The Beginning

As a designer starting out...

there is nothing more difficult than finding yourself in your work; or for that matter - losing yourself in your work (in a good way). It's a journey that takes you to your highest highs and your lowest lows. You feel like you're in high school and lost all over again. There are things that will make you feel small and worthless as a designer - people refusing to pay you for work you've done, belittling your work, and even you being your own worst critic. 

But I've got good news! All those opinions, the people who tear you down, those who oppose your creativity - they're not worth a thing. They're fuel. They're the fire that burnishes your work. Use that fuel to grind your work to the best refinement you can, because your best piece will be your next one. If I've learned one thing from taking criticism, is that no one is harder on your own work than yourself. You can spend hours and years on a single piece and still hate it. You move on, start over, burn the old one. And from the ashes you see what you've worked so hard to accomplish.

Being reborn - this is a perpetual process. Every day we change and evolve our work, our style, our ambitions. Some days I find myself lost in this sea of design, wanting a grasp of air from the flood of typefaces and photos that plague us from every direction. I close my eyes, take many deep breaths, and envision where I want to be. Many a time, I envision a mountain peak, me standing right on it. I like to imagine a light rain. I see the clouds in the sky; I hear the wind passing by onto the next mountain top; I feel the solid earth underneath my bare feet. A foundation. I breathe in again, and I find myself at my desk, pencil in hand and blank paper in front of me, genuinely scared that what might flow from the pencil will not be the representation that I desire from my imagination. So I breathe in again, hold onto my confidence tight, and I let by brain flow mindlessly, finding any fine detail that I want.

In art, there are no mistakes. There is only learning.

By no means do I think that design is easy. If I like it, then I like it. I don't fight what I find aesthetically pleasing, instead, I try and find what feeling it evokes. All art is, is feeling expressed through color and shape, or lack thereof. What I find funny, is that our feelings and emotions can betray us.

One of my favorite books in the Bible is Ecclesiastes. It is written by Solomon, one of the wisest men to walk this planet. He had everything, and I mean everything. This man wrote, "All is vanity" probably more than any other human. Why would a man who has everything say that all is vanity? That is because he was wise enough to see that everything on this earth is a gift. Nothing is our own. What we do with what has been given to us, is up to us. Don't you dare do anything without purpose.

If you find that your purpose in life is to be a designer, I pray you don't take it lightly. We have much more influence than we realize. People tend to believe what they see. That means you do, too. What you show people matters. Show them your best. Not yourself at your best, but your best, even if it's absolute crap. Because ya know what? Your hard work will pay off. Ugh, that's such a cliche. I hate cliches. Know why? Because they're true. It's hard to accept the truth when you don't want to hear it. But hear it you must.

This is why I love listening to vinyl records. There's a similar process to almost every album you handle when you're about to throw it on the turn-table. I believe design is the same way. You hold the album in your hands, feeling the paper whether it be old or new, you sense the weight of the thing. Your eyes then observe the artwork displayed on front and back and you try and figure out what on earth this record might sound like based off of the artwork. You open the sleeve and pull out the record itself, and the round black disc strikes you with it's classic look and feel. You've read the songs on the back so you know what the first one is called, and in your mind you already anticipate a certain sound to come from it. Placing the record on the turn-table, you then check the volume and see that everything is in working order. Placing the needle with intention on the edge of the spinning record, you wait for the sound to wash over you as you watch it spin round and round. Design is the same process. You observe, feel, and act with intention. That intentionality is what makes your work great. It sets it into motion, and all you have to do is listen to the music. Beautiful, ain't it?

Lose yourself in your work. Swim in it. Dive deep in it. It's a reflection of yourself. That's why you're always nervous to show people your work, because you're scared that they won't like the reflection of you. I can't begin to tell you how much I love to get lost in design, not burdened by it. Being so into what you're doing that the world goes away, and it's just you and a piece of paper, or a camera, or whatever the heck you work with. What I love about artwork is that it takes a while - it's a process! In that process, you begin to find yourself. So start wherever you're at, and run with it.

Now that you know where to begin, work with intentionality - never do anything without purpose. It's simple really.

Simplicity. And Intentionality.

Regards,

Vinyl Creative