Intro
To start, I remade my resume and applied for a new position. My current job doesn't involve design at all, and my interest in design has been steadily growing. Earlier this month, a junior graphic design position appeared right in front of me. I couldn't let this opportunity pass—this is my chance to kick-start my professional design career! I learned quite a few things in the process of making my new resume that is catered to a specific audience and writing a clear and relevant motivation. Throughout the month, this process stayed on the back burner, simply 'cause I'm waiting for the outcome.
As this month is a seasonal period, I won't be planning anything new. I would like to be more reflective about this year, considering what I have accomplished and learned. I'll try to be more casual with the storytelling; however, being poetic these days just slips out unconsciously now and then. With that being said, let's take a look at this month and year.
Learn as you go
You know how it goes, "you win some, you lose some". There is always something to gain from every day you stay present on the floating boulder. And that includes me, as I learned quite a few things this month.
Patterns in Reading
Earlier, I mentioned that recreating my resume actually taught me quite a few things. As I was asking for some feedback, a web-dev friend gave me some feedback on my layout. "Nice layout… if you intend to go for a double column layout, yours is counterintuitive to the F-Shape". Which immediately struck me. So what is the F-shaped pattern? He explained to me the concept, as we concluded how to still guide the reader even though I broke the F-shape. Instead of the main content on the left side, I had mine on the right; I had skills on the left and experience on the right. Obviously, I want the reader to read my experiences, so I used small visual tweaks to grab more attention towards the right side. I made use of differences in text size and color, so that the experience sections gain that bit of attention to help guide the reader. I was already familiar with the Z-shape pattern, which made me curious and pushed me to read more into F-shaped patterns in visual layouts and hierarchies.
Visual principles
Since I have decided to actually focus more on visual design, I want to understand the principles a visual designer follows. I tried to look at my typical sources, Figma, Behance, Dribbble, Adobe, etc., and tried to compile this list of principles:
- Composition and Hierarchy
- Spacing systems
- Color theory
- Contrast and accessibility
- Rhythm and balance
- Justification of choices
Being from the design research and requirements engineering side, I'm more used to the principles: accessibility and justification of choices. I learned to empathize and define before considering any visual choices. Without prerequisites or requirements, I, a software engineer, have no basis to start from. I still believe that, as a designer, no matter the audience, you need a direction a design caters to. This reflection made me realize that I'm a designer who designs with intention first. So I'll keep these visual principles in mind and work out how to understand them better.
A little zine
One fun thing I did this month was make a zine again. In the summer this year, I did a daily challenge for a week, where I captured my emotional state in poetry form. I wanted to create a poetry zine out of it with the poems and accompanying visuals. For now, I've only shared physical copies around to friends and colleagues. Soon I'll have my zines on this website as well, but first I need to figure out how to digitize my zines for digital reading.
When I was setting up the poems and visuals, one question kept lingering in my mind, "How do I lay these components out on a page?" I had no concrete idea how I wanted to approach this. Given I just started to learn visual principles, in this case composition and hierarchies, should I try anything complex… Well, I just gave myself a rather simple solution to this design question. A standard page in the zine contains one poem and one visual, so I decided to give myself a simple constraint -> You can only make use of a single column hierarchy.
This seems easy as you just go top to bottom. However, once you actually dump the content in, did you actually consider what the content had to say for itself? I loved the fact that such a simple constraint raised so many questions about how content can live freely within this limited hierarchy. Should the visual and poem be placed top to bottom? How about side by side? Once you start to understand the rules that a constraint implies, you start to think how to "respectfully" break them, which I love to do in every discipline I practice. That brings you to possible choices as: What if you put one inside and the other outside; what if I went for unconventional ordering; What if I tilt the content on an angle. All in all, I learned a lot just from a single, simple one-column layout.
I'll have these for take-away
Even though I said I have plans and projects in mind, I still managed to brew new ideas in the lab. Which I will save for later in the future to snack on. For now, I just briefly highlight those projects and running ideas.
Website and portfolio logo
At the moment of writing this post, I have a cat logo as the favicon for my website. First off, I don't have an artist or brand logo. Secondly, this icon is a drawing I made from one of my all-time favorite video game franchises, Rhythm Heaven, the cat is from the kitties minigame. For people to recognize my website and portfolio, I want something more authentic and generic.
Following that line of thought, I decided to start this new icon project based on something you might have read on this website already. This moment also became a nice opportunity to learn a new tool, so I picked up Affinity for the first time. I won't disclose too much detail on this project as I will write a dedicated post for it. And this project will be in my graphic design portfolio.
