really tough. My filling went in and I rolled out the top crust. I actually ended up re-rolling both the top and bottom crusts twice to get it to look right.
I brushed the top of the crust with milk out of habit and baked the sucker. It didn’t look too hot once it came out of the oven.
Thankfully it did not taste like homemade play-dough. It tasted okay, though it definitely was not flaky.
My slice of advice? If you’re going to buy pre-made pie crust, go all the way and get yourself the pre-rolled kind. You’ll save yourself a lot of hassle & heartbreak.
Disclaimer: I purchased this mix with my own pennies. Betty Crocker did not ask me to do this review as this was done out of pure curiosity of what exactly came in those red boxes.