letting go of the need to be the best. and earning human accolades.

holding on to making the best of my five loaves and two fish. my music and my design art  craft.

i am not about to give birth, not yet, not ever. (subject to change. but whole other topic)

it's been 9 months (give or take a few weeks) since uni, 9 months since i submitted (late) my final (haphazardly put together) folio.

about 6 months of which i spent in almost complete avoidance of my go-to "inspiration" sites eg. formfiftyfive, thedieline, ffffound, behance; conversations on design, design thinking, the future of design, design anything; patterns and trends; basically anything labeled (correctly or incorrectly) as "design".

i began my design (loose term) education knowing i could draw better than the average person. year one, in art & design foundation year, i confirmed my technical abilities, discovering the things i never knew my hands could do with pencils, fineliners, markers, pastels, brushes, inks, scalpels, etc. throughout the first half of my design education i was told that i possessed an innate "sense" of design. although i didn't (and probably don't fully) grasp what that abstract "sense" of design was, it padded my confidence.

and then a few weeks into my second year of Communication Design, my confidence just shattered. maybe my comfort bubble burst, maybe it was having a new circle of amazing design geniuses as friends, maybe it was the nature of the briefs (not underwear). but i just became increasingly aware of how immature, unpolished and shallow my design "sense" was. this sounds really stupid, but for the first time in my life, i was mediocre. i'd always been the smart kid. i didn't only excel in my studies, i had a "creative" side. i could draw and play multiple musical instruments. but here, in this dense population of creative designers, i wasn't anywhere near the best. by third year, even being mediocre was a struggle. i struggled with resolving form with function, function before form, the purpose of designing anything to be more important than how it looks, yet ultimately being graded on how it looks. i struggled between relying on my intuitive design "sense" and caring a WHOLE lot on what my classmates, my lecturers, my non-design friends, my family would think. while having designer friends was great, learning the design processes of others, the honest open feedback thrown around, understanding the pressures we were each going through, it was also stressful. in my inferiority, i compared. i judged my abilities against the abilities of my classmates and the entire design community's. which became, as you can expect, self destructive.

the final stretch was an incredibly trying time. i was mentally and emotionally drained. lost. thinking a huge part of my identity was found in my abilities, in losing faith in my abilities, i lost a sense of who i was. add to this a relationship that wasn't working out, learning about changes in the immigration laws and that it affected me directly big time, and the eventual breakup, you could say i was a wreck. to give a visual picture, i was like an injured runner crawling painfully slowly towards the finish line. my one goal was to graduate and be done with uni. and possibly design.

cutting the story short, i graduated (yey), spent a few months mulling over the visa application process, half heartedly browsed job ads, played lots of music, took lots of photos, worked in a cafe, decided not to apply for my visa, moved back home, started working at APR (family restaurant), doing bits and pieces of un-groundbreaking, mostly uncreative design, and now 9 months after uni, here i am.

when people ask me what i studied or what i do, i still answer with the rehearsed "i'm a designer. not architect, not fashion, not interior. communication. no, not mass comm. like, graphic. yes, i'm good with computers, yes i'm a photoshop goddess, but that's just a tool, a medium to the message. i design ways to communicate a message. like, if you have a message, say you make cupcakes and want more people to know, i can design a logo for your cupcakes, packaging for your cupcakes, a business card and flyers to hand out to people you meet, set up a website (or facebook page) for you, etc. no, i'm not in advertising per se. yes, i use computers. ..." but honestly, i don't even believe the definition of what i do, at least i don't believe it's what i want to do. i have since lost most belief in logo and visual identities. the strength of a brand lies mostly in what its customers/audience feel towards it, and while of some importance, imho it is miniscule in comparison to, e.g. the long lasting impact of customer service.

i've relinquished a good portion of my worry over how my design stands visually against what's being churned out in the design community and bookmarked, reblogged, linked, liked. and realised that first and foremost, my design is a communication tool, and if my audience responds better to ugly but familiar and easily understood material, that should be my style of choice. of course, i still subtly try to gently awaken their design "senses" with my carefully thought out layouts ("i don't know why but my mind is attracted to these images, and now my eye is moving towards this line of text, and flowing naturally to the next") and condition them to love perfect alignment and proper typography (though admittedly still a weak point of mine). i am still very nitpicky and a perfectionist in editing images, honing my quickmasking skills, but if flying dishes are what they need, then so be it. no visually neat (but mostly useless) infographics here.

i am at peace with what i am doing at this point in time. i am not worrying over producing New, Fresh, Exciting, Never done before, Droolworthy designs for the design community. i constantly remind myself that the design community is not my audience. and the message is king. even now, the design community and the roles of designers are evolving. chasing supposedly dream jobs in dream studios who get dream clients sometimes seems outdated. opportunities are everywhere. so many startups. who need communicators, designers. so many good ideas that need good communicators to reach their audience. more than ever before, i'm understanding how much more beyond a logo this is.

maybe with this better sense of clarity now i am ready to tackle more "creative" briefs. maybe i will, maybe i won't. the only thing i know for certain at the moment, is that if/when i do "creative design" next, i will not do it with the goal of it "looking good" but communicating the message. maybe that was all uni was trying to teach me. better late than never, i suppose.