What Am I Doing? (Apr 2009)

There’s little to update for this month. It’s what you may say a transition period of things that have happened and of things to come. I’m trying to wrap up the final behind-the-scenes stuff with Portal A before I move into a different stage of this freelance life. But this transition period will be no different from any other time of my life; I will be busy busy busy trying to get through the thousands of next-actions from my 100+ projects list.

Just another plug for my client: if you need some video work done, check them out. They’re also looking for an intern for the summer. No coffee runs; real chance to do actual work.

Quote I Go By Lately

“Don’t Live in a Design Bubble.” —Me, to myself.

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Don’t Live in a Design Bubble

Last night, I was going through my Google Reader and came upon Subtraction’s post “Dear Designer: You Suck.” To best honest, I didn’t really read the whole thing. I read the first paragraph and skimmed the rest. From what I assumed I understood, the post was about designers not taking non-designers’ criticisms well. As I skimmed through the rest of the post, one of the headings read, “Living in Bubbles.”

It didn’t really matter what it said (though I’m sure it was very thoughtful and well-written), but I realized that I’ve been living in a design bubble and I really should go out and explore and do something new that is not related to design. I really want to do this on a regularly (e.g. monthly) basis, but I don’t know what. Surf? Travel? Skydive? So if this idea comes to fruition, it would be fun to post it here.

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Portal A Interactive

A little more than four months ago, my designer friend Alan Wells recommended me to his friends Kai and Nate for a freelance gig to build a website for their newly founded viral video production company. He sent me the link to their site at the time, which he had quickly put together showcasing their past video projects. I quickly did more research on these guys to get a sense of the type of work they do. (And by research, I meant watching all of their videos in one sitting.)

One of their larger projects was a video blog called Huge in Asia, where they lived in Vietnam and other Asian countries for a couple months documenting their adventures. (I mentioned this in my monthly review last December.) After watching the fifty-episode vlog series, I knew that these guys possessed the potential for excellent content and success, and despite the upcoming busy holiday season at Peet’s, I decided that I would help these guys out and build a site for their company Portal A Interactive.

Pre-work Work

Being a typical recent-graduate designer, I couldn’t help but start coming up with ideas for the site. (I suppose I was still in school mode, where I was compelled to act on any ideas I thought of without considering ownership and compensation.) At the same time, though, having completed a design project for my relatives a few months back without a contract, I definitely learned my lesson and was determined to do everything I was supposed to as a freelancer this time around to protect myself and the client from unnecessary unhappiness.

I looked up tutorials for drafting freelance design contracts, and like the advice that young designers receive from experienced designers for preparing portfolios, there was an unbelievably overwhelming wealth of types of ways that one could go about this. There was so much conflicting advice that I could seriously curl up under my covers and cry. I asked my freelancer friends for advice and tried to write my own contract, but I was still concerned that I might be missing something that would come back and bite me later on.

Fortunately, I remembered that AIGA’s site has a section for business practices. I found the AIGA Standard Form of Agreement for Design Services that designers can use as a template. I adapted the AIGA agreement and took out one or two clauses that didn’t apply at all and had no way of hurting me or the client. I also put together a project-specific proposal, and quickly tried to get all that legal stuff taken care of so I could stop turning off the part of my brain that is responsible for thinking of ideas for the site.

The Logo

After the administrative stuff was taken care of, the first task in the agenda was creating the logo. I enjoy designing logos not because it’s easy (it’s not). I love that good logos look simple, yet are highly complex. Generally, the more different elements there are in a logo, the weaker the logo becomes. So with this project, I tried to keep the logo as simple as I could, sticking to the criteria of using a “one” letterform design and projecting a light-bulb signage mood that the client had envisioned.

Here's the basic concept of the logo:

Here's the final version, lit up and against a dark background:

Since this logo doesn’t include the name of the company, I developed a secondary logo mainly for the website.

Details of the neon:

While the neon isn’t the same type of lighting as the light-bulb logo, incorporating both into the site creates a mood that could not be achieved by using just one. This results in a mix, a melting pot of ideas, something that is not completely established and boring, and something that is flexible and can change as it grows, which is, in a way, what this company is about.

