Colten Nelson

The first example of a leadership principle I exhibited would be “Bias for Action” principle. This principle states,

“Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk taking.”

I exhibited this leadership principle when I was working as an electrician. You have to work with speed and efficiency and be effective with the time given. It was also important to do the job right the first time so you did not have to go back and waste time on re-doing the given task. It was ok to do this the first time or two just to get an understanding of the task at hand when being an apprentice, but it was expected for me to learn from my mistakes and get faster with repetition over time.

Another leadership principle I have exhibited was the “Deliver Results” principle. As this principle states,

“Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and in a timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never settle.“

An example of this leadership principle would be my time working as a Real-Estate mover. Deadlines were set for staging houses to put on the market. Often times there were times when I had to work overtime to make sure my job was done efficiently with my team and able to deliver in time with the given deadline.

The final leadership principle I displayed was “Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer”. The following principle says as follows,

“Leaders work every day to create a safer, more productive, higher performing, more diverse, and more just work environment. They lead with empathy, have fun at work, and make it easy for others to have fun. Leaders ask themselves: Are my fellow employees growing? Are they empowered? Are they ready for what’s next? Leaders have a vision for and commitment to their employees’ personal success, whether that be at Amazon or elsewhere.“

Whatever work environment I am in, I think it is crucial to keep a positive and good relationship with everyone as much as possible. It is important that everyone can feel like we are all on the same page and can communicate effectively. If this principle is instilled in everyone on a team, it pays huge dividends in the end. It is also important to have empathy for others if something goes wrong with a co-worker. It is my mission to help my cohort back up if facing some kind of adversity. We should be there for each other when going through struggles in life. If this is built in a workplace, it will help everyone grow and succeed as a collective.

The leadership principle I personally have a hard time adapting to is, “Are Right, A Lot”. Which says,

“Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs.“

This one gives me trouble because I find myself asking for reassurance from a higher-up in work settings and it is something I want to improve upon. Being confident in my abilities and knowing a lot about the job I am currently doing would definitely be beneficial to my leadership qualities and my ability to excel in a job field.

A time I wasn’t quite prepared for a challenge was when I was offered a job as an electrician. I do not consider myself to be a blue-collar worker, but I thought why not give it a shot? This was about 2 years out of high school and I needed to find a career path. It seemed like a good skill to acquire and I figured I would learn a lot, which I did.

At first, I was not the fastest admittedly which was kind of a given. This experience was new and unfamiliar to my lifestyle, so I had to adapt pretty quickly. Another thing I was nervous about was getting shocked. You may think to yourself, “Then why would you become an electrician?” well my answer, is money and not having a clear direction in life. After a few months, I found out that this was not the right career path for me. It was not the right environment. Personally, I tend to thrive in environments where people genuinely want each other to succeed and grow. Also, I found out it was something I disliked. Obviously, not everything is fun, but when you are putting yourself in risky situations, it made me reevaluate my career path.

By saying yes to things, it can help show you what you truly want in life. It will tell you what you gravitate towards, and what you repel from. This is something I am trying to incorporate into my life more recently. Taking more risks while I am still young and able to. I have usually had a hard time getting out of my comfort zone, but I can see the positives of doing so. 

Another time that rings out to me currently is attending Seattle Central. I have never really gone into a major city for a commute, which felt a little daunting at first. I am starting to get the feeling of settling into this busy environment. This high-strung feeling environment will be annoying in the moment, but I believe that I will come out on the other side a better person after it is all said and done.

October 19th, 2022

Finding a work focus to land on for me right now seems, pretty ambiguous to me currently, but if I had to make a guess, I would say I might fall into a low information density tile. I believe this to be the case because I noticed that my work seems to gravitate more toward simplicity rather than making things with a ton of information to process. It is satisfying visually to me when things are not all over the place in terms of art style and a ton to process.

Things with “High Information Density” seem to be a lot more that goes into it and a longer overall process. Hopping into new design projects more often feels way more exciting and fulfilling. Designing for a more broad audience would be nice because more people could understand your work, but working in a niche and a specific audience feels more freeing to work for. It definitely feels like there are pros and cons that I will have to weigh with my focus on design as a job.

The furthest tile away from me would have to be High Information Density + Specific Audience. The examples that were given, “Research Portal and Medical Illustration” sounds supermundane and lacks the excitement of the design process in my eyes. I imagine this quartile does pay better than the rest though just because it is so complicated.

Before arriving at Seattle Central College, I was never even giving web development a chance and assumed I would hate it. Obviously, we have not been at school for too long, but I am enjoying it more than I thought I would, so it is all about trying many different niches in the design world as possible and seeing what sticks.

All in all, finding my strengths and weaknesses in Design is one of my goals that I want to figure out through trial and error.

For my mashup design, I wanted to think of a word to best summarize how I was feeling at the time. Chaos was the word I decided on. As far as the rest of the text in my composition, I wanted to make it clear that it was good chaos, something exciting, yet unknown. The electric green signifies a positive, happy energy. The black surrounding it is the unknown. The next step was to think of how I was going to incorporate 3 art mediums into the piece. The first thing that was used was writing out the word Chaos with some sriracha I had in my fridge. I love hot sauce on tons of food, especially the breakfast burritos that keep me going through a long school day. I think this is an interesting approach because it made me think of ways to get more creative and not only use one program.

After saucing up my creation, I decided to image trace it in Adobe Illustrator. This is the top part of my word in my final composition.

Since the colors I had chosen felt very Digital-esque, and that is definitely apart of the program. I felt pixel art would be another avenue to travel down. I used a program called, “Aseprite” to create the bottom half of my word, as well as the pattern in the background of my composition. I have very little experience with the program, so there was a little bit of a learning curve that slowed me down initially. Overall, I learned a good amount from this particular experience about the program.

My final medium I used was glitch art. Examples of this in my design include; pixel sorting, distorting, dithering, and cutting/pasting. The pixel sorting is the effect where the pixels in some areas have that ‘stretched’ effect. This particular effect I managed to use from a glitch app on my phone. Incorporating effects in this manner seemed to really pull my idea together. It was fun to basically dirty up the work at this stage. Roughen up the edges and not make everything look so perfect. I felt this embodied how my art journey at Seattle Central College would be like.

Now that I have addressed my art mediums that I used, with this project I wanted to make it look like an old game screen that looked like it was breaking out into a new direction of some sort. Essentially this encapsulates my start of this journey at Seattle Central College. I am excited to learn so much here and can’t wait to set out on my new adventures.