Brigid Slinger

This week’s post is inspired by AJ Hanneld, who has worked in many settings and often finds herself working as a designer in a space that links graphic design with film or other visual media professionals. Because of this, the challenge for this post is to discuss the “other visual world” of photo and video.  Here are a few of my first impressions and reflections:

• Wow, I’m not very comfortable doing anything resembling photography, including shooting video footage. The lighting and the framing and the bossing of the actor or the model around… it’s all really far out of my comfort zone, so it’s awesome to collaborate with someone from the photo or film side who loves to shoot the photography or the footage. I’m glad that opportunities for that kind of partnership exist in the working world, and it opens up so many more opportunities for creativity when there are more media available. It’s a great reminder of appreciating the talents that other professionals have and the power of working on a team where everyone’s skills complement each other rather than a team where everyone is alike with similar strengths and weaknesses.
• So I don’t love shooting photos or video, but I do love other parts of the process in the photo/video world, and I’m really excited to explore more in New Media through the rest of the year. I’ve just started the After Effects module, and I’ve only tried After Effects a little in the past, but it was quite fun, so I’m looking forward to doing that again. Editing can also be fun, and in the video module, I especially enjoyed the assignment on sound design, which I had never really thought about much before, but it’s really its own whole field of work and makes such a difference. I’d love to experiment with more “mashup” concepts like blending illustration into film or photography for interesting effects to see where that exploration leads.
• On both the film/video and the graphic design side, there’s a lot of creative work to be done in terms of the technical skill for producing the product, but a huge portion of the work is also on the project management side of things. Even in my super limited experience with making films for this module, I was putting a lot of work into planning my project and tracking whether I had assembled all of my items, if I had shot everything that needed to be completed, whether I was on schedule to get everything filmed before the lighting outside changed dramatically or my actor had to go home and so on. That’s really similar to working in design where each project has stakeholders and different professionals offering different kinds of input that all need to be coordinated. Each deliverable likely has a whole set of components that need to be created and many factors considered. I suppose the take-away here is that, in every creative field, project management is a really critical skill, and half of the job is learning to manage the workflow effectively.
• I think that often the creative work of people in the film or photography world is often viewed by the people in the world as either “art” in the way fine art is understood. It can have a kind of elevated status but also might exist in a realm that’s just for decoration or its own sake without much practical application. On the other hand, graphic design is understood as more of a “craft,” I suppose, as work that’s being done to create or promote a product or to communicate a specific message or function, creating something that’s meant to be used. I’ve come from an art background in some ways but have always felt kind of frustrated about that line between “art” and “craft” and the sort of status that those two categorizations imply, and when we think about film and photo and graphic design, that boundary between “art” and “craft” is just as fabricated. Film and photo are often such important components of the designed world, and there is so much design work that can go into the production of even very “artistic” films or photography shoots. We should all be able to think of ourselves as “artists,” “craftspeople,” or “designers” and place a high value on all of those roles.  Someone who is producing successful work in film, design, or really any creative field is probably actually wearing all of those hats simultaneously.

This week’s post is inspired by Margaret Darcher, who is a Principal Designer at Amazon and introduced everyone to Amazon’s leadership principles. Three leadership principles that I have used in my previous workplaces include Earn Trust, Learn and Be Curious, and Insist on the Highest Standards.

