I’ve been on a posting hiatus- working and trying to figure my life out piece by piece. It’s been a very slow, very arduous journey, this past year, and I am back to relay some successes and failures to the army of no one who reads my blogs.
First of all, I promise (myself) to blog when I am sick of designing things for the day. May I always have something to say. The next step in my journey of designer-self discovery is to find my speakin’ voice because someday, I will speak at a TED conference.
The first great success over this past year is that I have solidified some goals in my design-life beyond the all ambiguous, “finding a real, FT job”, goal of duh.
(ONE)
I will work on my own time in my own space.
Some call this freelance, I call it sanity-preservation. When there’s tight timelines and much pressure, I find myself requiring a certain set of work environment factors to exist for optimal work output. And no, I am not able to sacrifice most of them because if I do, the work I expel would be of a diminished quality. Some people are cool with that, I am not. Why? Because I have these…standards that I hold myself, and (mostly) only myself to, (if I had interns, I would hold them to these standards as well), and if more than 3, but less than 5, not two, but more than one, of these standards are compromised thy work shalt not be released unless thine timeline doth approach. Really though, I despise adding mediocre work into a world marinating in it- and mediocrity scares me.
(TWO)
I’m going to stop sucking at full-service web design.
I’m workin’ on it. Over the course of the next few days, I’m going to be learning the ins and outs of making sweet websites. Adobe has released a new program for right-brain weirdos like, myself, that enables us to build websites like we’re designing in…hold your breath…ILLUSTRATOR! Not photoshop- suck it shoop’ nerds, illustrator’s UI rocks way harder than the shoop da whoop’s. I’ve started here…www.molliecoons.com…redesigning what once was young and flashy into something more refined and mature. Like, me compared to last year and now. Ironic!
(THREE)
Figure out WHO I AM as a designer and a human being.
It’s difficult as a 24 year old female caught up in the conundrum that IS modern society to figure out just who she is, balancing out who she wants to be with what she’s got genetically. It’s like juggling 45 hot plates, a salami and zimbabwe while riding a camel. That right there, is my identity crisis. Oh please someone help….
This is urgent on a variety of levels. 1) because my concept of “self” is innately intertwined with my outward expression though the stuff I design and the ideas I manage to contract. And 2) knowing without a doubt is the foundation for achieving goals and having greater, more fulfilling successes, I’m convinced by this through no one’s advice but via my own awkward thought process. Knowing exactly WHO I am as a person will allow me to do things like, strut down the sidewalk with booger hanging out of my nose, unembarrassed and proud. (this of course is an analogy. one thing to KNOW about ME is that my mind works in phrases attached to awkward notions- most humans refer to this as the Metaphor)
(FOUR)
Start looking the part.
Most clients have a predisposed notion in their minds as to what a Graphic Designer should look like, style and fashion wise. My clothing, sense of fashion and dedication to style doesn’t currently exist. I have the mentality of “function over form” AKA, if it’s comfy and moderately decent looking on then it gets an A+. I don’t look like a Graphic Designer. I look like a 24 year old Vermont hippie chick trying to look the part- I have no confidence in how I look and cannot even imagine how I come across to others. I do know that I lack a specific variety of refined, processional quirky that makes passerby go, Ah, that’s a creative professional.
All in all, the goals I’ve set out for myself over the next year are doable. It’s going to be another year of hard, grueling personal suffering and refinement, but it’ll be worth it in the end. Graphic Design is one of the only things in life I excel at naturally and I’m lucky enough to be passionate about it too.
Team win.
M
the next entry I will be outlining how exactly I will accomplish these 4 things, stay tuned.
