Author Archives: Dara

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.

Early Fall & Goodbye, Nikon D70s

Here are some of the last photos that I’ll be posting that were taken with my old faithful Nikon D70s. I bought it back in 2006, and it’s served me really well for over 6 years. In return for its loyal service, I’m heartlessly ditching it for a sexy new Nikon D600, which is full-frame (!!!!) and better in almost every way.

Sorry, old pal.

“Gourmet” food trucks (as seen at the Queen West Art Crawl last weekend) are a thing now.

Breaking into design (or other creative/technical careers): a guide for n00bs

When I think about the fact that I currently work full time as a front-end developer and that before that I worked at several jobs as a designer as well, sometimes it feels a little surreal, given my background. Four years ago, I was a fresh university graduate with a double major in History and Art History with no design or programming education or professional experience to speak of.

The aim of this post to try and give some advice that I would have appreciated hearing when I was first starting out as a total n00b. Everything I’ve written is of course through the lens of someone who works in the field of web design, but I don’t see why you couldn’t apply it to other creative or technical pursuits as well.

Here is what worked for me, and what I’d recommend to others starting out:

Starting as a hobbyist

There’s no easier way to test whether you’d like something than to just try it out on a personal project. I knew I liked to make websites because I’d been making terrible personal sites since I was 11 and thought that Geocities and animaged GIFs were awesome, and I’d continued to make cringeworthy websites through my teenage years. Of course, they were terrible by today’s standards and I’d never include any of them in a portfolio, but being a hobbyist without any professional pressure was a great way to slowly nurture a skill that I grew to enjoy and eventually become pretty good at. If you want to be a designer, experiment with some personal projects (perhaps try a logo or a business card). If you want to be a writer, start keeping a journal or start a blog. Nobody even has to know!

My first website ever, circa 1997. It featured a delightful colour scheme, gorgeous typography, and a state-of-the-art table-driven layout. It’s still an integral part of my portfolio, obviously.

Volunteering your skill for someone in need

Because I’m largely self-taught, I needed a lot of practice to hone my design and coding skills. The best way to do this without selling your soul is to volunteer your time and skills for people or groups who need them but could never afford a professional. Note! I’m not talking about responding to shady, exploitative Craigslist ads that ask you to work for free for “exposure” or because “it’ll be a great portfolio piece”. Barf. In my case, this initially meant volunteering to make websites and marketing materials for student groups while I was in school. It was a great way to practice in a fairly low-stress but real environment. I also ended up improving my web skills and gaining experience by volunteering for Stand Canada, which is entirely run by volunteers. If you’re a student you have a distinct advantage because student-run groups are always in need of talented volunteers, but if you’re not, there are plenty of worthy causes out there that could use your help. Ask around!

Educating yourself

Although there are plenty of self-taught geniuses in the world, it’s sometimes difficult and overwhelming to teach yourself everything you need to know. It’s important to have some foundational knowledge, at least in design or development. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself copying and pasting recklessly without actually knowing why you’re doing what you’re doing.

You can choose to go to university or college for your chosen profession, but if you’ve already graduated from school and don’t have the time, money, or inclination to go back for another full program, there are other options. Most colleges offer continuing education, which is less of a time commitment than being a full time student, but still offers the structure of being in a class. As for me, I enrolled in a 3-year graphic design program right after graduation, but I left after the first semester, because it turned out that 7 years of consecutive post-secondary education didn’t seem so appealing after all.

If the traditional classroom isn’t quite your thing, that’s cool, too. There are lots of great free and paid resources on just about every topic. Personally, I find that paying for something means that I’ll actually use it more. After all, I’ve spent money on it, so if I don’t use it, I’m being wasteful and I’ll feel guilty about it, and guilt is obviously a good motivator. In the past I had a subscription to Lynda.com, which I found quite useful, especially in learning how to use Adobe CS programs. Then there’s iTunes U, where you can take courses for free from schools all over the world, which is pretty crazy when you think about it.

And of course I have to give a shout out to Ladies Learning Code (one-day workshops) and HackerYou (longer, more in-depth courses), both of which I am/have been involved with as a mentor. If you’re in Toronto, check ’em out.

Practising on family and friends

Now, let me clarify here: if you’re not that skilled yet and someone you know and love needs a professional job done, it might be awkward and a little painful if you try and take it on as a beginner. It’s always best to be honest with yourself about your skill level. However, there are lots of ways to practise your creative skill on friends and family without immense pressure. Do you have friends in a band? Make them a gig poster! Someone you know starting a new hobby? Make them a business card! Tell everyone you know about your burgeoning skill, and they’ll keep you in mind for future projects. I also want to note that doing things for free or very cheap for people you know is probably only a good idea when you’re just starting out and really need the practice, and aren’t yet at a skill level where you’d feel comfortable charging for your work. Once you’re past that, working for free or super-cheap is generally not such a good idea, both for yourself and for your industry. (That is, unless you’re doing it as a gift — then go ahead, you kind person, you!)

