Categories
Uncategorized

Crossing Over

It feels like I’m between 2 worlds with photo and design right now. Photo was/is still my first love in the art world. There’s nothing that has brought me more joy expressively than being able to capture life and see things through a camera. Doing portraiture for clients, freelancing for a music publication, taking photos with friends, with street photography, it was all a way to connect with others in a unique way. I look up to those around me in so many different ways and get inspired easily, capturing it through photography just made sense to me, I wanted to highlight the life around me.

Design is a new passion that I am quickly growing to really appreciate this field and what really goes on behind creating the things I use, feel, hear and see everyday. I have lots of friends from high school who went on to do design at some really cool places, and watching their growth definitely inspired me to reach out to this program. I loved seeing the posters, the branding, the app prototypes and packaging and all of the amazing ideas they brought to life with just their talents and some technology.

I am truly enjoying the chance to intertwine these worlds as I see fit while I gain a bigger repertoire of skills through this program. I have definitely opened up myself to the idea of just how design can influence and aid photography. Being able to build app prototypes in Figma, for example, while heavily rooted in design, also incorporates lots of etiquette with photo choice. Figureing out how big to make a photo, since these are really what people enjoy in an app experience. What kind of text would compliment the hero image that I’m putting on the landing page of this website? The accents and background colors of pages can also be so dependent on the palette of the videos or photos you are incorporating in that project.

It also comes down to what makes great photography? I think about how in our design courses we are able to cycle through photography so interchangeably because of mockups we are making, using plugins like Unsplash to have access to really high quality free photos. I also think about what it’d be like to have both of those jobs in one. I am starting to see that I am a person who could be qualified to provide the photos and the layout for or a project. By the end of the program I see endless potential for melding these two worlds together in a position where I get a good amount of creative control on how things are executed, wherever I end up. Erik Fadiman mentioned in class yesterday that lots of UI jobs may be dissolving in the next few years because of the progress with AI generated art. I must find a way to be multidisciplinary, because I was genuinely interested in UI. I think rounding myself out to be someone who can do UI, UX, visual design, branding, packaging, AND photography is my best option for being able to market myself. I’m still gaining confidence in what it means to be a designer and I already feel like I’m on the right path. I want to keep in touch with my old skillset with photo/video too to make sure that these skills, along with my current focus as design, grow together and only compound my artistic prowess and my marketability.

Categories
Uncategorized

When I Led

Working in the service industry since I was 18 has definitely given me lots of opportunities to explore “customer obsession”. Whether I was at the pizza shop, the gym, or at the dispensary, I practiced what it would take to optimize every transaction with the greatest outcome for the customer. I would say I have the customer obsession model down every time I help someone at the dispensary. I try and tailor each experience to the customers needs. I remember having a particular customer experience with a couple (man and woman, mid 20s) where they took over 50 minutes choosing which marijuana products they wanted to buy. An average transaction mind you, is approximately 2-3 minutes. This couple I’m conversing with and showing products to really have no idea what they want, they literally ask me to show them everything (we have over 300-500 different products in the store easily). Along the way I’m making lots of suggestions that could be great options, but nothing is sticking. Most budtenders might give up at this point, seeing that they cannot make the customer happy. At one point the woman acknowledges she never spent this long in a dispensary (and I couldn’t have imagined a longer transaction either) but she keeps on searching, and so do I, happily. In this situation I really had to set my feelings aside and think, “There’s something that this customer isn’t finding, I MUST help them find it! We will find something you’re excited to try”… even though I was so over this at that point. She finally picks something and I collapse to the floor as they leave. Had I not practiced customer obsession and stayed focused on what they wanted and getting the best options out for them, I may have been there over an hour and a half who knows? At my dispensary we strive for the best service and don’t really pay attention to what the competition is doing.

A time where I demonstrated delivering results was in the final group project in my visual journalism course with Joe Gosen at Western Washington University. Our project was to create a documentary style film with The Nooksack River as the focus. In this project I worked with one other classmate, Ed. Ed was a macho man, and I was a little twerp in comparison, but I had heart. We decided to talk to some of the Lummi nation community organizers and conservationists to get more story out of what is happening (salmon runs were on steep decline at the time). The filming goes well, Ed and I all the shots we need together. When it came time to edit though, Ed completely disappears. I’ll see him in class sometimes and we get some editing in together, but for the most part, I felt like I was on my own. He would flake on every meetup and have an excuse as to why he couldn’t edit that day, often at the last minute to change plans. BUT, the project still had to get done! I take up until the last day to get this project in. Whether or not everyone is there or contributing, you still have to put forth your best shot to deliver something you’re proud of.

Lastly, a time I practiced bias for action was when our dough press at Mod Pizza started malfunctioning. We were in the middle of lunch rush at the Seattle Center Armory by the Needle… tourist season … and we don’t have a way to prepare dough?… We considered calling another store or a manager, anyone to be able to bring another press… which we knew we probably didnt have. Being one of the most senior employees, an idea occurred to me… Our old dough press is in the basement storage. It was heavy, so me and a coworker rush down and lug it back up to the restaurant. It’s not the prettiest dough press, but it was our most efficient option until we could get someone to troubleshoot the current dough press. We ended up making it through okay that day, with some delays and a few angry customers… But hey it happens.

I have the most trouble with the leadership principle of having a backbone: disagree and commit. This one may prove to be my most valuable one to learn just because I am such an agreeable person. I usually see all ideas as inherently good ideas, making my brain make them work even if my initial reaction is “no”. I try not to undermine people, but I realize that disagreeing isn’t undermining, even if it feels so in the moment. I grew up as the youngest sibling and a big part of that was struggling to find autonomy, and feeling like I had a complete voice rather than echoing my older brothers. Having the confidence to disagree is a big challenge for me, I hope to improve my instincts and self-trust as I progress through the program.