It has come to my attention that I tweak my portfolio’s aesthetics far more frequently than I update its actual content¹. It has also come to my attention that every single portfolio site on the entire internet uses Lightbox to display images². I discovered both of these things during a web design lesson I guest taught for an ex-professor’s Design Issues course when half of the class asked me to explain Lightbox implementation and I used my own portfolio as an example.

Don’t get me wrong, Lightbox is great, but it’s current ubiquity diminishes my portfolio’s uniqueness. And for a site that’s meant to win the hearts of clients, that really won’t do. So now what?

Well, first, the dilemmas.

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Boy I sure am bad at making commitments, huh? I get it, you’re not happy with me. Stumbling in after midnight, my keypad worn from impulse flings with Twitter. But I can change! Really, she doesn’t mean anyhing to me! I mean, come on, 140 characters? Sure, it’s great for instant gratification, but I’m ready for something more. I mean it this time. Look, I even made you a brand new theme so you can finally fit in with the rest of the pages here. So what do you say, will you take me back?

Thanks, Wordpress.

I knew we had something special.

I currently have no way of sharing the interactive Max/MSP/Jitter video based piece I worked on this weekend, so here is a nice wall of text that I wrote for a class not too long ago.

“How can I say this as nicely as possible?”

This is my job as a designer. To take shit and turn it into gold. Shit, you understand, it’s not even like I’m taking scrap metals and transmuting them into a precious metal. Nope, I just gallop right on by alchemy atop my twenty-foot-tall horse and bitch slap it with the Hand-of-Midas.

Have you read this before? Are you sure? Then you’re probably not one of us. This is what we read. This is what we write. Articulate, sophisticated, observant, and inspired. Verbose, obscure, referential, and patronizing. Whether we love ourselves or hate ourselves, we know we’re better than the luddite masses incapable of what we do. We wouldn’t even be in this field otherwise.

Incontrovertibly, our very livelihood depends on shooting down inferior thoughts and stepping up to replace them with our own masterful conceptions. So when our thought-out, neatly-packaged, highly-prized, and cleanly-presented ideas are challenged, it’s in our nature to fight for them tooth and nail. For most of us, this means defending our designs from the filthy, pedestrian hands of our clients. Those of us who either look down on journalism or feel that it’s beyond our grasp yet choose to write anyway, attempt to pre-empt any sort of contention by using big words and name-dropping as many esoteric references as possible. We also love our hyphens. Hyphens make you look smart.

But what about everyone else? As I write this, my classmates discuss the unfortunate run-ins they’ve had with bourgeoisie unfamiliar with the concept of Graphic Design™. Living, iron-clad proof of my point, conveniently observed from my ivory tower of truth and solitude. They are right, though. It’s a pain in the ass to explain this crap to philistines. God knows, I can’t even explain it to my parents.

I recently attended a family reunion. You know, the kind where you see forty aunts and uncles that can’t believe how much you’ve grown up. The kind where everyone wants to know what you’re doing in school now. Graphic Design. What the hell is that? Well, uncle Hector, it’s- and I’m already getting a blank stare here- well, I’ll probably use it to go into advertising. Do I plan on making a career out of advertising? Fuck no, but no one here is going to care enough to listen to what I think typography is or the niggling differences between art and design. I mean, honestly, besides us, who cares? And that’s it right there, I guess. No one else cares about the inner workings.

As far an outsider is concerned, our job is to make things look pretty. If he doesn’t like the way it looks, no amount of justification is going to change that. And who’s to say he’s wrong? What makes him the asshole? How about Susan Sontag, claiming that outside interpretation is a fate worse than death? Is she the asshole? Elliott Earls? He seems to think it’s not only cute when something is misread, but vital to it having any sort of life. Is he the asshole? And here I am, a wet-behind-the-ears college student writing about how wrong everybody is. So I’m clearly an asshole. Then who’s the real asshole? To be quite honest, we’re all assholes whether we like it or not.

By the way, we’re using italics, and hyphens now, so try to keep up.

Inevitably, someone is going to read this and be offended by it, and while that very thought warms my heart, that’s pretty pathetic. Even worse, however, is that someone- probably the type to actually use the word “bohemian” in a self-description- is going to agree with it too. The only people I respect are those who won’t care either way. Interpretation be damned, I’ve said my piece for my own reasons, and no one will ever know why for sure. This truth is my own, and though you may borrow it, it will never be yours. And that makes me an existential dick. Excuse me, asshole.

Comments are welcome in the space provided.

(available in pretty PDF form here)

My biggest problem in design is being unable to critique my own work.

Campus Compass series 1

Now, I’m sure there are plenty of issues with every single one of the above logos. I know this because I hate them. If someone else had done these and asked me what I thought of them, I could tell them precisely why they’re terrible. But because I’ve spent so much intimate time with them, I internally rationalize anything wrong with the overall picture. This is perilous. I’m hoping that by writing these things down, I’ll be able to break out of this habit.

I finally got my sustainable design group project blog online today, which is really what prompted me to get this one started. “reSACK” was just supposed to be a placeholder name until we thought of something better, but it was so well received during our initial presentation that it stuck. Oh well, I guess that means it’s time to start coming up with logos for it then.

reSACK logo idea 1

In other news, Doug and I got “design cock blocked” today when we discovered that the guy who hired us to redesign his site didn’t actually have permission to do so from the community he had licensed it from. We might be able to change the header slightly but it seems like that’s about it.

Buffalo Grapevine logo redesign 1

I still need to come up with something for Ben’s inanimate object political campaign. I have a fall-back idea involving a smear campaign, but for an assignment which was practically written for me, I don’t want to have to settle for a reserve idea. Hopefully I’ll manage to come up with something in the shower tomorrow. That’s where I get all of my best ideas, really.

I’ve decided to start a design blog in order to better organize and archive my thoughts. I am somewhat notoriously scatterbrained when it comes to recalling precisely how I’d previously managed to devise most of my design solutions, making replication a much more difficult task than it needs to be. Additionally, this should give me a better reference point for building and maintaining a portfolio than my current toss-five-billion-jpegs-in-a-folder method. Admittedly, I suppose I also just like to hear my own voice, so to speak.