WordPress

Before I took on this project, I had never touched WordPress. I had heard about it, but I always thought it was a paid service, and I just didn’t want to pay to create a blog that I could do the same thing for free somewhere else. But turns out it was free, and it gives you mad power for customization… in PHP. I was new to PHP, so this was both a challenge and an opportunity to learn.

As I worked on this project, I became more familiar with the WordPress setup as well as with PHP and MySQL, which I was also new to. But I quickly grew to like it. In fact, I liked it so much, I set up the video thumbnail section in the header that is based on MySQL. Furthermore, when I will be done with this project in a few weeks, I’m going back to my own site and convert it to accommodate the use of MySQL, such as my portfolio and experiments pages, which is currently based on PHP and XML.

Interactivity

This project has also allowed me to experiment with interactivity that I would not have needed with my own site. The video thumbnail section in the header has a slider that shows more thumbnails when you click on the arrows. It’s a simple function, but there’s a lot of planning involved. It’s even Javascript-disabled-safe in that, if you disable Javascript, the arrows disappear so you won’t have non-functioning arrows which would weaken user experience.

Another interactive feature is the Grayout. When you click on a thumbnail video in the header or a Featured video in the sidebar, the whole page darkens and displays the video on that page. The size also adjusts based on your window size (except for IE) up to certain max/min values. Again, it’s Javascript-disabled-safe; if you disable Javascript, the images act as normal links and bring to a different page so you can still watch the videos.

Finally, launched two weeks ago, a video player that plays more than one video in sync. This was something that Kai and Nate had first suggested, way in the beginning, before we even met and agreed to work together. Currently, the controls are basic, but using the YouTube Chromeless Player API, I set up a player that plays two or more videos at the same time, so that one (or more) video(s) can sync with one another. Here’s an example of what they did with this player. I’ve added volume control that Kai and Nate can determine beforehand to maximize viewer’s audio experience.

What I Learned

There’s a lot more to talk about than what I can cover here (or that you’re willing to read), so let me wrap up by briefly going over the many things that I have learned through this project.

• Contracts. This once nerve-wracking issue has been resolved thanks to AIGA.
• Neon. I never had to draw neon before, but thanks to Bert Monroy, I’m proud to say that I did a pretty good job with the neon I created on the site.
• WordPress. Move over Blogger, I’m with WordPress now.
• MySQL/PHP. My new best friends whom I still have much yet to learn.
• Interactivity. Much love for scripting (and a little bit of hate for troubleshooting).

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Function is Beauty.

It just is.

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Was Math Discovered or Invented?

I just listened to a podcast episode of the Design Matters with Debbie Millman, with guest Natalia Ilyin. This was a particularly interesting episode for me because of the amount of philosophical questions posed, like the time when Jonah Lehrer of Proust Was a Neuroscientist was the guest.

Mathematics

One of the topics they talked about in the beginning was whether humans discovered mathematics, or did they invent it? While there are arguments for both sides and the discussion would go on forever, they pointed out that humans point out relationships of things (such as seeing one planet next to another planet means that there are two planets, hence mathematics! But if you don’t see the relationships of those objects, no math occurs).

Symbols and Answers

Before they started talking about the mathematics topic, Debbie and Natalia discussed the theory that that are two types of people in the world, the kind that asks for meaning in everything in life through symbols and things, and the kind that are, I guess, more objective and follows a specific path and looks for the correct answer and that’s it.

This to me is sort of a left brain, right brain question, and it got me thinking, where do I fit? For a good chunk of my life, I’ve been dedicated to finding the right answer, because math, a favorite subject of mine, typically has one right answer. But at the same time, I’ve been told by some and have realized myself that I often have so many ideas in my head, and that’s where the creativity portion and the practice of graphic design come in.

So I often see myself as being in the middle: I enjoy the creative arts and graphic design, because of the enormous range of possibilities and opportunities, but I also get excited about math and programming, as I am comforted by the fact that following a particular set of direction gets me a particular answer or outcome.

So in situations where I am undecided, which happens often, I reach for the middle ground and ask, “Can’t I be both?” This is why I’m getting comfortable with where I stand right now: sort of one foot in the graphic arts, and the other in web programming. I’d love to do both at the same time, so let’s see how that works out.

