Re-Directing you to my new blog

Hi,

I have a new blog where I am posting my thoughts, ideas, musings and others. Please take a look at Temperamental Muses and tell me what you think! Hope to see you there!

 

What Thanksgiving is not

Today is Thanksgiving Day, a national holiday intended and dedicated to offer thanks to God for the bounty of the year. Though, for many it is a day to gather with family and friends to offer thanks to each other and plainly just say thanks. To me, is just another day.

Let me explain. If you have read my blog before or know me, you probably know then that I am from Puerto Rico. When I was a child, Thanksgiving was not a big deal to us. At least not to my family. What I remember most it was the day after when we planted a tree and celebrate El Día del Árbol or the Tree Day. I remember going to school and we would have some sort of gathering and plant a tree. However, perhaps my memory fades since while doing a search on Google it came up with different dates for it. I don’t have memories at all of making a turkey, eating sweet potatoes, cranberry sauces, or anything like that. If something was going to be eaten in Puerto Rico, it would be lechón asado (rosated pork) con arroz con gandules (rice with pigeon peas). In short, my attachment to turkey and any food that might be considered traditional for this day, is very minimal.

If we need a day to say thanks to God or each other, we have a immense deficit in gratefulness.

 

 

How working as a housekeper helped me be a better designer

On November 15, 2010 Syed Balkhi founder of WordPress beginner tweeted the following:

A half done project is just as good as an incomplete project.

This simple quote reminded me of a job I held many years ago as a housekeeper for a well-known hotel chain. I relocated to the Continental United States in 1993. I am born and raised in Puerto Rico, known as the enchanted island in the Caribbean. I learned English as my second language in school, fluently spoke it when I was a child, graduated with honors from High School, graduated with a BA in Secondary Art Education from the University of Puerto Rico, and taught for 5 years at a Jr. High School in Carolina, PR. However, when I arrived to Ames, IA I discovered I could not work as a teacher because I needed the state’s certification. I had to submit all types of paper work and possibly return to school to take classes they considered I was missing in my education. I got discouraged by the whole process and decided to try my luck doing something else.

Looking for jobs doing something else was as hard as trying to be a teacher in Iowa. I was new in town—though I was not sure they could tell I was new— and applied to all the stores at the local shopping mall, the university bookstore, its competitor, and others with no luck. I also went to the University’s job board and my experience with them was no better— though I was able to work as a Spanish tutor for several years.

Lastly I ended up looking for a job as a housekeeper at a well-known hotel chain. To my surprise I was hired! I would start right away cleaning hotel rooms, taking out the trash, dusting, cleaning toilets, sinks, making beds, cleaning windows, mattresses, and others. I would have a week worth of training and free lunch in the hotel’s kitchen. No uniforms were required and the schedule was very flexible— though if you wanted to get paid a decent amount you would work as much as you could. In a nutshell, believe or not I had a blast!

…how can a teacher be a housekeeper?

 

SECAC 2010 Southeastern College Art Conference

SECAC-MACAA Richmond, VA
October 21-24, 2010

This year SECAC was held in Richmond, VA in partnership with Mid-America College Art Association hosted by the School of Visual Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University. I had proposed a panel titled Research and Design: A match made in Heaven or Hell and it got accepted. I had very interesting paper proposals from which I chose 5 plus mine. Ambitious no? I had thought of not presenting my paper in favor of the applicants. However, one of the panelists had to decline participation thus, giving me a chance to present my paper. I had thought about this panel and paper since I started teaching the Capstone class at Harrington College in 2009.

Our panel had very interesting topics ranging from methodologies on how to teach and embed research in the design process, simple methodical analogies and parallels between the client-designer relationship and others. One paper in particular, Experience Design Models— a Compass for Integrating Methodology, Research and Criteria by Troy Abel from Virginia Tech and Andrea Quam from Iowa State University provided historical background for research methodologies in the practice of design education. It was very informative and it ended with a proposal for a rubric or project evaluation. Another paper presented by Adream Blair from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee titled Participatory Design Research and Ethnographic Research in the Classroom: Incorporating Research into the Design Curriculum presented an example of a comprehensive process book students put together documenting their process and results after a semester of intense research.  This research involved developing and making products that would be sold to the consumers.  Diane Gibbs from University of South Alabama titled Wait: We Were Supposed to Research? talked about students’ perceptions of research methodologies and the analogies she develops throughout the semester to help them understand how relevant research is to the design process. It was without a doubt a very funny and upbeat presentation. Diane has great sense of humor and the most remarkable statement she stated:

Design is like a good bra. It supports everything.

 

Sustainability or lack thereof…

“do you mean to tell me that you are not going to replace the battery?”

On July 24th of this year I took my iPhone to the Apple store nearest to me because its battery was shutting down in less than an hour. I bought a 3G phone on November 4th, 2008. I still had a few months on my contract with ATT. Thus, I was not looking to renew my contract or upgrade the phone— at least not yet. However, upon being helped at the store and telling them of my phone’s demise, the Apple representative told me that my only options were either to buy the same phone for $99.00 and continue with my existing ATT plan or upgrade and thus renew my ATT plan for two more years. It took me a moment to get over the news. So, I asked “do you mean to tell me that you are not going to replace the battery?” She replied very politely telling me they couldn’t open the phone to replace the battery. I replied saying that every other phone company allows you to replace the battery or at least I thought they should. Thus, my fight for a new battery got me nowhere and I had to decide if I wanted to get a 4G and start all over, or buy the same phone for half the money.

