diverse education experience

I was talking with someone recently about education and the virtues of having been to a University. I have as many qualms with the education system as the next person, but my University did instill in me a very fierce obsession with visual communication.

There is another reason, however, that I am grateful to have attended a University. I've often looked at fellow designers with envy upon finding that they have a degree from SCAD, Prat, The Portfolio Center, or any number of impressive applied arts schools. But then I remember.

At my University,
I took a class in sign language--taught from day one without a single spoken word.
I drummed and danced in an African music course.
I learned about the origins of humans in Anthropology.
I studied Kaftka in "Philosophy in Literature."
I went to see obscure plays and participated in a cultural dance exposition.
I spent a summer in London at my University's campus there, studying European design.

Ultimately my philosophy as a designer is that we must be exposed to a wide variety of things. We must have knowledge about cultures and subcultures. We must seek out visual stimulation of all sorts so that we are not recycling old ideas. We must read and travel and experience all that we can. What is there to pull out of your creative brain if you're not putting anything into it?

Anyone, regardless of what sort of school they went to, can achieve this. But something about the diversity of learning in a University helped get me on that track early in my career.

So...I think I'm due for a trip to a museum, or perhaps a class in origami, or to spend an evening helping to build a new local art center.

Creativity at work

The spark of creativity is fascinating. I spent last night reading quotes about creativity--people trying to understand where it comes from. Some quotes affirmed that creativity is about hiding your sources, or recycling ideas that have been forgotten, or taking old ideas and combining them into new ones, or the old moonlight-and-magic idea.

A friend sent this to me today. I'd love to know who stood there thinking, "hey, we should use our bodies to create the sounds of a thunderstorm", I'd love to have seen eyes light up at this fabulous idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjbpwlqp5Qw

Learning code

Something I've been very excited about lately is learning javascript. I've been comfortable with html for years and was won over by CSS about a year ago. CSS is that clever little sister sneering at HTML and saying, "Anything you can do, I can do better." And I love her for it.

But CSS can't do everything. Javascript is needed for a lot of the functionality I require (such as galleries and drop down menus). But I am a designer by nature, not a programmer, so I am taking the time to try and understand how programmers work with javascript. I am not shy about taking a script that has already been written to solve my problem--the fact is, they have all been written and they are intended for the public to use. But without being able to look at the javascript and understand what each line is for, I am only a regular person following a recipe. Instead I want to learn how to cook. I may never make every recipe from scratch but atleast I will understand the ingredients list.

So in that vain, I'm going to share some useful links I've found for my learning process.

http://www.tizag.com/
Wonderful size covering various web programming languages. Best tutorials I've found.

http://www.javafile.com/
A resource for prewritten javascripts.

http://dhtml-menu.com/
A great quick resource for making drop-down menus.

McBranding

Occasionally I take a local toll road, Atlanta's one and only. The past couple days, I've noticed the little arms that lift when you pay your toll wore orange sleeves bearing a clean, brief "McCafe" coffee advertisement. Today it stepped up a notch. As I approached the toll, I noticed a plane cruising overhead dragging a sign with a giant cup of coffee on it. At each toll stood a friendly individual in an orange apron. The toll receiver was blocked by a "Your Toll is paid by McCafe" sort of sign, and the friendly individual handed me a little die-cut card. One side was a couple of rather yummy looking iced coffee drinks, and the other a coupon for a free McDonalds coffee.



While this is an extremely expensive marketing technique, it was also very effective. The fact is, during tough times, people actually seem to buy more fast food. It's cheap! And as for this clever ploy, what works about it is that it's totally unique and it was an experience. It wasn't a loud commercial. It wasn't a still printed piece in a magazine or on a billboard. It wasn't even mixed in with junk mail. It was an experience during my day, and a pleasant one. One I'd tell mom about next time I call her. One I'd blog about and remember.

So what does this say for advertising? Perhaps we need to look more into supplementing all our basic techniques with experiences. Create events. Infiltrate events. Find a way to weave into people's every day lives. Appear like the character in Green Eggs and Ham, popping up as people go about their normal business. But make it experiential.

Kudos McDonalds, for putting money in people's mouths. I just wonder how you marketed to the folks with a cruise card.

building a portfolio

As I've recently been thrust back into job hunting, I'm currently sitting here in pile of reprints, a large format portfolio book, and all the little noodley slivers of paper I cut off of my pieces. For some reason I thought it would be fun to cut my own pieces rather than have the printer do it. I'm enjoying returning to the process of learning how to promote myself. I'm also finding the process to have presented a unique problem. I really love a lot of the work i've done-but i cannot have a 40-page portfolio! Somehow i need to choose between all these pieces that I'm genuinely proud of.

It's a good problem to have, I'm sure!

Thru You: Kutiman mixes youtube

Thru-You.com

This gives me chills. Intensely inspiring. This guy Kutiman--already a skilled musician unto himself--collected clips of people playing music in youtube. He chopped, looped, and mixed until he had something entirely new.

I've been making efforts to be part of group art shows lately. I enjoy the collaborative experience. Joy is always multiplied when it's shared. So things like this are very inspiring--especially, in this case, since the artists involved had no idea what they were contributing to.

The Muse

My life is so cram packed with creativity. What a fortunate being I am. I design for a living, pulling together text and image and color to create something that communicates and emotes and strikes a chord in the viewer. And for my hobbies of drawing and painting (which led to my career as a designer, as it did for many designers), I get the joy of smearing colored goo on a piece of stretched fabric that miraculously draws bright eyes and positive responses. I think of all of these skills as just that--skills. Learned. I do not think I was born with a special gift for drawing a likeness or arranging type and image. I think if anything is inborn, it was the attraction to creativity and joy I received from doing those things, which made me want to do them more, which made me good at them. I like the idea of a muse or a gift from some divine source, but because I could not draw well as a child or design well as a teenager, I think of them as skills which I worked to create.

However. Having read and loved the bestseller "Eat Pray Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert, I have an inclination to hang on her every word. As in this video, which I STRONGLY suggest you watch if you have a single drop of creative inclination in you. Or wish you did.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

(by the way--I use a lot of commas when I journal. Too many. Please excuse.)