Through

“The only way out is through.”

— Dan Benjamin (via Quit)

A Universe of Abundance

“If you perceive the universe as being a universe of abundance, then it will be. If you think of the universe as one of scarcity, then it will be. And I never thought of the universe as one of scarcity. I always thought that there was enough of everything to go around - that there are enough ideas in the universe and enough nourishment.”

— Milton Glaser (from How to Think like a Great Graphic Designer by Debbie Millman)

Done

In art school I learned what I still consider to be a very valuable lesson: know when to stop. I can be an indecisive person and it was extremely difficult for me to stop finicking with my drawings. I learned by practice that sometimes the more I mess with something, the worse it becomes. Every stroke of my charcoal was permanent and I either liked it or I didn't. And if I didn't, I had to keep working it until I liked it again. This allowed for some serendipity but it can also be frustrating. As I continued to do more work I learned to make informed and conscious decisions as I developed a piece. It was a hard process for me at first. I can be a bit of a control freak (maybe more than I'd like to admit) and the thought of making permanent marks without knowing if I would be happy with the result scared the shit out of me. One of my art professors told me in first year, "Don't be afraid to make that mark, don't hesitate. Have conviction in your strokes". It was valuable advice and one that I still try to practice. Art school taught me to not be afraid to put pencil (or charcoal) to paper, that things are never perfect at first and you keep working at it until your gut tells you it's done.

So experience taught me when to stop. The more drawings I did the more I trusted my gut in knowing that was the last stroke, any more and it would be ruined for me. I knew when I was happy with a piece and that if I kept working on it I wouldn't be any happier, in fact I might just be miserable. It's that intuition and awareness that I still take with me in my life and in my work.

Then I started designing for the web.

The web changes, it's constantly evolving and design for the web can change and most probably will change at some point in time. That's true of anything in technology really. It's very different from working with your hands on something tangible like a drawing or a painting. On the web, what's done is done - for now.

For some of us, it's why we like the web. The web itself is changing and a website can change as you or your company evolves. It's exciting but also a bit uncomfortable. I like the freedom of changing things, improving things, but like I said I can be indecisive. And the web enables the indecisive part of me. I think that experience, age and wisdom should make you more decisive and give you more conviction and confidence in yourself and your decisions. So I don't like to humor my indecision. I respect decisiveness because it is so difficult for me. But the web gives me the freedom to change. I can change my mind every year or two. Heck I can redesign my website every month if I wanted to. Of course, it's easy to do this when it's your own personal project. Working on client work is different. You have a set amount of time to finish something and you do your best work in the time you're given and that's that. Sometimes the best indication of done is when your time is up. That I find comforting. So I try to keep my indecision in check and I think that's part of being a designer. You have difficult decisions to make and you have to outweigh the different paths to take and make the most informed decisions with the time you're given and that's it.

Don't get me wrong, I like designing for the web and I've learned to adapt myself to the flow of the web. We're all learning to embrace the changing nature of the web. We've moved beyond the strict guidelines in print design that made it's way to the web. Responsive design reminds us that the web is dynamic and fluid. Agile development tells us to release now and change often. Apps are updated all the time. The websites you've come to love: the facebooks, the twitters, are constantly being redesigned and re-imagined. New apps crop up that make the previous ones from six months ago feel dated. Apps constantly need updating. Devices are updated every year or so. We learn from our audience and we change things. But change can be good or it can be bad. We need to change for the better and that takes a lot of discipline. We need to ask ourselves, will this redesign help our audience and our business? And what helps our business may not help our audience, and vice versa.

As a professional in this field, I'm excited by this evolution. I find it empowering and challenging. As a creative person I find it both freeing and restricting. As a consumer and as a person, I'm exhausted by all this change.

Sometimes I just want something to be done, finished, in all it's shiny glory as a remnant of that particular point in time, never to be touched again.

Sometimes it would be nice to create something and be done.

Passion, Creativity, Fear and Burnout

Burnout happens to the best of us. No matter how many people warn you about it, you still experience it. When I started freelancing, I was quick to hit that burnout. I would have a lot of work and then work and work and work then reach a wall where I was so exhausted and felt the passion drain out of me. Then what would ultimately follow is days spent not wanting to do a thing and trying to calm my mind and cleanse my brain. It's hard to quiet the noise. But somehow I always found my way back. Many creatives say the key is time management and being able to say no. I'm still learning on both fronts. It's been helpful to return to a full-time work schedule because it forces me to get up at the same time every day (going to sleep at the same time and much earlier than I'm used to has been a challenge). But I still work with my freelance clients and love that work too so I don't want to give that up. On top of that I've found a tech and design community here in Toronto that I love to be involved in. So that's on my list too. It's difficult to say no to any one of these so for now I'm not going to. Instead I'm trying to work on my time management.

