On many occasions, as a designer, your designs will be rejected by the powers that be. Back in university when one of the professors did not like someone’s design pitch for whatever reason, she wasn’t so subtle about it. She said and I quote, ‘don’t be afraid to kill your darlings’. While this advice is functional and practical, I don’t think it’s neccesary to kill your darlings. You can make them exist in other forms- like art.
Something similar happened to me last week. I had to design an animated poster for a techno event club and I went all in. I researched on techno aesthetics, spent hours modelling on blender and rendered an animation for it- praying that my laptop would survive this atrocity. Unfortunately, they hated it and I got ghosted.
But would I waste my labour and kill my darling? I don’t think so. So, I tweaked it and posted it on Instagram! It’s like a beautiful scar. Here is the poster:
So, I feel it’s really important to have some channel where you can showcase your darlings as art instead of killing them. For me, its my instagram and this blog. Where does your creative dump go?
Inza Galaxies : Experience in Design Reel
I posted this reel a few days back and and checked it off my ideas list. It was completely made out of frustration of companies rejecting me because I ‘lacked enough agency experience’. Anyways, I enjoyed working on its typography a lot.
The Observable Universe
Saw this in some corner of Melbourne. It was a treat to use so many typefaces in a single block flirting with heirachy, against a red bricked structure – pure vibes.
The Unknown
Read Julian’s article : Copyright Won’t Save You. It talks about the history and contradictions of the copyright law and how to survive as an artist in the world of AI. My favorite line in the essay is this:
To have rights in the United States, it is more strategic to be a business than to be a person.
Thanks for reading! See you next week.