I picked up a book from the work bookshelf on Friday called “How Proust Can Change Your Life” by Alain de Botton. Despite having never read Proust, I looked forward to getting on the 2/3 everyday to read it. I’m not really sure if it’s a self-help book. I’d describe it as a cynical intellectuals guide to not being depressed. The only thing is Proust, although an intellectual, seemed to have a pampered and limited life that kept him sheltered, preserving a child’s naive perspective of the world. This is not a bad thing in itself, but it limits how useful this book might be in the modern, real world, if you were to take it seriously.

Anyways, I think every designer should read it. His cynical view of the world is similar to the view that many designers, artists and writers have, being the ones who understand how lemming-ish people are. As a designer, I search for a truth, yet work within a system of no truths, where things happen by the unwritten rules of people, which are incomplete b&w photo-copies based not on inner-human thoughts such as logic or goodness, but on the outward facing instincts of desire and competition.

There are a few sections of note:
page 4 - Proust’s response to a question about the world ending
page 25 - Marquis de Lau Phenomenon
page 36 - The dangers of reduction (simplifying a message without taking the meaning away)
page 65 - noticing things you don’t normally notice
page 86 - Using the right representations
page 117 - Honesty
page 139 - Painters and seeing
page 144* - I put a star on this one because this is the main role of a designer, to turn recollection into appreciation
page 178 - Independence

Go get the book today!

The other day on the B train, a thought popped into my head after reading over a hipster wall street worker, and seeing an article in the New York Times about some art exhibition going on in one of the millions of galleries in the city. The accompanying image was bold, reminding me of design work. Then on some trendy girl’s purse, there were beautiful and elaborate patterns and characters in a lush variety of colors.

As a graphic designer, I think it’s always been easy to think ethnocentrically. From the perspective of someone creating the visuals, you tend to focus the inputs coming in and what you produced from them. It’s difficult to step away and perhaps look at this from the edge of the circle, from the outside-in, and the inside-out.

Working in the real world for a little bit now, I have a bit more understanding of how design fits. What differentiates art and design isn’t the process, the purpose, the inspiration, money, your emotions, the function, the use, the audience, the outcome, or even what you think. What determines whether something is art or whether it is design is power.

This is what I wrote on the subway train, unedited:

Both are a representation of something (feelings, emotion, ideas, thoughts, things, etc). In the pure essence, as forms of communication, there is both good and bad art as there is good and bad design. Goodness or badness at what it is “supposed to do” doesn’t determine what it is. Taking it out of a producer (artist or designer)- focused context, it is not about “the process” if you are talking about it with the rest of the world; it is about power. However, it is not about this process, the consequences, the individual. It is not about the intentions, whether they are intentional or not. Simply, the question is, when someone connects with the work, be it words, pictures, tools or sound, does the power transfer to the buyer/viewer or does it remain with the creator (does the controller of the power remain with the artist/designer (Picasso) or does the power now lie in the consumer (girl’s purse). In music: pop stars may be corporate machines, but they are still artists - that is, until their brand overpowers the music and others’ opinions of a person owning the music becomes more powerful than the music is valued in itself: the medium is the massage.

I’m not sure if all of that makes sense, but I think: It doesn’t seem to matter what you call yourself. Most people are wrong most of the time anyways, and certainly about something they can’t even observe (themselves). The determining factor is whether the consumer of your piece takes the power from you (in a societal sense/status-wise/being cool… whatever) or whether you provide the power to the work (if you were Mr. Versace (artist) versus if you were one of his hired design goons (designer)). Note this has nothing to do with originality but with branding and reputation.

This casts a dark light on design, but I think it is neither positive or negative. Or if it’s negative, being an artist is no more noble.

For an animation for the school project for pop, I cut out a print out of Tex Grubb’s drawings, photographed them, and then animated them in After Effects. Each piece is a separate element, including the shadows, which are linked so they move together with each piece. The final animation is at the resolution of the original photo, which was a challenge but ultra cool at the same time.

A little no-music, no-cuts Quicktime movie after the jump. You’ll notice the bottom parts of the flower disappearing because the camera cuts to just the top part of the flower.

(more…)

After a whirlwind job search that took me to the hippie, laid-back streets of San Francisco and everything-happening-all-at-onceness of New York, I’ve finally arrived home (temporarily) in the lively streets of the upper Upper East Side (98th and Madison, to be exact). I’ve decided on starting my career out of Portfolio Center at Frog Design, in their New York office. In the end, it was a tough decision, but I’m sure this is what’s right for me. It was the company that best matched my background, my skills and my goal of humanizing technology through design; and it’s somewhere I can make a difference and contribute in a meaningful way.

Frog is a “strategic-creative consultancy,” which I’m not sure what that means exactly yet. But I knew it was a great place as soon as I saw the green walls. Actually, I knew it was a great place before that when I talked to Okay Dave W. about it, but I knew for sure after interviewing and learning what the company, and its people, are about. In addition to general awesomeness, I sensed a quiet confidence exuding from the people I saw and talked to; this is in no doubt related to a line from their mission statement about living and working fearlessly. Design based on core human values: I start next week and am super-excited.

Needless to say, this is a great city to be in. And, after a brief breaking-in period of a few days where i didn’t know what I got myself into, I’m happy to be one of the ATP in the proverbial mitochondria. If you’ve never seen it, think about rush hour traffic jams, but with crowds of people instead of cars. It’s really amazing.

I’m looking for a permanent place now, so as soon as I find one, you’re all invited up.

Peace.

Tomorrow morning, I’ll be driving up I-85 for the last time, on my way to Maryland to see friends and family for the holidays. Goodbye traffic, goodbye peachtrees, goodbye “y’all,” “might could” and “fixin,” goodbye Republicans, goodbye segregation, goodbye church on every corner, goodbye Chick Filet, goodbye Buckhead, goodbye Coke, goodbye Ludacris, goodbye Waffle House, goodbye Portfolio Center, goodbye Georgia, sweet Georgia.

The past two years have been amazing. Time has flown by, and looking back, I can’t believe how much I’ve grown during my time in Atlanta. I’ve learned to find my voice. I’ve learned how I can draw for a living. I’ve learned to take what I learned in business school and actually do it. I’ve learned what’s real. And the most important thing I’ve learned is how to keep growing, both as a designer and as a person. That was school’s real value for me.

I am now almost a New Yorker (I just have to find a place to live). I even left the Atlanta, GA network on Facebook and joined the New York, NY network. In January I’ll be starting at Frog Design, looking forward to whatever comes my way—because (and I feel this now more than I ever have)—design is the best job in the world. As a designer friend of mine just told me, “I can’t believe we get paid for this!”

Okay, so I decided anything on the web is better than nothing on the web so I’ve updated http://www.onegreatmonkey.com/ and actually put some of my work up there.

I won’t be completing my portfolio website anytime soon,
but here is a diagram I made regarding design considerations: