Dunham Deremer

I was walking into a coffee shop this weekend to get to work, all the final projects are coming up due soon and just sort of scrambling to get everything done on time, and I was waiting in line I saw this elderly gentleman in front of me. With his conversation with the barista/owner it was clear he goes there a lot and had been a customer for a long time. He was struggling with his credit card and the machine wasn’t reading his chip. You could just see it on his face that he was embarrassed and nervous about it. And then the owner just said it’s fine. Comped him on the spot. It’s not some enormous gesture but it was just really nice to see something like that, I feel like I hadn’t seen an act like that since I moved to Seattle.

While it may be a bit of a stretch, I think it related to the creative process, or at least my own. I think often times when I’m working, I try to exist and design in a bubble, without much input from my other classmates, and I think most of the time that works. But I have had a few instances where I might just not be getting something, and that frustration builds and people see it on your face, and they just walk over and try to help. I think this industry can probably be pretty isolated and lonely, and sometimes that’s great and exactly what I want, but it can be a double edged sword, and it’s nice to surround yourself with people who know you well enough that they can help you, even without you having to ask.

So I saw this product, the Petcube as a smart, spaceage item that is reminiscent of a Dyson style product. It might not be as advanced as a bladeless fan but I think that’s what I see it should be advertised as. I think doing that means showcasing relatively modern but definitely upscale and well furnished apartments. Keeping in mind modern aesthetics, I think a really subtle grayscale gradient would be nice as well, as long with simplistic modern branding, some nice custom illustration for social media or the brand itself. And then I think playing up the technological aspect and that metallic look seen on the product would be a nice touch as well.

I feel like after last Fridays conversation, my perception of agency work has muddied a bit. I think Freelance and Contract work sound like the most stressful and challenging for me. I think at one point down the road I’d like to have my own studio, or at least think that would be a good endeavor, but I’m not the best hustler for myself, so for that reason I think I would have a hard time with Freelance. Unless I somehow became just good enough and proficient enough that the work started flowing in, I really don’t see myself going that route. 

I think part-time is fine, if there are other commitments in my life more important at that time or maybe it’s a really good company and just a way to get my foot in the door, this could be an excellent option. It’s kinda like what Mark said about working for free, if it’s for the right reason, it can be helpful. I’m gonna try and find some of these jobs this summer.

Fulltime is most appealing to me. I think either in-house at a company/brand I love or a design studio would be most appealing to me. The in-house at a company sounds really stable, maybe less stressful, but the way Spencer and Todd were talking, it sounds like a lot of those jobs have to start from an agency, so they can figure out if you’re right for them. So an agency might have to precede working at a specific company. Design studio sounds most fun to me. Even if it is more stressful I think coming up with the branding and not working in a pre-existing system sounds like the most fun and rewarding of all the jobs. And the opportunity to work on a lot of different projects and for a lot of different clients sounds most appealing.

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I’m Dunham. Doneham, dumbham. I’m into nerdy shit, way more than people probably know. I get deep into wikipedias for fandoms and have intimate knowledge on shows, movies, franchises that I sincerely have no interest in. I build models, I collect posters, albums, trading cards, hats, bluerays, art books. I’m exceedingly competitive, I have to constantly resist the urge to compare myself and my work to everyone around me. I always want to be the best whatever that means to the point I’m self-conscience of that feeling. I just wanna be good at what I do and I’m scared sometimes maybe I won’t be but I try to work past that.

I want to be a designer that’s respected in design circles. Someone that people can just say is good and is known as someone who does good work, is acknowledged by their peers and is known as a good person to work with. I want to make posters, design album covers, books, magazines, draw sometimes. I want to do all the fun design shit. I want to be creative and have my creativity praised. 

I want these things and am these things because I think I have to prove something to myself. At my old job, it was technically in graphics, but it wasn’t creative at all. And I saw people who’d been working there for 15-20 years making what I make, doing what I do and I was terrified I’d be that complacent. And that sounds shitty, there was nothing wrong with what I was doing, and if they were happy doing that then more power to them, everyone should be so lucky, but I just wante dot do something I could be proud of and thought was worthwhile to myself. So I want to be a designer that’s considered good and knows their shit. I want to take this super seriously because I want to be someone taken seriously.

I want to go back to Minnesota at some point. I love it there. I like it here, and I want to probably work out here for a while but I think my heart is and always will be in Minnesota. The cold winters are worth it it, there’s just too much there for me to not want to go back. And I think I’d want to make something there, a design studio potentially if I got good enough to do that. I want to have a place to exercise my vision of what is good design.

I would say don’t half ass your life. Don’t be complacent. Take a chance on yourself at least once. Work hard, be serious when you need to be, be honest in your critique but kind. Make whatever you’re doing worth it. If they aren’t your friends or family, don’t take shit from anybody. Stand up for yourself, listen to criticism in earnest. Be a sponge. Never stop moving in whatever you’re doing.

So one thing I’ve always loved is when people talk about things that they are really interested in. Even if it’s not something I care about, I think people speaking passionately about a hobby, or a book series they’re into, just something that they do or participate in or a type of culture they consume (preferrably not political) is really interesting to hear about. 

My idea for a video would be kind of a round table of people, probably like 5 of them. One person would go to the front of the classroom and explain in detail to the other 4 about their hobby or interest, could do a powerpoint, could use a whiteboard but just from the start to the beginning explain something you’re interested in and are knowledgable about in as much detail as possible, and then the next person would explain their topic and so on. It’s kind of like Drunk History (minus the drinking to excess) but just people talking conversationally about something they have an intimate knowledge about.

I’ve been to powerpoint parties where people give powerpoints on something dumb and it’s just kind of fun to hear people give presentations that aren’t for class or homework or business. It’s just about this comic series I really loved as a kid or my favorite album and the story behind it. It’s not a super groundbreaking idea but at the end you could incorporate that ranking system where people could rank either who was the best presenter or if you picked a specific category (like movies) people could rank which descriptions they thought were most convincing in having them be interested in their choice. I think it sounds pretty fun to do, you could incorporate questions and make it interactive too, just to have some fun with it.

So I chose to do an art exhibition from the Department of Digital Arts/Ruth Schnell at the University of Applie Arts Vienna. I just stumbled across that event posting looking online for metaverse events. The metaverse I was in was Voxels so the same one that Michael was showcasing on Friday. I hung out for awhile, walked around to see different student submissions. There were DJs and some interesting blocky moving sculptures. I think it was probably just interesting to me but not something I’d ever do of my own volition in my free time.

I think there is a real appeal to the metaverse for people. I think Michaels enthusiasm for the space and it’s potential is probably appropriate, this seems like something if you got on early could be hugely beneficial in the long run, but at this point in my life and the metaverses life, I’m just not interested. My experience was fine but as someone with older devices it just didn’t run smoothly at all. I understand rendering anything other than blocks would be way too hard on most peoples machines but for all the metaverses potential benefits, I just find it very ugly to be in. It’s just unappealing, I don’t like feeling like I’m getting advertised to in what appears to be minecraft with artists marionettes as my avatar.

I think the concept itself at this point seems kind of muddy to me as well. The accessibility of it as a browser and not an app is a boon to it, but it’s combination of social media, extension of the internet and video game feel make it fairly unappealing to me. I’d rather do any one of those things individually, because the individual experiences are more enjoyable at this point. The metaverse feels like when you go to a restaurant that’s doing too many different things on the menu, and you’re like, they can’t have good pizza and sushi. This just feels like it’s doing too much, so I don’t even think I could use this as entertainment at this point. I’d rather just browse the internet, go on social media or play a game. Maybe when this hits like ‘Ready Player One’ fidelity I’d be into it but just not there yet.

I guess it would be easiest to talk about this when discussing my old job. Before coming to school, and honestly what probably pushed me to coming to school in the first place was how much I hated my old job. They called it production graphics but that wasn’t really what is was, it was just setting up art supplied by our customer on our templates and making sure it fell within printing guidelines. I think at various points in the process of that job, I would have been guilty of not meeting all three of criteria. Some of these factors I feel like coule be mental more than realistic, kind of like imposter syndrome though. I think for my first job, I constantly thought I wasn’t doing enough for whatever reason but with time you just kind of learn what it means to be a good employee and how to feel secure in your position.

None of that is to say I thought I was a bad employee, I think I was actually a really good one and one of the best ones they’ve had. What comes with a job like that that encourages and necessitates speed is that you do a lot of the same type of work. It’s just trying to get through as many orders as you possibly can during a day while keeping the quality really high. With the high volume of monotonous tasks, it becomes hard to always pay attention and make sure everything’s perfect, so sometimes there just were mistakes.

We had a metric called claims, and you strived to have less that .2% of all your work come back in a claim, and sometimes it was honestly the customers fault, but for 1.5 years I was terrified of that metric. I thought every time I got one I was gonna have a meeting with my my boss and I was gonna get fired. That wasn’t the case, it was all imaginary, so in a way I’m kind of grateful for that job. Not all mistakes are equal but I think it taught me a lesson in comfortability and job security and if you’re a good, hard working employee who owns up to their mistakes when they happen, you shouldnt have anything to worry about if you have good bosses. And if they aren’t good and you’re not treated fairly, it may be time to step away.