Reflection: Frustrastion is Your Friend

Looking back on this year, especially after Junior Review, I cannot believe how much I have accomplished in such a short period of time. With great guidance and teaching I have learned and grown in my the area of art direction and copywriting. But I can pretty much sum up the year and my experience in two phrases: "nothing comes easy," and, "frustration is your friend." 


I learned this many times along the way when trying to execute things visually. Sometimes the ideas would just click, and others there would be times where I would literally have to shoe shop because my mind could not think of anything that was worthy to present. As for copywriting, well this for me is mostly frustration. I know now I can write good copy, it just takes longer for me to come up with it, and I can not let it defeat me. I just have to sit by myself with some trance music and just write, write, write. And I am sorry if there are spelling and grammar errors in here, because so I have been told it's the art director coming out in me. But one thing that we have been told since freshman year that sometimes, not always, makes execution in both areas is a solid concept. If you have the "big idea" it should be expandable into multiple areas than just print. This is still not always easy. After working on OfficeMax for Phoenix Ink, we had a solid concept, but some of the visuals and ambient were not so easy to come up with as was the copy. But after much frustration and hitting our heads, we fleshed it all out, and it looked amazing. 

If I could go back and do things differently, I would have started to put my portfolio and resume together over the summer. You do not realized how time consuming they are, and lets face it, if you are working and have other activities you eventually end up sacrificing something, and these are the things I sacrificed. It defiantly hurt me because I feel a tad bit behind. So for all freshman and sophomores start working on your logo, resume, and portfolio now. You will have more free time for you other AD projects and other activities. 

Next year, not going to lie, I am very scared. It is senior year. We are about to graduate and become adults. I know I am going to get great experience from participating on N.S.A.C. but I am still trying to think how I am going to swing my portfolio to make fashion agencies to want to hire me. I am not sure how I feel about this open assignment idea, due to the fact that I need some guidance. So we will see how it all plays out. I am though excited to be out in the real world, and use all the things that what have been taught, and I know that we are already know that we are doing work on an industry level. I want to give a special thanks to our teacher Vivan Owen. Without her our projects, portfolios, copywriting, and art direction would not be where they are today. I am very proud of all my classmates and how far we have all come, and I am excited for all of us to walk at graduation next year. 

Please Someone Put Me On Diesel Island

So as many of you know, and after writing the same thing on this blog many a time, I want to work for a fashion advertising agency. But of course, most of designers do their advertising in house, so in the famous words of Rebecca Black, "which seat should I take?" Well let me tell you, there is one seat I would defiantly like to fill, and that would be on the creative marketing and advertising team at Diesel. Now, if you keep up with Diesel you know they are always making trendy clothing for young adults, but also always pushing the boundaries of how they advertise their clothing. This is usually in the form of sex sells, but recently they have been selling their clothing in a humorous way, with a hint of sex. Their newest campaign "Diesel Island" for summer 2011, still plays off the previous "Be Stupid" campaign, but in a new way. The video below, a history of Diesel Island, is the perfect combination between witty humor and fashion. And Diesel made a few more of these videos that are equally entertaining. I would not change a single thing about these videos. The way they are filmed, down to the casting is spot on, so clearly, Diesel is anything but stupid.

Making a Zen Website

After reading section of The Zen of Social Media by Shama Hyder Kabani, there are a few key points that I came away with. Right away in the first chapter there was a methodology represented by the acronym A.C.T, which stands for attract, convert, and transform. This principle can be summed up as you have to get a consumers attention, make them into a loyal customer, and keep on turning that first attraction into an ongoing one, or a "magnetic force.

I also found it interesting after reading this part of the book, that in actuality the best site of conversion is the brands actual website. So everything you put out in social media should some point the consumer or client back to the website. In chapter two of this book, it continues this principle even further and states that your website the window to ones company. It also states that it is this way because everyone expects you to have a website and it can influence a huge audience of people, that may have not been possible without a website. Chapter two takes this concept even more in depth by saying, "Your website can't be good-it has to be great!" This concept it compelety true. I can think of so many times I have been to a brands website, or even a designer, and their website alone makes me either want to know more, or completely forget about them.  It continues to say that a "cool" website must do three of things: educate, market, and sell (EMS).  If you can educate, you will not be able to market your product well, and if you can not market your product well, then you can almost guarantee that your product will not sell well, at all. So how do you make a website that can do all of this for your brand and more? Well, according to Shama Hyder Kabani your website must have following: design, structure, content, and optimization. So all in all you must have what we call an "eye catching design" and it must be simple to use. Just because your website is really complex and cool, if it is not user friendly and easy to navigate, your website will, be considered a fail. And also it must be well built, and look good on the outside and function on as many platforms as possible. 
I found these parts about building a website especially useful not only for any social media project, but for me personally. Since I am my own brand, any of the principles in this book can be applied to me as a personal brand. In a world full of competition, this book has many useful tools to help me stand out.

Reflection on Bad Writing

I liked the film by Bad Writing quit a bit. It was just the same thing though we have been hearing since we were in elementary, "anyone can be a writer." So the age old message was nice to hear again, but it was no real revelation of knowledge that I haven't heard before. And I strongly felt this was the point of the film, just to tell you everyone starts at a certain point when writing; no one writes perfect pieces all the time. It takes a lot of revising, and re writing, or can be summed up as perfect practice makes perfect. Just keep practicing writing, and like a muscle, it will get stronger. The most important thing I learned from the film is if you love what you do, even it is for 25 percent of the time, it is worth doing. You may feel like you are failing sometimes, but do not let doubt defeat you. I defiantly feel this way sometimes when I am writing copy. I get so frustrated with words that I just want to burn a dictionary. But once I hit that moment where the words start to flow out on paper, I realize that I am not that bad at copywriting after all, and I need to be a little less hard, but still be critical of my work. I would defiantly recommend this documentary for people who are discouraged about their writing, or for someone who just needs a quick reminder things may come naturally to us, but they never come easy.