Design in Design

Let me recount to you a story of how I randomly found myself being part of a student club at UofT called "Design in Design".

Fridays are generally my favourite day to be on campus. I have my Women & Gender Studies tutorial in the morning, my peer mentorship drop-in in the early afternoon, and last semester, I played badminton for the rest of the afternoon.

I didn't sign up for the badminton club this semester because I felt I had gained a little too much weight over the holidays to really be competitive. This, of course, is merely an excuse (because I would lose weight by being in the club) but well, it's too late now. I can always drop-in, but that costs a little more than if I pre-register.

Anyway.

So here I am in room 220, just hanging out by myself after all the peer mentorship people have gone, and since I don't have badminton to go to, I figure I'm going to camp out here and throw stuff in the air and catch it, all acrobat-style. And once I get bored with that, I'll practice my reading voice by reading passages from The Magicians.

So it's around 4:00 and an apparently middle-eastern guy around my age with an ill beard walks in. I foolishly blurt out "You can come in", as if I own the place, and he merely nods at me. He then walks over to a desk, pulls out a laptop, and plugs in.

I go back to my pseudo-juggling. As I catch one more piece of clothing that I've been throwing in the air, I realize that laptop-guy is here to stay. I figure I might as well go see why he's here; maybe something is going on and I have to clear out soon.

G: "Hey. So, what are you here for?"
M: "Our club is meeting here in 15 minutes. It's called "Design in Design", and we meet with clients to design logos and brand images."
G: "Sounds neat!"

I happened to have my sketchbook with me, and "Maruf" (laptop-guy) seems to be okay with me hanging out as people trickle in, so I sit down at a desk and start to doodle. My beautiful red pen with blue ink runs out on me, so I'm forced to use those standard bic pens to draw.

The "CEO" of this club then walks in; a younger-looking guy whom I find out later is 22. Maruf introduces me to him, and I find out that the head honcho is named "Joe".

J: "So what do you want to be here?"
G: "Uh... well... trainee I guess."
J: "Alright so you're going to be Creative Director and I'm placing you in that group over there."

Joe points to a small group of about half-a-dozen people sitting together, discussing and laughing as if they are old friends. I join myself to them and awkwardly try to join in on the conversation. It doesn't work out too well, but they all seem very friendly so it's not that bad of a situation.

Finally, the action starts. A client comes to our table and describes a logo he wants turned into a banner. As a creative director, I'm supposed to lead the vision of how we want to produce this logo, apparently. So I scribble in my sketchbook, pretending to know what the hell I'm doing when I really have no idea what I'm doing in this room.

An hour passes, and it's time to go. Joe tells me to add him on Facebook and mentions that they would love to see me again next week.

So I came back the next week, and I'm still confused as hell, but apparently work is getting done because we have new logos to design.

And then today, the third week that I've been going to these meetings, I realize I can switch my title to "Quality Assurance Manager", so I get moved to the marketing team and I spend the hour looking over e-mails and double-checking an event promotion page.

Weird. Cool.

Signed,
Kaleidoughscope

Writing from the heart

Writing from the heart, rather than from the brain, is difficult.
Too often I have found myself blogging solely to see words pop up on the screen, my motivation being that of feeling like I have accomplished something. This feeling is one that I can partially characterize as a heart-skip that I get when I hit "Publish".
In my experience, this heart-skip is much more pronounced when I've just written a post from the heart. If I've written a post mostly from the brain, I don't feel as much satisfaction.

So what's the difference between writing from the heart and writing from the brain?
Well, when you write from the heart, you get emotionally invested in what you're writing. The words can sometimes flow through you onto the page like an endless stream of liquid creativity. Other times, a single word can suffice to express everything.

Writing from the brain isn't all that bad. For a lot of courses in my undergrad that have essay components, I am intellectually (rather than emotionally) invested in what I am writing. Ideally, I'd be equally invested in both, but that would require a course with a special blend of liberty, creativity, and intellectual rigor that is difficult to find in early-year undergrad courses.

The challenge with writing from the heart is to not revert to writing from the brain when your emotions get locked up or blocked. The easy way out is to write fancy words and hope for the best; but are you really being truthful to yourself and your muse if you do this all the time?

Signed,
Kaleidoughscope

And the cradle will rock

Signed,
Kaleidoughscope

Try #2 at Robarts

Different floors in Robarts have different sound levels. So here I am, stuck trying to write stuff one finger at a time at 1/00000000000000000 x the speed of light. It's a pain.

This is a really weird day.

Signed,
Kaleidoughscope