Monthly Archives: October 2012

An afternoon in Brooklyn

On the last day of my trip to New York, I decided to visit Brooklyn, since I’d never been before and I’d heard that it’s really different than Manhattan and was worth checking out. I ended up mostly walking around Williamsburg — I know that this invites a knee-jerk “lol hipsters” reaction, but I really found it quite delightful. Does that make me a hipster? Do I care?

For quieter people like myself, being in Manhattan is amazing and exciting, but a bit of a sensory overload. When I got off the subway in Brooklyn, I felt a bit more sane again. In a way, it felt more like Toronto to me — still definitely city-like, but more spread out and laid back. I definitely want to check out more of Brooklyn to see what it’s like beyond the super trendy and hipstery part. You know, for science.

Turns out this is a paraphase of a Baha’i quote. Thanks, Google!

Endless jewelry supplies at Brooklyn Charm!

Another new friend I made last weekend ♥ ♥ ♥

A really great iced tea and free Wifi in McCarren Park.

The littlest details are sometimes the best ones.

Speaking of New York, a crazy-ass hurricane is currently heading that way (and toward the east coast in general) right now. Stay safe, east coasters!

New York, New York: Adventures in solo travel, The Blogcademy, and new friends

As I write this, I’m sitting on a plane on the way back to Toronto (though this is actually getting published a few days later), after having spent four action-packed days in New York City. This was my second time ever in New York, and I’m happy to say that not only did I enjoy my time immensely, but I might even be starting to figure out the ridiculously complicated subway system. Trust me, this feels like a huge accomplishment since it’s actually insane.

A desire for a small adventure brought me to New York, as well as a blogging workshop that was being held this weekend. Now, it might seem a little strange that I attended a workshop about blogging with my own blog being so new and really just a hobby, but sometimes in life, it’s nice to say “what the hell, why not?” and just do something impulsive and a little random.

On Solo Travel

This trip was the first one that I really took entirely by myself, and now that it’s over, I can’t believe I didn’t do it sooner. Travelling alone probably isn’t suited to everyone, but to a semi-introvert like myself, it was really refreshing to be able to do whatever I wanted to do without having to make conversation (unless I wanted to talk to strangers, which I did sometimes!) or worry about pleasing anyone else. I was able to take as much time as I wanted at the Guggenheim, and I could leisurely browse as many clothes/jewellery/record shops as I wanted in Brooklyn. No one was around to judge the amount of sugar I consumed at Tu-Lu’s Bakery (aka the best gluten free bakery ever – we really need one here).

Nope, I’m not telling you how many of these I ate.

On the other hand, it was a little scary. No one else was there to make sure I knew how to get from place to place, and no one was there to make sure I made my flight on time. But you know what? It was kind of awesome. There’s no way to learn self-sufficiency like being forced into it, and it’s really empowering to have made it through on my own. And okay, I know that a long weekend in New York isn’t exactly roughing it in the wild, but hey, isn’t it nice to celebrate the little things?

On the Blogcademy

The workshop I attended was a lot of fun. Led by three super successful, interesting, and really fun bloggers (Gala Darling of galadarling.com, Kat Williams of Rock n Roll Bride, and Shauna Haider of Nubby Twiglet), we were taught all sorts of things from being your own spokesperson, to brainstorming potential sources of income, to deciding what to write about, to developing a brand. Oh, plus a bunch of photography tips by Lisa Devlin (who also uses Aperture, like I do. Aperture ftw!) A lot information was packed into two days, but it wasn’t too overwhelming or difficult to absorb.

So, as someone with a personal blog with no immediate (or, let’s be honest, any) intention of commercializing it, was all of this information valuable to me? Yep, I’d say that it was! Because I also run a business, I can actually apply a lot of the advice to that instead where it doesn’t perfectly apply to my blog. Also, not all of the material was directed at blogs with commercial interests. The core takeaway messages like being yourself, being consistent, being patient (no one became InternetFamous™ overnight, after all!) and working hard are good advice for anyone.

And I have to mention, as a designer, this was one of the best branded events I have been to. I tip my hat to Shauna, who pulled that part of the workshop together. I know I just wrote a post where I said that sometimes a product can succeed in spite of shitty branding, but now I’m going to go in the opposite direction and say that a well-executed visual identity is truly a beautiful thing.

Even the balloons were totes on brand.

On making new friends

I’m a very firm believer in the idea that good people can make or break any experience, and that new connections with people are the best souvenir that you can take back from any trip. With that in mind, I’m so happy that I met so many lovely, smart and charming ladies over the four days I was away. (Sadly, I didn’t run into the lovely, smart or charming gents of NYC on this trip — maybe next time?) I hope we’ll be in touch for a long time to come! ♥

Delving deeper into design, or, how design and I broke up and got back together again

When I first became interested in graphic design, I thought my love was one that would last forever. After all, it combined my favourite things: art, words, and a healthy dose of strategic thinking. After completing a fun but fairly useless degree in art history (focusing on 17th century Dutch art — so practical and relevant to life!), the world of design seemed refreshingly practical and contemporary. And thanks to our good friend the Internet, access to great design has never been easier.

