It's A Designer's Life! (Part 4)

It seems obvious what we have seen in today’s design community. Either we aware or not, besides plagiarism, there are more things that reflects the growth of the local wired culture. I’ve been in communities for years, but recently, we are able to see a lot of new young and emerging designers put priority not on their works, rather their appearance (face, name and glamour). So how can we see passion in designers today?

Are we vain?
Can we entitle ourselves designers or celebrity? There are so many ‘celebrities wannabe’ out there who don’t understand the definition of DESIGNER and CELEBRITIES. Why do I relate to celebrities? One of the few example, there are few individuals who likes to approach to online communities, portal, medias and press carrying the title 'designer' but none of that particular person show how strong his/her ideas & concept. Hmm.. talk about getting famous for nothing? It's like you join a reality-show (for example, Malaysian Idol and such) to gain popularity, being featured his/her face in TV shows, newspapers and magazines without realizing the fact that his/her album only sell less than 15,000 unit? That's what's going on in both industry. We want to be so popular as whatsoever we want to call ourselves but we don't care to emerge, improve and grow from our work, taking on step ahead further. I mean, I had that problem once, but when I mix with different crowd, you will get to see and experience more. You learn more, you gain more creative. You take risk to explore and try out new things. I start out using Photoshop, now I love to use Illustrator which I thought I can never use any of the tools. I never thought doing graffiti can be so much 'fun', where I discovered how to differentiate thick and thin lines, working out a throwup in dark and that feeling when you felt like someone is watching you ;-). I began to carry my sketch book everytime I went out of the house. Like Shieko (one of my mentor) said, keep drawing, you will master it. So what do I have to say when I refer to celebrities? Joshua Davis. WWFT (Mike Cina & Young). There are more! This people have passion as an artist/designer/ideas/and achieve themselves as a star.

Designers invent, recreate, design, Celebrities live for what their put their effort on – work, and taking the advantage of it to gain more business, but we locals seeing it as popularity, not to work hard and smart to get more income in our lives. Why do we see so many young designers out there emphasizing on their name so much, yet we see less work, which doesn’t assemble with the quality of work they do. So, are they to into themselves?

Not revamping, not facelift but recycling your ancient work
I came across many websites especially the local designers. This is by no means to put their self-esteem away, but rather to take this so-called issue for positive act and finally to find a solution. When I browse their website or portfolio, what I can see is only a huge label of names (example ‘AZMIL MUSTAFA’) which however showcase such a small amount of work. It is more tragic to see the work that they had showcased is from their very own college work, which happens to be way back years ago. Do we ever came across our mind that there are web visitors out there who has been following our works and progress? The answer is yes. Like art, an artist MUST NOT recycle back their artwork. They are hurting their collectors and buyers.

A lot who claim to be web designers could not even figure out how layout works. Why? Don’t use a blogger template or some other templates to layout your portfolio. It’s not a professional way to do it. If you want to be smart, there is a way and we called it ‘creative modification’. This is because YOU are building your brand through a website; you want to sell your own idea, NOT from other people’s idea or work. If you said you don’t have the time to build your website or a portfolio, there’s always time. We designers also should read more, do more research and be mature in our creative thinking. Don’t ever be in one circle of community, mix and communicate because communication is important, and it’s the key to all of us, designers.





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* more to write ;)