Inspire #3 "Bad" Art

I only say bad because it was in MOBA (the Museum of Bad Art) in Boston and the picture is a bit blurry, but whatever, I liked it.

Inspire #2 Festivals

What is more inspiring then gigantic, multiple day parties full of sensory stimulation. More photos over at The Big Picture.

Inspire #1 Inner Courtyard at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Visited this in Boston, I was not allowed to take photos, and these photos just don't do it justice. One of the most amazing interior or courtyard I have ever seen. I could easily spend all day there. Also lots of amazing art there, but to me that was just secondary to the courtyard. It is a must see if you are in Boston.

Vacation-Part of the Job; and an introduction to a new part of my blog

I traveled to Boston this past weekend (Valentines Day) to visit the girlfriend. Had an amazing time; I was there less than 4 days but it seems like a really fun and exciting place. One of my favorite parts of design, or any creative discipline for that matter, is that almost any experience can add to our creativity or have some sort of influence for our work. Going on a trip or vacation, experiencing new places, people, culture, art, music, or any thing really can influence and inspire us. A part of our design education that will continue forever, I think it is extremely important to nourish. Experience, in a broad sense, is a part of our job.

This brings me to a new part of my blog I want to start. It will be things that I think are in some way inspiring or exciting to me. For the most part I will provide little commentary or none at all; I want them to speak for themselves. It could be anything from photography, traditional art, an object, a place, or anything else. The only limit I want to put on this is that it will not be directly design related. One of the main reasons I blog is to become better at expressing my thoughts on design related things. So when those come up, I will talk about them more in depth; they will not be in this section. I want this new "inspire" section to be more of an image based part of my blog, similar to notcot.org and Black Bunneh Sees. Since I was just in Boston, the first few will be from there. They will start with the next post.
-enjoy

Personality

I ramble a bit in this post, so just bear with me.

Getting a real start on my portfolio, I have been doing the planning and little things leading up to actually working on my portfolio for awhile now. One thing I have heard many times about portfolios and and on criticism of my own is that they need to have personality (or more personality) in them. You can take a look at mine here so you know what I am talking about.

Graphically, and for the most part work the quality and the content I am happy with. (There are obvious things that will get redone, sketching, taking out some projects getting new ones in, but that is not what I want to talk about) I realized that even though I present "process" and my thinking, I have it presented more like a report of what has been designed than something that expresses who I am as a designer and what and how I designed it. I don't even think I use the word "I" in the entire thing. The basic progression is research, sketches, final design. This is not bad but I feel it is slightly generic and I need to show how I truly arrived at the forms and the ideas; an important aspect of how I design and how I think (something that could help get me hired) is missing. I obviously cannot show every aspect of my design process, but I feel that I have so far not done any of my projects justice in that respect.

I did not just make this decision from critiques of my portfolio and general portfolio advice; I was looking at design firms websites and tried to figure out some things they do that I don't. The most obvious thing was that they had their personality in their presentation. Their case studies were not reports; they were stories.

Examples:
M3 Design-The first thing that comes up "Who we are", "What we do", "How we think"
Priority Designs- "What makes us different", "Our designs", "Our work", "Our clients"
IDEO- "We are a global design consultancy. We create impact through design."

Now I know just adding "I" or "we" does not make it more personal, but it is a start and it is something to work off of. I read a really helpful article on design writing on Core77. I will just say it gave some great advice that pertains to what I am trying to do with my portfolio. I will not review it, I have said plenty on this post already. Read the article here.

I will post some updates on my progress. What I am trying to do is like anything else, it can be overdone, underdone, or just not done correctly. That being said I will be relying heavily on feedback (from all of you if anyone reads this) once it gets going.

Final Portfolio Goal: When people look at my portfolio I want them to have a solid understand of my thinking and how I design, not just what I have designed.