AJ Tuan Le

Our guest speaker this week was Abdul Kassamali and he shared a lot on his journey how he became a producer with his background in engineering. He is one of the best example of “follow your heart and do what you love”, no matter when and the circumstances. I also mentioned before on my background, I finished my degree in Fashion Marketing, I also graduated with a certificate in Baking and Pastry, but I have been working as visual merchandising and sales/supervising in high-end retail most of my life, I still don’t think it is my right call so here I am, back to school when I am almost 40 but I have no regret with my decision to pursuit my dream to be in the design field.

Back to Abdul’s talk today, he shared some of his biggest lesson he learns so far included “treat everyone like you’d like to be treated, think ahead, be smart about collaborations, compromise, tell your truth, ego, boundaries, master one thing but know it all..etc”, these advices are amazing and I feel like it applied well to almost every situations that I experienced in both school and work life.

One of the example through the program I had last quarter was for my history of Design class with professor Gabriel, we had a group midterm of 4 (pic above) for a recorded group presentation. We had to divide tasks between the 4 member of each group to do do research, draft information, finding pictures, come up with presentation style, make power point, figure how to record on app and voice over the powerpoint, just name a few. It was a big project when none of us know how to use Quicktime or other video app, and after 2 weeks in, one of our member in our group dropped out, so we all had to work with the others to carry on the weight and workload of that member. We compromised each others on schedule to meet up, we helped each others when needed, we shared the workload, we laughed, we learned how to do certain things all together, we figured things all together to build the project bring it to the finish line. Even though we just met last quarter, randomly assigned into group, we had different backgrounds, some of us stronger in speaking in public, some of us stronger in reading and find information, some of us stronger in visual to build powerpoint, but we all got along well, support each others and we all got an A- for that project. It was such fun experience for first quarter even though we had some challenges but we collab well together as one strong team.

That was my experience that I wanted to share. Thank you for taking your time to read it, see you in my next blog.

Hello again, it has been a while since our last blog, we had the opportunity to hear from our guest speaker Steve Hansen – A food photographer, not only we got to listen on his journey but we also got to see some of his amazing work (you can see more at stevehansenvisual.com)

I always find a strong interest in food/packaging branding and also food photography as I had my background in marketing. For this week, I just had some fun trying to make a simple piece of chicken wing looks presentable and giving it some work to make it more visual to people.

First I found a nice off white background to take the photo of my hand holding the piece of wing, I have to balance the picture to make sure the wing is a vocal point and centered. I took this with my phone in focus mode, then I brought it into Illustrator and adding some square and circle shapes into it for some fun and visual effects. I love playing with colors so I changed the gradients on the boxes from yellow to red, keeping the warm tone for the fried chicken piece to give it a more appeal feeling. Hope you enjoy this. See you on my next blog. Ciao..

Hello all, for the week’s blog (also last blog of the quarter), we have the opportunity to explore some ideas of designing some blank space on the 5 floor of the campus. I am sure not only me but most of other art students would love to see all of this blank white wall around 5th floor turn into a art project from student, could be year 2 students have this as part of their portfolio project, let say all student can propose designs as individual or group, then get grade/vote by all instructors, then win the wall to transform the idea into live. That would be so much fun and amazing! It will make the whole 5th floor became a giant art gallery with all the artworks wall to wall.

For this project, our team chose PARKS as our theme, our team leader Shane did an amazing job on creating some of the assets for the team to make everything in uniform together. Each of us picked different parks around Seattle, mine is Cal Anderson park, even some of the assets are already made by Shane but I got to learn how to put them together, I found picture of the fountain by the park, added some information by illustrator for one of the info panel, then tested it out and recorded it successfully at the park. It is a fun project. I showed some of my friends and they all so impressed. I can’t wait to learn more about this.

Part of the Google family, Just A Line bring your drawing to life using AR, it is really cool that you can draw, record or take a photo just through the app, you also connect with your friend near by to draw together and create more stuffs together as well. FUN for someone who enjoy some quick, simple, doodle art drawing. I wish it could offer more feature such as colors, stickers, etc. Overall, simple and fun app to play with.

This week I got to do some more AR fun stuffs, for my project I did a jungle whimsical kind of theme with a fern human that dance, a wolf that howl when you get closer, under the eclipse moon with a set of silver clouds, oh, and a dead scary tree. There is also night sound audio to give it a little bit more related to the theme.

I don’t have much problem creating this as I followed the steps from the instruction file. I would love to know more on how to get more icons or animation to play around with as this is super fun and I absolutely love it. Thank you for teaching me this.

Last week we had our guest speaker AJ Hanneld spoke about her amazing journey with all of her amazing works when she was done with the program in 2017. She gave so many example of her work not only in graphic design, but also in movie poster, video, UX UV design, art directing and so on. Listened to her got me realized sky is the limit and there are so much more opportunities not just in your major/department but also could be something else that related to it.