But sadly, somewhere along the way I started to become disenchanted. I started to feel like design trends were far more prevalent than good design thinking. I found myself completely overwhelmed by all the CSS galleries, “inspiration” blog posts, Dribbble shots, and Pinterest boards in the world. After a while it seemed like most design communities (be it graphic design, interior design, or web design) were, let’s be honest, a bit same-ish. And don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely nothing against designers sharing their work or work that they like In fact, I think it’s great when people share! It’s just that the volume of visual information and sameness all seemed to be too much. I slowly felt myself becoming disenchanted with design culture.

Lately, though, I’ve been finding my way back. Here are some things that have helped:

Drastically limiting “inspiration”

I know that this might come as a shock to all the Pinterest lovers out there, but I honestly can’t deal with inspiration overload. I just can’t. I find that after seeing so many pretty images, they all start looking the same, and I don’t find myself caring about any of them. There are two main issues that I have with inspiration overload:

  1. There’s way too much pretty stuff out there, and you can spend so much time looking at it that you don’t actually do anything yourself. It seems that we’re living in a time where making original work and “curating content” are both seen as equally creative activities, and I find this a little problematic. Admiring the pretty is fun and even quite useful in moderation, but in excess it can waste a lot of time that might be better spent actually doing something.
  2. Admiring design only on a purely aesthetic level without any context can also be harmful since it ignores all of the strategic thinking and decision making that led to the final product. It also perpetuates surface-level trends that inevitably start to pop up in places for no reason other than that they’re popular. Now, I’m not immune to trends and I don’t think that trends are all bad! It’s nice sometimes to feel like your work captures the spirit of its time. What I don’t like is seeing the same style being thoughtlessly applied over and over again when it’s not really a good choice. This also applies very much to web design. It’s so tempting at the start of a project to browse endlessly through CSS galleries to get ‘inspired’, but this is not usually the best approach.

Reading some books (sometimes even paper ones)

If you know me well, you know I like to talk a lot about context. (I know, I’m such an exciting conversationalist!) Maybe it’s the former history student in me, but I can’t help seeing cultural artifacts as being very dependent on their time and their place (and on a multitude of other factors). So, naturally, I appreciate design far more when I understand where it’s coming from.

Given our current cultural fascination with retro-/‘vintage’-inspired design, it can be really fascinating to open up a design history book and read about how these aesthetics came to be. When you learn about a design movement in its historical context (there I go again with my favourite word), you begin to realize that what you once thought was purely visual might actually have a lot of meaning. Understanding a bit about the intersection of design and the culture in which it exists can really help to make intelligent and informed choices when you find yourself borrowing from a particular style. Colour, typography, images, and patterns can have very strong political/cultural meanings (depending on their… wait for it… context!), and it’s never a good experience when you accidentally give off a message that you didn’t intend. Reading a bit about art and design history can also help you to understand how something that seems boring or overdone now might have been completely revolutionary in its own time. (Context!)

A couple of book recommendations: Graphic Style: From Victorian to Digital by Steven Heller and Seymour Chwast is a nice intro to the last couple of hundred years of graphic design. As a bonus, it’s really image-heavy, so you’re not slogging through a wall of text about something that’s inherently visual anyway. I also really enjoyed The Shape of Design by Frank Chimero. I’m not entirely sure how to sum it up since it’s a bit abstract, but I really liked that it was more philosophical than practical, and it got me a lot more excited about design thinking than I had been in a while.

A couple of books and… David Bowie? How did YOU get there?

Putting graphic design in its place

Last week when I was out buying a jar of honey, I couldn’t decide between the various brands in front of me. Instead of picking the one with the nicest label, I instead decided, as an experiment, to buy the one with the hideous Comic Sans label. Not too shockingly, the honey was still sweet and tasty despite its unsexy label.

LE GASP

I’ve come to realize that although branding is very important, it’s both contextual and complementary to the other facets that make up a brand. For example, I’m pretty sure that even the most iconic of logos (say, the Nike swoosh or the Apple logo) probably wouldn’t be iconic — really, they’d probably be totally forgotten — if they weren’t associated with amazing companies. Good branding and graphic design can really help (and I do mean a lot), but in the end, they aren’t the only things that matter. It helps me keep perspective to remember that good design is just one cog in a great machinery.

Note: Oh, noes! This post was long overdue, wasn’t it? I usually try to post here about once a week, but I recently got super sick and it completely knocked me out. I’m back now, though! Hurray!

Have a cute squirrel for your patience:

I took this picture today. This squirrel was totally irritated and yelling at something for a good ten minutes. It was amazing.