When I was freelancing it was my time management that screwed me but I would focus on one project at a time. But now, even though my time management is a bit better, it's just the shear volume of ideas and projects and interests. And I feel like I will get burned out soon if I don't check myself. It's almost as if I can feel it chasing me and one day it will get to me. The thing is I try to avoid it and even forced myself to spend a day or even a morning sitting on the couch and watching TV or going out or doing something that isn't at all related to my work. I used to do this easily and I'm sure I still can, but right now, I have so many ideas that I can't sit still. So I take it as my passion calling me and I have to take advantage of it. The difficulty happens when I sit at the computer or with my sketchbook in hand and I'm stuck with fear. Fear that what will come out won't resemble anything that I pictured in my head. Fear that it won't be as good as my contemporaries and I'll come to the realization that I am mediocre at what I do. Fear that I can't find my own voice, my own style and that I'll be nothing more than a joke. Gosh that's unnerving. It's also exhausting.

So here's what I realized: Fear contributes a lot to my exhaustion and even more than that, not putting pencil to paper, as they say, makes me so overwhelmed. I think that will lead me to burn out before I even get started! I'm working on it. I'm starting to file things in my head in 'do now or soon' or 'probably will never do therefore let it go'. Here's to avoiding burn out! *fingers crossed*

Managing Change

I once heard someone say, "Do something that makes you uncomfortable". I think that being uncomfortable is one of the keys to growing. Life has a way of letting you settle into your normal, your schedule, your happenings. And then wham! something changes and you're forced to react, adjust and settle in again. Change is the one constant in life. And the more we resist it the more difficult it is to accept. I made a career change or rather an adjustment lately. After freelancing full time I decided to take a permanent full-time position working for a company and while also maintaining a part-time freelancing career. Part of the reasoning was personal and part of it was that I think I was ripe for change in my professional life. After designing and illustrating for a few years and enjoying the work that I was doing I wanted to try my hand at something close but somewhat new. I took a position as a UX designer and front-end developer and am working for an organization designing it's online content management system.

I've realized that designing a product and building and improving on that one idea is quite different from designing for games or web projects. It requires a different mentality and approach. Where I would have project stints for one game or website or design project, now I am working through a release cycle in an agile environment on essentially one product. In some ways it can be exciting to know that as your product grows you grow with it and you make changes for your clients and improve on your initial assumptions. On the other hand you don't have that release where you send your work out into the world and set it free. True, game and website development isn't necessarily finished when you release it and you can improve upon it but there is still that big launch when it's completed. In an agile product development cycle, your work is evolving and growing. You have less time to finalize your decisions and have to make compromises for the sake of business objectives or time restraints. It is quite challenging for someone who is comfortable developing a project and refining it before it's released. In terms of production it is a huge change for me and can be quite challenging on it's own without the design challenges that also comes with it.

I'm uncomfortable and nervous and anxious but also excited, hopeful and determined. I'm working in a way that I haven't worked before. In designing game interfaces and websites, you have to think about UX but the types of users you're designing for are different. Designing a software product or service poses different challenges in UX, UI and graphic design. Your audience is different in many ways. The context in which they use your product is different. Their motives are different. The tone takes a more serious turn. Your product must allow them to perform the tasks they need to without too much hassle and also give them some other functionality that they hadn't realized they could use. Your design aesthetic changes a bit as well. Your designs are sometimes based more on business objectives, time constraints and development challenges. It's an uncomfortable position for a designer to be in and though I welcome the challenge it can be frustrating. I do believe that being able to design within these limitations or restrictions is beneficial to growing as a designer. On a personal note it also allows me to enjoy and appreciate my freelance projects more because I have a certain level of artistic freedom and creativity. You can definitely be a bit more playful and have a sense of humour when you design for games or websites (depending on the website). I have counted myself lucky to have had and to continue to have amazing freelance clients who trust me and believe in my work. My full-time gig has given me insight into what it takes to be part of a development group and face the challenges many designers face: defending and arguing for the sake of design. I've never had to fight for design like this but I think I have been in a unique position until now and this experience will only make me a better designer.