My disappointment with this marketing technique of forcing people to buy an entire new electronic device instead of replacing a part has reinforced some ideas I have entertained for a while. This last Monday, while giving a lecture to my students based on the book by Karl Aspelund, The Creative Process, we touched on the topic of sustainability, expanding on the concepts found on Stage 2 of the creative process: Identification. In the book, Aspelund emphasises the need for designers to think about sustainability BEFORE they sit down to create and sketch. He encourages designers to ask questions about materials and think about how these materials will be discarded once the user moves on. He states:

Expecting common sense should never be a basic assumption in any design…

 

Inspiration, ideas, creativity, and the genius

Some time ago, my good friend Nate Burgos from Design Feast sent me a link to a recorded presentation on TED by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, and Love. I watched the video and it affected me profoundly. She talked of course about  her book and how its popularity had indeed, according to people, doomed her. How could she repeat that amount of success? However, to me the most important part of the video was how she described her relationship with her “muse,” her “genius” as something outside of herself. The way she described this relationship implied almost a servant attitude from the creative to their genius. See, the “genius… would come and go as it pleased. If one could not be bothered to capture the ideas the genius was bestowing upon us, the genius would leave to find another recipient and use as a vessel. But when the creative was receptive, oh! well, incredible things will happen.

to me the most important part of the video was how she described her relationship with her “muse,” her “genius.”

 

I could not resist…

“In the future, everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes.”

— Andy Warhol

These are the words of the famous pop artist and designer in the 1960′s. Little did he know then how the Internet would transform the immediacy of communications and how it would affect us. Nothing seems to go unnoticed and unknown anymore. Long gone are the days of anonymity. Now even people doing counterproductive things get their spotlight.

For the past few months, I have been in a some what of incubation state. Trying to think about my career, blogs, and what I really want to do with my art and design. Plus I have been busy teaching 5 classes per semester and it has taken me some time to establish my rhythm. However, recently there has been some news about a man along with 40-50 people in Gainesville, Fla talking about burning a book. I will not bother to put any links to it or name any names or even tell you what book he is burning. One, you must know since it is all over the news. Second, I wish to contribute nothing to what this man is doing and bring him any more publicity thus being guilty of facilitating not just 15 minutes of fame, but perhaps more. So, why you might ask I am bothering in taking time of my hiatus to write now, right after these news? The answer is simple: I could not resist.

 

BUS EXPO 2010— Lessons learned

It has been exactly 2 months since my last post. Somehow between teaching and doing the daily designs (#daily365 for those of you who do twitter searches), time has just flown by. While those two months were going by, many ideas for posts came to me but somehow they would not materialize. I guess that is what a “dry-spell” looks like. In any case, here I am again today writing about one of my latest adventures: participating in a business to business expo sponsored by the surrounding areas chambers of commerce here in the western Chicago suburbs. Thus, it was a big event. Since I had never been involved as a business owner in one of these expos, I scrambled trying to think what to do, what not to do, what souvenirs to give away, and many other details. To help me with these decisions I consulted with Ilise Benun from Marketing Mentors. Ilise helped me think through the process and gave me great ideas. It was a great experience and though a long day I met many people and made connections. But more importantly, my freelance name is out there. Following are some of the things I learned, what I think I will do or not do next year, and of course some photos of our display. So, here it goes:

 

Beautiful paragraph… how I love thee.

Inherent to layout and typographic design is the use of the paragraphs. Usually other layout elements such as headers, sub headers, captions, quotation marks, quotes, captions, margins, page numbers tend to get all the attention the designer has to spare. Sometimes this is due to the project requirements. In the case of web layouts it is due to browser support or lack thereof, and issues with legibility. A paragraph must be read. It is after all the reason paragraphs exist—to be read.

In its simplest definition a paragraph is a collection of lines placed on top of each other and neatly arranged within a certain width forming a nice looking rectangle. If you take a moment to think about it, a paragraph is either a horizontal rectangle or it is a vertical rectangle in the case of narrow columns. The importance of seeing form in a rectangle is what allows designers to create experimental layouts or even simple layouts with some anomalies that call our attention. Sometimes these anomalies are perhaps out denting the first line, changing to bold weight the first line, perhaps doing both of those things in a middle line, indenting few lines creating another rectangle in the negative space, and sometimes these rectangles can be placed in a diagonal creating interesting compositions.

A paragraph must be read. It is after all the reason paragraphs exist—to be read.

 

Was it honest?

I have a story to tell you. My friend who we shall refer to as Designer S, was hired by Agency Q. Creative Director L did not live up to his promises. That did not stop Designer S from coming up with ideas. Some time went by and one morning a brainstorm session occurred about seasonal promotion materials. Designer S got excited and while this idea was being considered for Designer S’s promo materials, Designer S decided to put the idea on the table. The idea was received with great warmth and positive feedback. Moments passed and a private conversation ensued. In the course of the conversation Designer S was let go just moments after sharing a good idea. Designer S was offered a “settlement” and a condition of never contacting Agency Q again. In shock and not sure of what was going on, Designer S remained quiet holding back the sense of embarrassment. Creative Director L packed Designer S’s things in boxes and was escorted outside. A month in a half or so goes by and Designer S through the wonders of the Internet, discovers Agency Q’s promotional materials. The materials clearly depicted Designer S’s idea. Needless to say, Designer S called a lawyer. Unfortunately, the lawyer said, there was nothing he could do because when the idea was shared, Designer S was on company time. Therefore any ideas discussed, brainstormed, and sketched were the intellectual property of Agency Q. In other words Agency Q was not liable. True enough Designer S acknowledged, but asked “Was it honest?”