Time To Despair

Never has it felt so good to be in such a state.

Modeled in mocking of the classic 'inspirational' posters that deface the walls of most office buildings, Despair Inc. www.despair.com is a website that functions with the soul purpose of de-motivating as many people as possible.  Their witty, harsh and just a little empathetic vantage point on office life provides a nice and needed escape from the mundane reality of every day tasks.  Although, optimists beware it may belittle your sunny disposition.

 

There is something here for everyone.  You can order your very own de-motivational posters, mugs, glasses, mouse-pads, t-shirts and calendars - customized to your hearts dis-content. Check it out, if nothing else it will help you forget how deathly bored you are at work right now. Just don't get caught, you could get fired.

Go to your sad place, Nicole

Joe, Average: Karen Kavett

Karen Kavett is a relatively well known youtuber.  She has done a lot of design work for youtube related projects and has done a very nice job at networking and marketing herself as a nerdfighting graphic designer through and through.  Apart from her personal vlogs she also does a lot of videos that are geared towards the design industry.  She has made videos on all kinds of topics, but her introductory videos are full of good streamlined information that can help you remember key details of the fundementals of design.  As an added bonus she is witty, personable and entertaining to watch, which makes learning about any subject more fun.  And, when you get bored with learning, you can watch some of her personal vlogs which are always entertaining and usually thought provoking.

Here are her new and really quite clever business card designs that she recently posted to her blog.

"The idea is that I can fill in the blank with whatever I am to whoever I give it to – when I go to internship interviews I can write in graphic designer, and when I go to YouTube gatherings I can write in video blogger, and when I go to Hogwarts I can write in Slytherin." - Karen Kavett

You can check her out here:

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/xperpetualmotion 

Second YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/karenkavett

Blog: http://karenkavett.com/blog/

Twitter: http://twitter.com/karenkavett

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Karen-Kavett/165315740154374

Market yourself as you, Nicole

When Life Gives You Lemons

 

You probably just found lemons, Nicole

Stopping To Turn

And so ends the project.  Alas, I am very happy with the product I have turned out. It is no secret, I am sure, that I love writing.  I love leaving an impression of myself, illustrated in words.  I love the words, I love the letters that form the words and I love the forms that shape the letters.  And this is me.  Never fear, invisible audience, I will not abandon my post.  There are many more a post to write and this world is a never ending story of sights and sounds and feelings that must be conveyed and thought upon.  So this is what I will continue to do, as it is what I hope I have been doing.  As the semester draws to a close I feel myself changing as a person, as a writer, as a designer, and as an observer of this tiny blue-green dot in the universe that we call 'home'.  It is so much more exciting and expansive than I could have ever imagined.

And moving forward from that point, Nicole

Joe, Average: The Readables

It is always fun to point out some everyday people who make awesome things happen.  This time I would like to point out The Readables (a.k.a Priscilla).  The Readables are the collective works of my fellow Canadian Graphic Artist/Book Worm.  Priscilla does online book reviews and lately has been using her creative side to make visual pull quotes from the Harry Potter Series.  On her tumblr account she also picks a song that best represents the book she just read, which I find to be a unique approach to the book review process.  I deeply enjoy her views on books and I think she has a lot of intelligent and thought provoking things to say. 

You can check her out here:
YouTube http://www.youtube.com/user/thereadables
Tumblr http://thereadables.tumblr.com/
Good Reads http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/4731097-priscilla

Living life with my head stuck in a book, Nicole

Such Manor

Turn your swag on like it's 1799

Just whip it.  Whip it real good, Nicole

Bent Into Shape

If you have not been able to tell (because it's not like I have been short on posts as of late) I have been suffering through a creative slump of serious epicosity.  Yes, so serious that real words can not possibly attempt to describe it properly.  Today was the first day that I felt truly back to my awesome, designer self and part of that is because I allowed myself to step away for a few days, even after having been under the weather (literally and metaphorically speaking) for about 3 weeks for different but nonetheless equally unhelpful reasons. 


Why am I boring you with my life story?

"This is a design related blog isn't it?  Use your personal blog to ramble on about how hard your life is, I came here to get some serious insight on some serious stuff."   

- Overly Critical Bitch

Well, not today, so shut-up random 'overly critical bitch' in my brain. ("And for the children in the audience, we have used these words in a sentence.  I don't care it's still stupid." Smile if you caught the Robin Williams reference) What I have allowed myself to re-realise (because I have realised it many times in the past) is that sometimes you just have to laugh and once you do the world becomes brighter and better in every way. 

So I would like to reference a different Robin (it is the day of Robin's; apparently) and give props where props are due. Robin: thank you for showing me this in class and for contributing to my already good day.  Check Robin out here: http://design-4-change.blogspot.com/

This is "Bent Objects" by Terry Border.  Check Terry out here: http://bentobjects.blogspot.com/

"Modest Pear"


Today I remembered something that I somehow forgot over the last month.  Design is fun.  Design creates awesome things that would other wise be missing from the world, like modest pears and linguist dinosaurs and eggs that think they are birds. 

More importantly I remembered that design is fun and I am good at it.  I know you don't really care that much (anonymous reader), and I am not expecting you to.  But you can't exactly have a blog, and have a great day, and discover something fantastically awesomtackular and not post about it.  Can you? (You won't answer because you are a computer... I am going to continue writing now).

I am the egg on the latter.

I am a tired yet refreshed, awesome design student, clutching the feathery wings of my work ethic and visual nature and perched atop the questionably safe evaluation latter about to leap.  Hopefully the metaphorical red-bull I gulped down today really did give me wings.

Flying high with 25 days until permitted to land, Nicole