Once upon a Mistake
There’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance, and my professional arrogance had needed to be knocked down. Let me tell you the story of my humiliation. It’ll be fun.
There’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance, and my professional arrogance had needed to be knocked down. Let me tell you the story of my humiliation. It’ll be fun.
I understand, now, why people say it’s hard to stop getting tattoos once you start. Because that’s what I felt while I was making a surreal desert scene using photomanipulation, using only images freely available under a Creative Commons licence at Pixabay.com. I’ll just add one more thing, I...
I design ways of communicating a message visually, for tangible outputs. That’s my job, summarily. It so happens that, while a contractor, I’ve usually done this with logos. Branding a company (or re-branding it) brings its own kind of satisfaction. The company’s not mine, but like its owners and...
Imagine what you would do if you woke up one day and couldn’t read. Letters on shop signs were nonsense to you. The words of your favourite novel were inane markings, no more rational than scratches on a fence. I didn’t have to imagine it. And that’s how my intrigue...
Freelancers work in isolation. I’m not in a studio, or an office block. I’m not rubbing shoulders with other designers. There’s just me. Usually, I love it that way. It’s comfortable. But it does leave me short-resourced — I need to ‘network’ to find collaborators with complementary skills, like...
In this digital age, getting a real tangible parcel is exciting. Usually. I’m sure I would have been excited to get my nondescript brown box, if I hadn’t been distracted writing an email at the time its presence was announced. Husband came to stand next to my desk, holding...
It started when I saw a shiny picture of a Newton’s Cradle, and all thoughts of finishing the day with a hot drink and going to bed early got shunted aside by my photo-manipulation drive kicking in. Initially, I’d just wanted to superimpose planetary appearances onto the balls. I’d...
I was almost ready to be ready. It’s how most people are, when going into business for themselves, I’m told. We convince ourselves that we’ll be confident and ready to start after reading just one more advisory article, one more blog post, one more case study. It all amounts...
Would you touch a magazine that was printed with HIV+ blood? A book printed in blood sounds like the purview of the macabre. But it can also be a pretty amazing design project, and the HIV+ element naturally generated a big response. I’m late to the party in discovering...
Humiliation is a mandatory part of the creative process. At least I hope it is, because that’s how it plays out for me with just about every graphic design project. The creative process is a quaint and classic dance. Steps are as follows. (I’ve got logo design in mind...
The proverbial ‘they’ say that the first step to solving a problem is acknowledging you have one. I don’t even know if I’ve made that first step, because I can’t decide whether this thing is a problem or a gift. If I figure out a way to make it...
My four-year-old was sketching some unidentifiable streaks on his Dry-Erase board. I couldn’t make out any particular shape, but he looked intent. “What’s that?” I asked. “What are you drawing?” “Um, I don’t know,” Timmy said, unperturbed. He continued to add another shape. “Are you finding out as you...
I feel like an escaped city dog. Like an adolescent who was given more independence than she was ready for, and is now dizzy with the possibilities, overwhelmed with the options, and frustrated with the constraints of reality that don’t enable her to do it all. It started off...
It’s been a busy couple of weeks! We’ve had two instalments of visitors from Australia, so any established routine with Timmy (not that there was a great deal to claim in the first place) was put aside in favour of taking the opportunity to do the Tour Guide thing....
It’s not just toddlers and middle-aged men who get excited at shiny new toys. Our new camera arrived yesterday — a Panasonic Lumix TZ20 — and I’m so pleased with it! A cynic would say it’s too early to make that call, since I haven’t tried its video function yet,...
The reason my bundle of baby is often so grumpy is because he has a tough moonlighting job. You’d be grumpy too if you’d been defending galaxies from dastardly hostiles all night, then came home to someone insisting you hoist your legs up so they can get a nappy...
Every now and then I get hit with a nostalgic mourning for a nicety of the past. If I’m lucky, it’s a fond remembrance of a pleasant triviality — like the Pumpkin and Kumara Stack with pesto that used to be served at Breakers restaurant. (I’m of the opinion...
The proverbial ‘They’ say that honesty’s the best policy. Whoever ‘They’ are, I doubt they work in business marketing. Because, after all, it would be damaging to business if the customers knew Director Bob has his financial plan sketched on a crumpled napkin, or that he dances naked and...
I feel just a little bit shafted. I suppose what happened was, strictly speaking, above board. It was legal. But it feels exploitative, too. I had done some freelance work for Joe Bloggs of Company A. Company A then went into liquidation, so the amount of my last invoice...
