Phoenix Design Week

I’ve been asked to write something about Phoenix Design Week, and the reason why I have taken forever is because I didn’t know what to say about it.

I know now. Phoenix Design Week has helped me become a better designer, by showing me a community of talented people, who have become great colleagues, and some have become friends, and has helped me reconnect to what I really loved about design.

When I was done with college, I was mentally drained, so I took a sabbatical from performing design work. That lasted a few months, and I had some small time jobs, working with print, and learning about the industry, and then I got my job at U-Haul, performing web design on a national scale. While the jobs were good, in some aspects, it wasn’t mentally stimulating. I had lost that passion that I had throughout school.
Then came a fateful night, I had heard about the AIGA showing off the Milton Glaser movie at ASU, and I had found out some people with a thing called “Phoenix Design Week” were going. So I decided to climb out of my shell and go. I met Mark Dudlik, Sunny Thaper, and Andrew Courdek, and had an amazing night, filled with sarcasm, hilarity, beer drinking, and most importantly, I found people who were passionate about design.
Needless to say, I signed up to help with PHXDW, and soon found myself elevated from being part of the volunteer crew to a member of the Promotions team, coming up with promotion ideas, drinking coffee, and taking on the role of Poster Czar, overseeing over 120 entries to the Phoenix Design Week Poster Contest, which has been deemed as a smash success for the movement.
And it was in that Poster Contest that I regained my passion, and spent 5 days constructing, shooting, and assembling my poster.

Phoenix Design Week Submission "Phoenix Design is Natural"

Unlike the majority of the work that was created for the poster contest, mine utilized the elements around my home. A specific type of stone, twigs, and hard desert grass all came together, and building it, and seeing the results was cathartic. It made me feel alive, and I wanted to design again, and I mean actually design, not just layout, but create functional art.

So, in that respect, Phoenix Design Week has re-awakened my desire to design and by extension, my soul. Since then, I have created an identity for myself, redid my portfolio, and I am pursuing some very exciting prospects for work.

Also, being Interviewed by the Arizona AIGA, Spicywebdesigners.com, and being showcased at Phoenix Design Week helps.

Things are looking brighter. And if you’re in Arizona, and a designer, and if you have no plans this weekend, please, I urge you to go. You will meet an amazing group of people, and if you’re lucky, like me, you’ll be inspired. http://phxdw.com/register

What I want to do before the end of the year.

So, tonight, I went out to Wet Paint, a great art store over in Tempe, and finished up with a beer and pasty and the Cornish Pasty Company, and I was with my friend Brandon.

Brandon is an interesting sort of person. I’ve known him since I was roughly 14, and we’ve pretty much stuck together our entire lives. Recently, he entered a “job transition”, that will hopefully be all cleared up by August 10th, but in order to pass the time, he has decided to embrace his artistic side, which I find completely awesome.

So he has a list of projects, some of which he has invited me to come work on, these include:

• painting a 4′x6′ panel
• him getting a car for under $500, and us doing graffiti on it
• taking the same car and either glossing it super white for White board markers, or
• (better) painting the car with chalkboard paint

All of these are incredible creative, and awesome. So I started to think to myself ” I have a ton of crazy ideas, why not get these down?”, so here’s my list.

• Re-do a font I created in college, add ligatures, change the name, and release it to the League of Moveable Type, an organization that seeks Open-Source fonts.
• Join the board of AIGA Arizona. I feel that joining the board will give me some awesome connections, and the ability to share creativity in a greater arena.
• Try to do at least 1 creative project for myself a week. I started this week with that “What The Fuck” poster I made earlier. I figure, I can do something like this every week.
• Screen Print. First thing, the “What The Fuck” design, because I think it would look totally rad.
• Customize more toys, including a big Munny. I’ve got three 4″ Munny’s done, and I think I can move onto a larger one.
• See what I can do with Augmented Reality. The concepts and what people do with it simply astound me.

And that’s it for now. I’m sure there’s more, but for now, that’s good.

Later.