Leave The Nest

The internet is such a wonderful thing. Not only can you find essentially any information within a few seconds, but you can also meet people from all over the country and world that you would not other wise meet. In chapter 7 of "Steal Like An Artist", Kleon states that most of his peers he connected with online and also that if you feel like you are stuck where you physically are, you can go to the internet and find people to connect with. To an extent, this a good solution for those who have a hard time fitting in with the people around them, but I feel meeting a person face to face develops a stronger bond and also gives you the social interaction of doing something together that you would otherwise not be able to do.

In the second half of the chapter, Kleon discusses how important it is to leave home at some point, because one you get too comfortable being in an area, then your brain doesn't work too hard because you know what to expect in your daily routine. Once you have the opportunity to leave home, then not only are you in a new place and can experience new things, but you can also meet interesting people. The more different kinds of people you meet, the more knowledge you will get from their experiences in life. It may be uncomfortable and scary being in a new place by yourself, but once you get settled, it is well worth the experience, especially for your creative process. For me personally, I feel like I have met many interesting people that I would not otherwise have met during my time at Parkland. Now that graduation is just around the corner, the next place to meet new and interesting people would be at my future job because there are always interesting people at design firms. Maybe I should pick up a new hobby as well. We'll see....



Steering away from Kleon's book for a bit, back in my fourth post, I posted a picture of 10 books that I would want to read at some point. Fortunately, I did have the opportunity to read one of them and that is "Logo Design That Works: Secrets for Successful Logo Designs" by Lisa Silver.

It's a short book, but I personally found it very useful when trying to come up with a logo design for a class project. Some other logos books I have seen just bombard you with hundreds of logos, one right after the other, without any information on it other than what company it's for. This book is different because with the logos it features, it has descriptions of the creative process the designer went through to get to the final result as well as the meaning behind designing it in a specific way. There are also a few logos where they show the different stages of sketches that the designer went through. Just being able to read what the designer was thinking allowed me to not only learn about what went into it, but most importantly it showed me how I should go about thinking of a logo design. Some of the logos look a bit dated, but again, the important thing is to understand the thought process that went behind designing them. That knowledge is invaluable because now I can apply it to my future projects. In fact, I enjoyed this book so much that I actually checked out the full book that not only contained the logos, but also magazine layouts, brochure designs, and identity systems titled "Graphic Design that Works". 

Here is a glimpse of what's inside the logo section:

This is what a typical page looks like. It lists the client, creative director, designer, firm, process description, and what makes the logo work. 

Here is one of the rough draft examples. It's nice to see that professionals go through the same process as us in terms of constantly revising until they have what works. It's also fortunate that they included the sketches that were done.

Here is one of their logo evolution examples. It's interesting seeing the change of identity that went on throughout time, with each reflecting the era that it was used in. 

Overall, I highly recommend the logo book for people who fine themselves stuck on designing logos. It's very useful and enlightening reading what went on "backstage" and it allows you to go into the designer's head. It's not a long book with only a couple paragraphs on each page, so it won't take up too much time to go through the whole thing. 

Sharing Your Thoughts

When my graphic design class has the opportunity to speak with a professional, a consistent question that comes up is how to get your name out there so people can find you? The first thing that Kleon discusses in chapter 6 of "Steal Like An Artist" is to enjoy being obscure while you can. When you first start out in the real world, chances are your name won't be known (at least not yet). Take that time when there are no expectations of you and experiment with creating things or create things that you enjoy. Once your name does become more well-known, then there is a standard you must uphold with your designs and you must design things that not only you like, but most importantly that your client likes. It won't just about your ideas and thoughts so enjoy the time of being unknown.

Just because being unknown has its benefits, you should always network by talking to people and now a days, have an online presence so your work can be accessible to pretty much anyone in the world. Your online presence doesn't have to just be about your designs, but can also be about your daily thoughts and philosophies. It's important to wonder about the things around you and allow other people to wonder with you. That's how you get a following of people who care about what you think, and therefore will care about your work. Creating a blog is a standard now, and it really keeps you engaged because you must make posts consistently and each one you create must be as good, if not better, than your last post since the latest post will be the first one seen by people. That being said, I should try to do blog posts consistently. I'm thinking about starting a new blog where I post a variety of content, not only my works, but also any thoughts I might have or interesting thins that occur in my life. I want to come up with a good name and url for it, so I need to incubate this for a while.

Productive Procrastination

Everyone procrastinates at some point in their lives. I, for one, am the queen of procrastination and have been for some time now. I have been trying to get better at not doing it, but you know what they say, old habits die hard. I probably procrastinate on not procrastinating to be honest. In the 5th chapter of "Steal Like and Artist", Kleon addresses this and encourages productive procrastination. If you are going to procrastinate on something, it might as well be something worth while like playing music, or going on a walk, or reading, but it has to be something that you truly enjoy doing. Not only will it make you happy doing it, but it will also benefit your actual job because it gives you a break from thinking in just one manner. Having and maintaining a hobby is important for productive procrastination because it is part of who you are and what makes you whole.

This is especially important for designers because we are always in constant need of inspiration. The more experiences we have and the more we do that is outside of design, the more ideas we will have. Sometimes, it's also nice to just sit around and do nothing. There is nothing wrong with that as long as you're not doing it all the time. I probably do it a bit more than I should. Every time I say that I'm not doing anything, 95% of the time that means I am on the internet either watching videos, reading random articles, checking the news, or playing games.

As for hobbies, I have a few, such as ballroom dancing, playing tennis, and playing video games, but my favorite one would probably have to be cooking. I love to cook all sorts of things, American food, Chinese food, and sweets. I even bought a fancy ice cream maker just so I can make ice cream from scratch (three words: nutella ice cream). There is something very relaxing and satisfying to me about getting all these ingredients that are not anything special by themselves and turning them into something delicious (most of the time, lol). It's also fun sharing them with other people and is a great way to bring people together and have a good time, as long as I don't have to wash the dishes afterwards. I was going to bake banana bread today anyways because I had some overly ripe bananas that needed to be used soon, so it was perfect timing with reading this chapter.

Behold! the ingredients to embark upon this baking adventure. 

Now it's ready for the oven...

It finally finished baking! This was my first time using whole wheat flour, so I hope it comes out tasting ok and the texture isn't too weird.