I am currently enrolling in DES program, I am lucky to met and talked to some amazing individual students from the photo/video program and see some of their phenomenal work. Even though I don’t have a lot of knowledge nor experience from the field but I always found it is fun, fastinate, and amazed how those photos they took can tell us so much, from the stories behind it or even the emotions it brings to the viewers. How cool is that?

Sometime, I got to see they set up their studio, the way they talk about lighting can help tell the stories or change the mood of the subjects, how exciting they are to do what they do and that spark up my interest a lot to know more about their program and admiring so much on all the final products they produced.

I kind of glad we all have the opportunities to share the new media class together, therefore we can make new friends from other program, share thoughts and experiences, even some fresh eyes and fresh opinion to see over our work as well. Oh, and did I mention one of them ask me to be their model for one of their project? That was so much fun to actually sit on set that one day and have an overview of everything they do. I had so much fun.

Back to the relation between our programs, I think it helps for both to get to know a little bit about each other program, or even learn a little bit of the basic, fundamental of the other program, so we can have a better understanding and I think it also will benefit us more in any of the future projects or opportunities, just like what AJ Hanneld did.

In conclusion, I believe there is a big connection between graphic design and photo/video production program. We both could use each other talents, to support each other, to bring more creative to our work, so spread the message in each projects that we work on and to make them better and better. If you agree or disagree with my thinking, I would love to hear more on this topic, and I would love to hear more what the students from photo/video program think about us and our graphic design program, I want to one day collaborate with them in a big project, that going to be so epic.

Alright, I think this is it for today blog, I truly can’t wait to next guest speaker and what they will share with us. Thank you so much again for taking your time reading this. Ciao for now.

Hello again, and welcome to our this week’s blog #4. This week we had the opportunity to meet and listen to Margaret Darcher – Principle UX designer at Amazon to share her experience working at Amazon and some of her tips to get in big company and each level to grow with. She started with her career journey, then she went into the Amazon’s culture as a company, what does a typical day look like, the hiring process, the promotion process. She also talked about the compensation/benefits, as well as what she loves and don’t loves about working at Amazon.

We all had a very deep details on everything Margaret wanted to cover on her time with us. I will choose three out of all the topics she talked about and share my experience from my previous jobs that I had as well.

First of all, “Ownership” – for wherever I worked at before, my definition of ownership is to treat your work as your company, bring your best amd work you best to bring out the most success on every project or whatever you do, make sure you understand and look at the bigger picture as a whole and not only focus about YOU.

Secondly, “Learn and be curious”, I always come to work at my previous job with open mind to know more, to learn more, not only under what my role description but I always want to know more, not only just to improve myself but I want to understand in a wider range out of my role so I can have a better understanding of others people around me as well, so I can know to see different angles from every perspectives and help me easier to understand any problems and how to solve it.

Another one will be “Earn trust”, just exactly what it says, “Trust meant to be earned”, and it plays a major role in wherever we work, once you earn the trust from your team, your managers, as well as once you trust your team, things will be a lot easier, smoother in every aspects.

Last one will be the one I think is the hardest one for me to adopt, “insist on the highest standard”, sometime I tend to get into the “comfortable” mode when you are at one job for so long, I could be more relaxed and not pushing myself for the best or keep myself on the highest standard at all time, and that for sure is something I need to work on and make sure I always keep my mind set to that.

I think this is it for this week talk, I will spend more time and talk more on next week’s topic, as for now, CIAO!.

Last week we had a pleasure to meet and hear from Jesscia Aceti, to understand how amazing her journey is from worked at so many different places to owning her own brand. The one thing that I found very admirable when I listened to her that no matter what she does, in whichever field she was, she always bring her best with all the positive energy and always say YES to any opportunities coming her way.

To share my own personal experience on how I get to where I am today, it all started in a rainy spring 2006 when I freshly moved here from Vietnam as an international student, I first went to Seattle Central Community College to study ESL for about a year, then I went to the Art Institute of Seattle and got my AA degree there majored in Fashion Marketing. I then worked for about one year for my PTO at Neiman Marcus Group and moved back home after that in 2010.

After almost a year staying in Vietnam and working, I decided to move to Vancouver, Canada to study Pastry and Baking at the Art Institute of Vancouver ( you can see more of my cakes stuff on instagram @pastrytales )

I moved back to Seattle in 2015 after 4 years working in high-end retail in Vancouver, I joined Gucci as a Supervisor/Visual Merchandiser for about 6 and a half years. I have met so many amazing individuals while working and have learned a lot from each and everyone of them, I became very comfortable with where I was, over 6 figures job, full benefits, lot of vacations and amazing team, I decide to challenge myself to go out of my comfort zone, and follow what my true passion is: ART and DESIGN!

After almost 7 years long working, I decided to pull the trigger and call it quit with the shock of everyone around me, my coworkers my friends as well as my family. I am very blessed that I have full supports from everyone and all the encouragement to follow my dream and I am very glad that I did and I proud of myself for doing it.

Everyday I come to school, I am very happy that I now could learn what I truly passionate about and I can not wait to see what the future will bring when I done with this program. That’s pretty much sum up on my journey to where I am today, I will definitely share more on our next blog. Ciao for now!