Perfection=Completeness

Another topic that came up during the interview was the idea of perfection. Natalia believed that perfection is about completeness, and design is really good for people with OCD, because designers usually follow a grid created by modernists a hundred years ago dreaming of creating Utopian societies and no one has since figured out a better way to teach design. I just can’t help but agree and put myself within that group.

There are many other topics that they’ve covered that I do not have time to cover here, such as what “home” really means, and how semiotics affect us. So if you’re a neurotic, and/or math-loving, and/or philosophical type like me, this podcast is worth checking out. The Design Matters podcast is available on iTunes.

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What Am I Doing? (Mar 2009)

Freelance

Things are going well with my freelance project. We’re pretty much wrapping up with the foundation of the site, with a few more adjustments and fixes. Hopefully, in the coming weeks, I’ll be able to present it here with some process work.

GTD

I finally had some time to revamp my GTD system, and it seems to be working better than before. I basically digitized my projects list and actions so that they’re easier to look through (and therefore, less intimidating for me to review and organize). There are still parts of the system that I need to streamline, but things are definitely more efficient already.

Twitter

I recently started using a public Twitter account. My username is ivanwlam, and you’re welcome to follow me if you want. So far, some of the “famous” people I’ve followed include David Allen (the GTD Guy), Ze Frank, swissmiss, Armin and Bryony at Under Consideration, and TED.

Cut&Paste

Me. Me. Me. The fact that I forgot to mention that I went to watch my friend Sam Sellers talentedly compete at the SF stop of the Cut&Paste Competition Tour is unacceptable. Long story short, Sam did a great job and was robbed of his first prize. I love the piece he did for the first round, which was (and will be again) my Facebook profile photo.

Motivation

Something happened in the past week that retriggered and intensified my motivation to advance my career and my life as soon as possible. I can’t go into the details, but I now have a stronger desire to be independent and self-sufficient and to take control of my own life. So hopefully, in the coming months, I will have more exciting things to report.

Really Simple Designer Web Comic

Within the past month, I ended one blog and started another. Really Simple Designer Web Comic was an experiment to create a daily web comic starring Point, Line, and Plane. Every start of the day, I take about half an hour coming up with a concept and quickly draw a comic for the next day on my Wacom tablet. The idea of this project was to become more comfortable with my tablet, and I definitely am now. I ended it after two months because it was taking too much time of my day and the creative juices just weren’t flowing as fluidly as I’d like.

One Per Day

One Per Day is a much simpler project. Every day, I post about the day before, using only one word or phrase as the title of the post, and only one sentence describing the day. This keeps my post lengths short and to the point. It’s sort of a practice for me to pack as much content and meaning into one word and one sentence as I could, instead of dragging on and on about an incident (which I tend to do quite often… like right now).

The idea for One Per Day originated from a revisit to Ze Frank’s The Show, which indirectly kept a record of Ze’s personal life and experiences behind the scenes during its running. I have tried to keep a record of my life ever since I could write and had self-awareness. I used to write by hand with special notebooks and special pencils, and then switched to LiveJournals for a while, then to design blogs with monthly reviews (like this one).

But all these posts were taking too much time of my life to sustain, as I write really long posts, usually about now-apparently trivial things, and I wouldn’t want to return to them if I wanted to recall events of my life at the time.

One Per Day reaches a compromise between wanting to document every experience of my life and cutting down the number of words that I would have to read later on. One year from now, the individual events that happen every day will mean very little to me. In the end, a day is just a day, even on special occasions. What’s more important is the overall mood.

I just started blogging on One Per Day on WordPress (my new friend, perhaps my fortune cookie best friend?), and I haven’t gotten to redesigning it. But the presentation is going to be more streamlined and intuitive. Subscribe to the feed, and stay tuned.

Quotes I Go By Lately

“A day is a day. Every event, however trivial, will, by definition, influence and change the rest of my life.”

“Keep it simple (and easy), stupid.”

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Please Return It

This isn’t design or creativity related, but I want to use this to ask anyone who’s picked up something of mine to please return it. Thank you.

You may use the form here. http://www.ivanwlam.com

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