• Earn Trust: Two of my first jobs were working as a summer camp counselor at a full-day art camp for kids and working  as youth counselor at an organization that served homeless young adults. For both of these jobs, earning trust was probably the single most important thing needed in order to be successful at the job. When working at a summer camp, I had to earn trust with the parents on day one. They needed to feel confident and safe about leaving their children with me to learn and do projects so that they could go to work without worrying. Some steps I took to earn that trust included setting up my classroom in a friendly, inviting way, letting everyone know what activities would be planned for the day, taking time to answer questions, and making sure that each child came home with a successful project (or more!) each afternoon. I also sent out emails describing our day each afternoon with questions that parents could ask their children about what they had learned. When working with homeless youth, it’s important to understand that many of these young people have been through serious trauma in their lives. Probably adults have failed them in some important ways, and one way that they might protect themselves is by not trusting. Earning trust in this setting takes a very long time, so it’s important to be very honest about what’s happening, even if the news is bad. At the same time, when there is bad news or something unpleasant happens, it’s important to react calmly and thoughtfully, not to be a person who might potentially break down or explode when the going gets tough.  It’s also important to make sure that you never promise anything you’re not able to do and that you establish a consistent routine so that everyone knows what to expect from you. I worked really hard to be a consistent, calm, communicative, and trustworthy person in both of these setting.
• Learn and Be Curious: I also used to work at a science museum where the company values were all about curiosity and discovery. This was a great place for me to work for a while because I love learning and find that, when I’m in a job where I can no longer learn, I stop feeling fulfilled, and it becomes time to move on. In this job, there was so much opportunity to learn about science as well as to try working in different ways, with technology and in settings with visitors. One area that I especially enjoyed working in was the planetarium. During my training there, I was introduced to the constellations of the northern sky and some related Greek mythology and the very basics that I needed to know to make the planetarium work during my presentations. Once I got comfortable with the basics, I took the initiative to learn more on my own. I learned more about constellations beyond the Greek and Roman ones so that I could incorporate a more multicultural approach into my presentations. I also went out of my way to incorporate fancy tricks to impress the audience, such as simulating a smooth sunrise or giving the appearance of flying through space, and I took opportunities to do extra work getting the sky set up for a new season. Eventually, I moved into roles there with more responsibility, and because I had done that work, I got to be part of the team creating and programming new shows such as a preschool show and shows about ancient stargazing to go with special cultural exhibits. This led to getting to learn new tech programs that were specific for the planetarium and that knowledge helped a lot when I eventually became a supervisor and started running a NASA-funded program at the museum. All in all, I loved learning about astronomy, and continuing to learn and be curious helped me not only to move up a career ladder while also getting to explore my interests.
• Insist on the Highest Standards: My father is quite the perfectionist, and he might have passed a bit of that personality trait on to me. I tend to have high expectations for myself, and I like when I’ve done work that I feel is high quality and complete. I often appreciate a good tracking spreadsheet that’s well-organized or creating a system for doing a job that works like clockwork. Another job that I held for a while was in HR at a very large organization, and when I started, I took the position of a person who had been let go because they were not staying on top of the work or keeping records organized. As a result, they’d mistakenly shared a lot of confidential information inappropriately and had lost information that should have been kept, which was very challenging for my team. I knew that I had to quickly do damage control and create systems that would prevent those problems and track a huge amount of minute tasks and details. I created color-coded spreadsheets, a standard process for different tasks, and did a lot of customer service to try to soften over past mistakes without laying blame on anyone. Once the basic systems were in place, I realized that we needed improvement in several areas such as understanding different nuances of privileged information (like QI at a hospital or attorney-client privileges), ways to track work that had been done in the past, and updating to new technology (much of the work was still being transferred by CD rom). I created trainings on different types of confidential information, set up a file structure and naming conventions so that past work would be searchable, and worked hard to get a cloud-based file share system in place. Once these elements were in place, I continued to work on more improvements such as in our communication to other departments about how our systems worked. In that position, there was continual room for improvement, so I did my best to continue moving the work forward towards a higher standard.

One leadership principle I think I might find challenging, especially as a beginning designer, is Are Right, A Lot. It sounds like a tall order, especially as a junior employee just learning about the business, to be frequently “right” when you are just learning about the company and the work. Don’t get me wrong, I like to have right answers as much as anyone, but in fact, in most real-life adult situations, it’s been my experience that there’s rarely a “right” answer, but rather several decent options, each with their own pros and cons. There’s almost never a single correct answer to a design problem, just many possible elegant solutions, and even in very litigious situations, attorneys almost never give straightforward advice because there’s not  “right” way to handle a problem, just available options with varying degrees of risk and practicality. Also, I can’t think of ever deciding that I want to work with or for a person or be their friend because they’re always right about things; sometimes that can even be off-putting. Instead, I appreciate when someone can be a good listener and collaborator, when they are thoughtful about ethical decisions and care for humans, and when they learn together with you. My best supervisors have been honest and open with information and feedback and have been the kinds of folks to go to bat for what their programs and employees need to be successful. This has nothing to do with knowing all the answers or being able to say “I told you so” in the end. Sure, they want the final product to be high-quality in the end, but they trust their employees to have the expertise needed to do the job while simultaneously being there for support and big-picture vision. If I were at a high leadership level, that’s the kind of person I’d strive to be like, and I’d hope that I could let go of a need to be “right” all of the time in favor of being real and continuing to listen, learn, collaborate, and grow.

This week’s post is inspired by Jessica Aceti, who encouraged everyone to say “yes” to opportunity even if you’re not 100% prepared or confident, as a way to push yourself to grow, gather experience, and network. Over the course of my career so far, I’ve also found this strategy to be the way; you’re never really 100% prepared to take a big leap, embark on a brand new kind of project, or make a big life change, but sometimes, these kinds of leaps are what’s needed to move forward or even to just continue on.

One example of a time in my professional life when I was faced with a challenge that I wasn’t prepared for was a few years ago when I was working in the science museum field at a museum. I was part of a department that, among other things, created live theater-like shows about science content for our audiences. At one point well before the pandemic, we got a grant to create a live theater science show about epidemiology that would combine live theater with interactive content and video, and I collaborated on coordinating the project with one other project manager. The first challenge of the project was to develop a storyline that would be exciting and fun about scientific work studying diseases.

Once we’d decided that the audience would take on roles as epidemiologists trying to solve the mystery of a zombie illness, the technical work began of filming, editing, and formatting everything into a media experience that would incorporate both theater and film with many different possible surprise endings, depending on the choices of the audience. For this part of the project, my supervisor had arranged for the help of a volunteer who said that he had a lot of filming and editing experience. At that time, I’d never used any film-related software and was just assigned to be a helper to support the actors, keep track of the time, help with props, and so on. However, the volunteer suddenly and unexpectedly disappeared after filming, and someone had to edit the footage and program the interactive components of the presentation using a new software program that had been purchased under the grant.

