Time to get a chip on my shoulder

My current strength right now is knowing that I have none. I am not comfortable with where I am as a designer, I'm not where I want to be. However I find it refreshing to think about. It's not that I am depressed with my work. I often really like some of the work that I have done and allow myself to be happy with it, but not for too long. Recently however I think I have been allowing myself to be too comfortable for too long and that's a bad thing, that is completely hampering to my improvement. I am too young and nowhere near a good enough designer to be comfortable. The lack of return calls from companies I have applied to snapped me out of this state of relaxation with my designs. I have to improve and I think it is actually healthy to look back at your own work and say "damn I could do better than that." This is the strongest strength I have as a designer right now.

Furthermore I think it is time to get competitive. Even though I used to disagree with that statement and would tell myself that I design for myself and because I enjoy it. I see nothing wrong now with being competitive and if anything it will fuel my fire to be better. That's not to say that I am going to hide techniques from classmates or steal and cheat from people. I am going to treat design like I do sports. My class is my team, I want us to be the best possible and I want us to be better than all other schools. When it comes to jobs if a company turns me down, that is fine I am the only one to blame for that, however I will want the place that hires me to be better than the companies who didn't give me a shot. I used to look at this mentality as shocking but in the sports world when a team cuts a player it isn't looked at as bad to want to be better and then beat the team that cut you when you are on a new one, in fact it is honorable.

With that said I need to get uncomfortable. It's time I got a chip on my shoulder.

Good Design

This is something that I think I will never truly have an answer for but something that I should always have an attempted answer for. Currently I think that good design beyond being emotive and impacting people at an initial level has to have the research built into the design. There are many designs that look awesome but how many take problems found in research and have problem solving features built into them. Currently I think a great design impacts emotionally and has problem solving features whether they are visible and recognizable or not. As always to I think the simpler the better.

Mixed Media

I think using multiple tools to create a design is something that can be very beneficial to creating a great looking design page. Furthermore I think it is something that can be beneficial in CAD using Alias for those crazy forms and SolidWorks to keep it simple. Overall using all the tools at your disposal as a designer can make things look better and cause their creation to be faster as well. Above are a few good examples of mixed media pages.

Work Ethic

Recently I have really been pondering the amount of work and time that goes into being in DAAP. Is it worth it? Am I really giving up having a life outside of DAAP during the week. Right now I'm not really sure. I think that I have to learn to moderate. Example I refuse to pull an all nighter this whole quarter unless there is completely emergency. I shouldn't have to do that. Really what it comes down to is I need to manage my time better. I need to organize and have a plan for how I am going about doing things. That is really how I am going to get the most work done, also I have to schedule time to have outside of DAAP. A career is very important to me however from my visits to nursing homes last quarter nobody was really giving me advice on how to get a job or an important way to earn money, it was all about living life. Even though many people think that it is crazy to listen to them they probably realize what is important after being through it all. Maybe I really won't know until I go through it all. Anyways I got a lot of work to do and I'll probably be up all night, peace out.

USB Final Designs 2

USB Final Designs 1

USB Sketches

USB Design

To start off this project we surveyed 113 people about USB drives. From what I felt was the most important results I made this research graphic.

Inspiring Designer

Honestly it is hard for me to say that I follow any designers. I realize that this sounds strange and that like any aspiring athlete I should look up to another athlete. However I have never really had one designer I am a huge fan of and it's not that I choose to do this I have just never done it. My inspiration more so comes from looking at design sites and checking out all different kinds of designs. I think I guess one designer that I do consistently look at and the only one who I can really name is Spencer Nugent who runs a site called sketch-a-day as well as idsketching. I think he does a really good job of using contour lines and through quick and simple design communicating the shapes exactly how they are. Furthermore I think he creates really interesting layouts to sketch pages. Check out his sites at

http://www.sketch-a-day.com

http://www.idsketching.com

Information Design

Definitely one of the hardest parts about showcasing a project is how to get across what you learned from your product research. Ultimately what you learned from your research is very important because all of the features and the design is general should revolve around a quality solution to the problems you found in your research. So the best way I think to do this is through an interesting and simply visual that really gets the point across of what you found to be the most important results of your research. Honestly who likes reading graphs and statistics, not many people, this is why you need an interesting graphic that coincides with your research and helps to further emphasize what you learned or what topic you researched. Here are a few good examples.

Here is a good link

http://www.colorful-data.net/

Communication through Film Trailers

I like to consider myself an avid movie fan. There are some great movies out there, however it doesn't always relate to a great trailer. To many times I see trailers predicated on what others are saying about the movie in newspapers and magazines. Other times you see trailers that just simply summarize the movie and leave the ending to question, trying to entice you to pay $9.50 just to find out what happens at the end. The point is there are a lot of bad movie trailers out there. To me what makes a good trailer is rather simple. It gives you a sense of what you are going to experience. The cinematography, emotions, and a hint to the plot line. It is really all about creating an emotive response in the viewer that is what they will experience when they go see the actual movie. I think I found a perfect example in a trailer for No Country for Old Men. It gives a great look into the dark and exciting action thriller that will ensue without destroying any of the story really. Furthermore it chooses great music and narrative clips from the movie itself not some hollywood narrator with a deep voice. Essentially it isn't showcasing anything other than the movie itself. Anyways here is the link enjoy.

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/miramax/nocountryforoldmen/

Choose the one that says TRAILER

New Portfolio

Hey check out the new portfolio. The link is on the top right of the page.

I am pretty excited with how this has turned out. My portfolios from the previous two years have I feel just been a struggle and a learning process to how to really create a portfolio. I think my problems previously have been simply how to showcase my projects. I felt that I had good designs but I wasn't communicating their features and the work that I put into them. This is one that I finally feel proud of. I think there are still some things I could work on, but hey the more portfolios I do the better they will get I guess.

Inspirational Brand

The inspirational brand I have chosen is Nixon. As a designer I can appreciate the extreme attention to detail that is put into each design. This goes behind engineering details and small design details. This is more about an understanding of the emotions evoked by a product and a full understanding of the customer. I think Nixon is a strongly emotional brand and not afraid of polarizing themselves. Personally I don't think that is a bad thing. You can't appeal to everybody so don't make your product dull by trying to, you will have greater success if people hate your product because in turn somebody will love it. They know who there consumers are and aren't afraid to alienate the rest of the market from them. Furthermore when they design a product like the 51-30 Gunmetal as pictured above they take it to heart. The emotion and feel of the product really relates to the name and I think I don't need to say anything about the marketing image. Nixon is simply a really cool company and if you hate them well they don't care.