Headphones on the side
On Black Friday, unfortunately, I bought some new Sony headphones. I really liked how the design of the headphones is minimalistic, and the sound quality is just good enough. Despite all the good stuff, it still lacks some personality. On all my previous headphones, I added a touch of batik. Inside the ear cups or on the headband, however, these spaces are rather "subtle". This time, I actually want to show the batik to the people. At the moment, I'm figuring out how I can put something on the side panels of the headphones. I don't have any results to share yet, except for my biggest struggle, which is measuring the surface of this panel. In the future, when I have some results, I will share this little side project…
Zine distribution method
A small idea that popped up when I made a zine this month. What if I use it as promotion material? So I made a simple 8-page, A6-format zine, and it was easy to reproduce and give away to people. That made me wonder about how I can use it to share my projects, ideas, products, and so on… I have no concrete plan or repeatable pattern for self-promotion using this medium. Although I have to admit, I don't have any clue how to promote myself. Just a fun thought that is worth the attention at some point.
Website redesign?
Back to big project ideas, I think since the summer, I have been stuck on designing my website. All the while, the idea for this website was to serve as an archive and portfolio. That's where "arsip" comes from, which is Bahasa Indonesian for "archive". At the moment, I don't even have placeholders for my other discipline sections.
With that in mind, I want to redesign my website to be very barebones. A Simple layout that can hold my work in place for y'all to view it. So I want to approach the redesign as barebones as possible. While I did keep functionality first in mind, my current approach was to go section by section. In hindsight, this wasn't what I wanted; I wanted to produce stuff and showcase my work. Now the whole design and web development becomes a roadblock, and that shouldn't be the case for my website. I need a place to archive my work and share it with the world.
To make sure I can realize this space, I will keep my requirements to functional ones first, aesthetics later. This will be my next focus for the beginning of this year, as I really want my work to be out there. And it will be the same doing and learning process as I have been doing lately. Stumbling, falling, getting up, and realizing that, without trying I'm missing out on potential learning experiences. So I'm really excited for this project.
A step back
Last point I want to look back on is the rest of the year. I just want to highlight again what I have accomplished and how it ties to my progression as a creative person. (As I wrote this part, I was hesitant about how emotional I should get.)
A creative year
Both good and bad moments have passed this year. I was able to travel a lot and see amazing places, though I also had some emotional letdowns and struggles passing by. Creatively, I have been able to craft some neat stuff, like:
- Two appliquéd jackets
- An embroidered coaster
- Two zines:
- Ghosts Emerge
- Days Remaining
- This website
- A new logo
- A new resume
- A lot of poetry
- A lot of Kusudama and origami pieces
Creations like the coaster, poetry, and origami-related ones are expressions I just make some day(s). It happens mostly spontaneously, if it's at work, home, or on a holiday—these are direct responses to how I feel at the moment. Maybe you can relate. When you create something, every stroke, fold, just any action becomes the result of your expression.
The beautiful part of these creations is that I can combine them with each other to create, for example, zines. Both Ghosts emerge and Days Remaining, two of my poetry zines, were created by collecting poems, digital visuals, and origami pieces. Then, using newfound skills like graphic/visual design, I'm able to put together cohesive creations that tell my stories. It's really a multimedia effort to find a way and execute these projects, just to tell my story.
Last year, I had a lot of excitement and ideas towards fashion and sewing projects; however, I wasn't able to produce much. Already at the beginning of the year, I was physically unable to reach for my sewing machines. Fortunately, I was able to applique two jackets with some beautiful fabrics. 'Cause turning a simple fashion garment into a fashion statement is really fun. Hopefully, with the rebuild of my website, I can showcase these pieces.
Although not many physical handicrafts were realized, I was able to do some digital work. Beginning this year, I made a start to developing this website. When I wrote a lot of poetry this year, I was looking for a place where I could archive my poems and share them with people. I already wanted to use my web-dev skills to build a portfolio in the past. And that's how this archive website came to be. I just finally decided to take a stab at it, and here it is. And of course, at the end of this year, I worked on my resume and my logo, which required some graphic design skills and digital tooling.
What have I gained though?
What all these things have in common is that they are a direct reflection of my emotional state. If it's a need for a place for my work, working through stress, talking with my emotions, or telling a story. I use these disciplines to do something with my emotions, which in turn makes my creative muscles only stronger. I'd have to admit, if I didn't have these "hobbies", as people would call them, I would really struggle to process my emotions.
But from a personal standpoint, it gives me a way or place where I can let it all out. How I see fit. The more I make, the more I realize how true this is. Next for me is how to share this with the people around me. I want to show people what I can do and hopefully find a community as well.
This year, I have been able to learn a lot about my creative potential and gained a lot of self-confidence. Just like most people of this time, I'm a multi-disciplined, multimedia creative. I want to refine each side of my skillset and explore more of what I can create. Of course, it has to happen step-by-step, but the ambition and passion are still alive.
And that continues here, with arsip.me and my design career.