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

On Not Having Agency Experience

So, my previous post,  regarding what I’ve been doing the past 2 months, mentioned that I would talk about the difficulties that I have been facing so far while being unemployed, including not being contacted by potential employers, even for a “thank you, but…” letter,  the term “Agency Experience”, and others.

Today, I will talk about the subject of “Agency Experience”, which is an excuse that I have recieved several times over the past 2 months while looking for work.

2 Months Later

Author’s Warning:

I have been without a steady job now for over a month, slowly creeping up on two, and I have been told that I should write about my experience of looking for work, and how frustrating it actually is. That being said, there will be a lot of venom in the following paragraphs, and most likely with some rude language, but nothing too bad.

They want me to write from my heart, and to be completely truthful to myself, and to you.

I have actually decided to write this in parts, this first part is about applying and not hearing back, a constant problem and issue for people who are unemployed.

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.

What the fuck

Got bored today while the Cox guy shut down the  cable, so I made this thing. Font is Xacto Knife.

Kinda wish I could get this printed.

Recent musings

Man, it has been a crazy week. Quick update, then look for a final post on the Nintendo DSI tomorrow.

Recently, I have been working on a proposal for my company to start and maintain a video campaign for one of our programs, which is going to segway me into this interesting thought “Do we need websites for everything?”

The program in question has the ability to have a massive write-up, but, in a very unorthodox move,  I have decided to sell the idea of creating a video, rather than (once again), putting video and photos on our basic site template, following all of our standards completely. Basically, acting completely out of my comfort zone, and going for something nuts.

Part of my reasoning is because of some of the people I have been introduced to, and have had the absolute pleasure of being around. One of them is a Designer/Production Director named Sunny Thaper, of  Fourty Agency, here in Phoenix. He is very eclectic, some would say that he is strange, but I think he’s pretty awesome. And he’s really into video, and looking at his video work, I started to think of what I could do, melding video into design. So, very cool.  If my proposal is accepted, I will be documenting the process here.

In other news, my website is stuck at 95% done. http://www.puuchuu.com looks great, it’s just getting the content put together, and some of these projects I haven’t  touched since I finished college, so it really is mind blowing. The worst part is looking at projects I was second guessing myself over, taking 5 minutes, and fixing it so that the project is more attractive.

Why oh why couldn’t that have happened 2 years ago?

I wonder to myself. Oh well. Also, some of the files have not transferred fonts over, etc, etc, so really, this gives me a chance to go back and tighten up some of my best student designs, so that I can proudly display them with newer works.

Another thing is the conclusion to my first blog series about the design and UI of the Nintendo DSI. My first two posts were dedicated to what I thought were problems with the system, and now, for my final post, I will write about the good parts of it. I am absolutely in love with their browser, despite some flash/java issues. So that will be handled tomorrow.

And lastly, a reflection on this whole blogging nonsense. I love it. I like the opportunity to share my thoughts with whomever discovers this blog, via twitter, facebook, friends, or random searches, I love all of it, and I would love to see some input on what is being written and what you would like to see me write, so please, I encourage you to comment.

Thanks a ton.

-Randy

In regards to CSS of the site…

It seems that unless I decide to go with the “putting wordpress on my own server” dealie, I would have to pay $15 a year to use my own css.

Yeah, not going to happen.

So instead, I will create a different header image each week, as 1) being a creative output and 2) keeping at least something dynamic and interesting until I decide that changing to my own server is a good idea.

Gotta finish my personal site first, also, I have an NPO project coming up for the Palms Foundation, an organization for Adult Disabilities. I will be doing some promotional work for them, and I have taken it upon myself to create a better logo for them. I will document the process for you, the reader. Isn’t that great?

Alright, out. Goodnight, internet.