Ok, so I'm doing a friend a favor for her marketing class. They are doing a iPod/Cafe kind of thing, and I'm doing sketches, check it. Bottom couple icons. Those look like freeking coffee pots don't they! The initials are DC. Download-Cafe. ;|...



Brilliant, I know...

I just have to sell her on it.

Design.

I've been asked to design things for the past 8 years. Hypothetical things. Things that have no real value or meaning. As I just now finished my last class, and contemplate more hypothetical projects to flesh out my 'book', because I have LESS than 7 pieces I want to see the light of day. With the potential for a first 'real' interview in less than 2 weeks, I believe I may have discovered WHY it's so difficult *for me* to do anthing of value. Well, at least 2 reasons. Take your pick.

1. I'm a no-talent hack.

or

2. Truly great design needs a true purpose. Because I've layed out the groundwork for myself before, and because deep down I KNOW it's not real. I have no team for feedback, ideas to bounce off of. I fail. The few times I have worked in a team setting, the results had potential for greatness.

Over and over. Just today, I set out to do a project this weekend. A Craft Magazine. You know, do something I had little interest in. I went to B&N and sat down with a stack of magazines and dictionaries to pull some inspiration up from somewhere. Nothing.But then, that's how it's always been. Then, I began thinking, do I, an inexperienced, not even 'junior' designer yet, think I can come up with the equivalent of what *most likely* goes through an enormous development cycle (a magazine, at least initially).

So, it stands here. How do you build your 'book' up if you have no idea what you're doing? Not that i don't know what I'm doing at all, it's just that I've made a concious effort throughout my educational career to be genre-free, because that's what I thought a good designer should be. Let the work/client/needs dictate. I feel I'm at an impass. Hopefully, if I get a design job, the truth will reveal itself, for better or worse.

No need, no inspiration i guess.

Responses welcome...

Ha. I love monster movies.

I just finished watching the Courtney Cox film November. It was Ok. Wouldn't buy it, really, I don't know if it would make a good rent. For no other reason than I felt indifferent about the characters at the end. The 'twist' ending could hardly be a twist, given it was in the artsy psychological dramathriller genre, it should have had a stronger ending. Prove me wrong if you like. Pi did it much better.

I just updated my interest's with a link to a metropolis article about type, unbeknownst to me it features blurb's from Tobias and Adam McIver! Go figure!

All is well in the planning department. I have my two shades of red, tinted primer, seven of my eight brackets and near final to-scale blueprint for my wall. After work this evening I drove up to loveland to pick up my polished stainless letters at Mainstream Waterjet.

I could feel my typosenses tingling as he took me to see it. I guess typosense has two halves, positive and negative. As I approached, the 6" UC roman look great, and the italic, MY italic, was none other than PC system font.

?

Ever so politely asked him what happened. He seemed a bit confused. Then I told him, after forgetting momentarily I wasn't talking to a designer, that it wasn't what I sent him. They had some problems with the CAD conversion, and after just found ' the closest thing' it was some old style italic. Which, if you've even briefly seen my italic, it looks nothing like an old style italic. Then I explain that what he changed 'was' my project. Woops.

So we went into his office and opened the CAD outlines. Completely wonky. The conversion had given the string ' new type by eric west ' a total of 36,000 points on the line, and looked like it had been molested by a forklift. It was nasty.

As I was figuring out how to resolve the issue, he just sits there. I ask him if the software that vectorizes bitmaps had a manual so I could look up what kind of files we could try to resolve it. He didn't. Didn't just seem like he cared a whole lot.

Thank God i havn't paid them yet. Minimum order is $100, if we can't resolve it, I'll giv'em $50 for the 'VERTICE' part (or nothing if they won't take less) , and truncate my title, OR if David Knight knows of anywhere that can do it right.

Lesson for today is... Find somewhere that has experience with non-industrial app's. ( If you want more than primitive geometry produced)

Peace