Who was this “someone”? It was me. I had to quickly step up and teach myself how to edit film footage in Adobe Premiere using internet tutorials. This was pretty complicated as our missing volunteer had convinced everyone to film with a green-screen background and no one had realized that it’s important to control the lighting and colors of clothing carefully so that the green screen would work properly. After that, I had to use the new presentation software to program the show so that the audience could select which quarantined zombies they wanted to interview and discover the answer to the puzzle in their own way.

In some ways, my work was a huge success because I saved the production from completely tanking when our volunteer dropped out. In other ways, it was a hot mess because I wasn’t able to save some of the zombie footage and deadlines for the project had to be pushed back a lot since I was learning the software as I went along. There was also a steep learning curve for the live actors and presenters, which made it really challenging for them to use the new software to run the show, so my co-worker and I had to be available for technical support for a very long training period with the show. All in all, the project was very stressful, but I’m glad I did it because I learned so much new tech and had so much fun with the storyline.

This week’s post is inspired by Joe Hallock and his colleagues from Microsoft who spoke specifically about designing at Microsoft and more generally about work as a designer in the corporate world, comparing his experience at giant Microsoft to other experiences that might be found at smaller organizations. He also shared a useful graphic for understanding design projects in terms of their information density compared to the specificity of the target audience. The audience for a project can range from very broad to very specific, and at any point along that range, information density can vary from low to high. For me at this time, it’s a bit hard to answer the question of where along these spectrums I’d like to work in the future because I’m open to many different possibilities, although I have to admit that Joe Hallock made Microsoft sound much more appealing than I’d thought previously. I suppose to pin it down, I have to say that I’m into the idea of balance. I think an ideal position upon graduation might be with a small team in a large corporation because I’m interested in the stability and opportunities for growth that a large corporation can offer as well as the resume-building effect of having experience with a well-known employer whose design work is strong. I hope to find myself in a position where I’m able to find mentorship and build my portfolio while establishing good habits as a solid foundation for future work. It’s also important to me to find a work environment that’s supportive of women’s voices and is flexible enough that I can support my family and have creative space on my off-time for passion projects. I think that there are some large to medium employers out there who fit these criteria pretty well while other large employers (stereotypically Amazon) have expectations that “successful” employees will have lives that revolve only around their work. In terms of information density and specific audiences, I think I have the most experience with projects that are fairly high on the scale of information density; some of my past studies and work have included museum education and zoological or botanical illustrations. Through that work, I’ve developed a strength in making complicated information understandable for a non-expert audience, and I’m definitely interested in exploring work that would involve interactive data visualizations. This would fall into the quadrant of high density but broad audience. I’ve also learned recently a little bit about UX work that’s intended to solve design problems in high-risk scenarios; one example is design work that was done at Children’s Hospital looking at how surgical tools and operating room equipment is organized in order to streamline and improve outcomes for patients. This was really inspirational because the designers were able to implement changes that quite significantly lowered the amount of life-threatening emergencies for children during surgical procedures even though they themselves weren’t surgeons or medical professionals. While the actual designed elements themselves didn’t contain a high information density, the designers dealt with very high density information in order to arrive at the solution, and it was for a very specialized audience: the surgeons. I’m really interested in exploring how UX design could be used in ways like this to improve lives and the human condition, but I think that the designs that actually come out of that type of work could wildly vary in terms of audience specificity as well as information density. Finally, I really love some of the more tangible aspects of design like drawing illustrations on paper with different media, and I hope that my future career will allow for a component of hands-on image rendering; I think that could also be something that happens at a company of any size and for any audience from broad to specific.

This week’s post is inspired by Paolo Tossolini’s talk about his work with prototyping and emerging digital media and prototyping. He had a quirky personality and really championed his work style of taking risks and investing in new technology up front, which makes room for his own experimentation and learning, then using the outcome to market his prototypes to a client or business. Some products are successes and others fail to bring in income or take off in the market, but Tossolini finds value in learning from the process for all of them. His approach to prototyping is really based in a “mashup” philosophy, and his process begins with finding technologies that are new and novel to him and thinking of unique ways that they can be combined with each other or with other tech or particular locations to produce something new.

Inspired by this, here is my own little mashup:

To create this digital collage, I combined images that I created using Adobe Illustrator and hand-drawing on paper. Some of the images were originally intended to be still, and others were part of animations. I combined these with photographs and text. To put it all together, I used Figma, which is a program that will be needed for interactive media classes but that I haven’t used before, so this project was a little like a prototype for me. The images are mainly parts of work that I have done here at Seattle Central, and the text is just a few phrases from first quarter teachers, but I’ve also included pictures of my daughter whose arrival interrupted my work in the Graphic Design program a few years ago. I think that the biggest challenge for me was simply figuring out how to combine all of the elements that I wanted to use in a program that’s new to me. In retrospect, Figma might not be the most ideal program for collage-making, but I am glad that I tried it. By experimenting with placing the images, I got some beginning experience using some of the tools, and I feel a little more comfortable than I did with the interface. I can also see that I have a lot more to learn about how and when Figma might be most useful!