Having a boyfriend in a band meant lots of practice designing posters.

Being your own client

If all else fails, there’s always one client you can count on — yourself. I used to go through countless iterations of my website and “brand identity” (though to be honest I didn’t know enough to call it that back then), and this gave me tons of good practice that I could use in, or as, my portfolio later on. Doing work for yourself is a bit of a mixed blessing — although you have the freedom to do whatever you want, often we’re our own worst critics, and it’s extremely difficult to make something for ourselves that we’ll actually be satisfied with. This in itself is a mixed blessing as well, because creative dissatisfaction is a great motivator for trying new things and improving your skills.

Working your way up by working in-house

So, you’re starting to get good, and you’re on your way to finding a first real job in your chosen field. Hurray! A great way to start growing your skills if you’re talented but not yet an expert is to work in-house at a company, as opposed to working at an agency. I’m sure there are about 1000 exceptions to what I just said, but in my experience, working as an in-house designer or developer (client-side) is far less pressure than working with many clients at once (agency-side). Working at one organization generally means that you’ll be focused on fewer projects at once, and that you’ll be working on them for a longer period of time. It can be really enlightening to stay with a project from inception all the way to post-launch, and truly experience the outcomes of your decisions and work.

I was going to continue with what didn’t work so well for me, but this got so long that I’m going to cut it off here. Let me know if you found this useful, or even if you entirely disagree!

Being ‘unique’ is overrated, anyway

I used to think that my “unique” hobbies made me a bit of a special snowflake.

It’s laughable now, but when I was in high school, I was one of the only people I knew who owned a camera. It was a clunky 3-megapixel point-and-shoot that’s of course entirely obsolete today, but I loved that thing like you wouldn’t believe. That Canon A70 and I had a special bond; we understood each other. I was really proud of the fact that I’d bought it with my own money, and even prouder that I also knew how to use Photoshop enough to edit my photos.

I loved taking and editing photos, but I also secretly liked knowing that I had an interest in and an aptitude for something that most people my age didn’t really care much about at the time. I also felt similarly about knowing HTML. Let me tell you, 10-15 years ago, knowing how to code wasn’t at all cool, trendy, or even on most people’s radars (especially, let’s be honest, if you were a girl). So, regardless of how good I actually was, I could feel pretty proud of myself for exploring all of this “uncharted territory” (as I felt it was at the time).

Now, let’s fast forward to today. Not only does almost everyone have a camera in their phone, but apps like Instagram have become ubiquitous. Taking stylized photos is now something that everybody does. Digital SLRs are probably now owned by more new parents and pet owners than by professional photographers. Graphic design, which similarly used to be the domain of a small group of specialists, has also risen to prominence in popular culture in a similar way. In the age of Pantone accessories and Pinterest boards, it’s easy to argue that our culture cares more about design (at least on a very surface level) than ever before.

I took this picture with Instagram. So meta.

So how did I feel when I realized that I wasn’t such a special snowflake anymore? I’ll be honest – I was slightly annoyed at first. Now, the very things that I thought made me unique turned out not to be so unique after all. I had to examine my relationship with my skills and interests to see what I really wanted to get out of them. In time, I’ve come to realize a couple of things:

  • When you’re genuinely into something, it shouldn’t really matter how many other people share your interest. It’s kind of like when someone obnoxiously stops listening to a band they claimed to love the instant that band becomes popular. I mean, really. Did they ever actually like the music? The same goes for a niche interest that suddenly explodes. If you truly like what you’re doing, popularity or lack thereof shouldn’t make a huge difference. It will probably make some difference, honestly, but if it totally puts you off, maybe it’s a sign that you weren’t so into it in the first place.
  • Now that your formerly obscure pastime has been taken over by just about everybody, just showing up isn’t enough. Now, you actually have to be good to be recognized as an expert (or, really, as someone who’s even proficient) in your field. Feeling like an expert requires a lot more effort than it used to, especially when you have a whole Internet of people to compare yourself to. This can be both motivating and overwhelming. On good days, I settle on realizing that I’ll likely never be the best person in the world at anything, but letting all the talented people in the world motivate me to do better and better.

Interests, pastimes, and professions are a lot deeper than they first appear. Most people, myself obviously included, do things for a variety of reasons. We don’t just choose our hobbies for how they make us feel, but also for how they make us look. We don’t live in a vacuum, and a lot of our choices are dictated by how we think we’ll be perceived by others in the context of our culture and peer groups. The bitterness that some people feel when their previously obscure interest becomes popular really highlights this. I’m not judging that bitterness too harshly, since I think it’s a natural (human, imperfect) reaction. This kind of discomfort can actually be really interesting, since it shines light on our motivations, which usually sit, unnoticed, under the surface.