Month: March 2023

who am I? Well I’ve been a prince and a pauper you know. I believe I’ve grown into an empathetic and creative person with a passion for absurdity. I’m a decent friend. A good partner. I am prone to intense stress. I can be jealous and competitive. I’m changing all the time. I’m constantly learning new things and trying to release myself from the patterns that no longer serve me. I’m trying to focus on progress not perfection. I’m tired.

What do I want to do? I’m figuring it out. I don’t have a clear path in mind and I’ve decided to accept that rather than stress over it. In terms of what career I’m hoping to get out of my school experience I’d like something that’s challenging but requires less work than an average quarter at SCCA. Something that’s creative but doesn’t drain the energy necessary to work on art projects. Packaging seems like a pretty safe bet for me. Based on the fact that every speaker we’ve had this year has changed careers 20 times and since I’ve already had a few myself, I suspect I’m going to end up doing all sorts of things and changing directions based on life experience. Hopefully this will happen with more money in the bank than I have now. I love type design and particularly hand drawn lettering. Most of my entrance portfolio was hand drawn lettering and I want to start incorporating it into my work here at school. The dream is to have my own publishing company and design logos and type for you know, things I like. I think I can do both of these things but I’ll probably also have to find work with a minimally vampiric corporation too.

Why? HA!

Well, I’m good at making things. Though I crave structure, I’m kind of a casting arrows every which way kind of person. With creative pursuits I tend to stick with something for a few years and move on. In fact it’s very reassuring to discover this is a common path for folks who work in design.

Where do I want to go? As far as these wings can carry me baby. Ideally I’d like to work in a field where my contribution has a positive effect on the world. Physically I’d like to be able to work from anywhere. The pandemic made me think a lot about the benefits of working remotely and I enjoy travel.

What would I want to say? Accept yourself as much as possible. Resentment is a poison. Racism, sexism and homophobia are diseases that can be cured. Pad thai is delicious. Fugazi was a great band–sonically and ethically. Nothing feels better than drawing a bunch of cool looking letters in a note book. I am very grateful for my partner Lara Kaminoff and I’m glad I didn’t die all those times I could have.

I enjoy Cut’s output. Their content is usually as fun as it is uncomfortable. I have tried to think of some fun concepts we could work with here on campus without pushing the limits of acceptable content.

1. Have students or faculty from others floors/department guess which students in a line up are graphic design students, and which are visual media students. This could be fun for us and give us some insight into what people who are not a part of the program think of design/visual media students. What stereotypes are out there? What does a designer look like?
2. Cut has a segment where a person off the street tries to match artwork to the artist. We could do this with students at SCCA. We could have visual media students guess which works were created by which design students and vice versa. This has comedic potential and it ties in the school as a major component in the concept.
3. The two ideas above are okay and I suspect you may get similar ideas from other students. What may be lacking in my first two concepts is some of the tension involved in Cut’s approach. Maybe we could do something involving professors, like “which SCCA Professor did crazy thing x in college?” A lot of the students seemed really surprised by the old picture of Erik that Andrew showed during his presentation so this could be a fun one for students to work on.

Oh the metaverse. I suspect in the near future all social media platforms and gaming services will be owned by one company that controls all commerce. Initially I thought the king of the new world would be someone obvious like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk but based on my recent experiences I’ve changed my mind. Those guys have made their fortunes selling physical objects which I believe will become a relic of the past. The future is all about getting paid to create things that do not actually exist. Why would you drive a Tesla when all you want to do is put on a headset and be transported into a completely customizable fantasy realm with no physical limitations?

My first trip to the metaverse went pretty much exactly as I expected it would. After customizing my avatar I walked around a digital environment until I found some other users. The majority of the avatars I saw were very customized. So these people already spend a lot of time and money in this space. I should mention the metaverse space I was visiting had been the site of a Taco Bell sponsored wedding just days before. Now I was watching avatars play poker in a digital casino. Many of the user names involved crypto currency. There was a billboard for something called “DMT GODS.” Virtually every action I took prompted me to connect to a wallet so I didn’t do much.

Overall I was impressed with the user experience. It’s very much like a video game. I can see the appeal for folks who grew up gaming. They are accustomed to the mechanics of games, and interacting with other users in this type of environment. I’m gonna guess if you connect your wallet and start spending some cash you can have a lot of fun. A lot of people seem to be interested in the customization of digital space and avatars.

I am 40 years old. I feel rooted in the physical world and I have attachments to physical objects. The idea of spending money on a digital hat that a character on a screen can wear is ridiculous to me. That being said, I understand there are a lot of people with a lot of money, who place value on what is essentially nothing. So, I’m not above making a pixelated digital t-shirt and selling it to some guy with too much bitcoin. Maybe I’m admitting to my lack of integrity here, but I’ve never worked a job in my life that hasn’t been in service to someone richer than me, and this seems – well, easy.

Admittedly, I will probably enjoy the metaverse more and more as it grows in popularity. I held out on streaming video, I said I would never use Spotify and now I use both constantly. I’m going to try to remain open to whatever happens while maintaining my cynicism.