First new journal entry in nearly 2 years! Hurrah!

It's really more of a mini rant + update on my life if you care to read.

Rant: It really irritates me when people get too big for their britches and think they can do everything just because they are passable to talented in one area of art. It's always been a pet peeve of mine (other than when people mistake 'your' for 'you're' and vice versa) when people have more ego than talent. Fine. You're talented and full of yourself. Arrogance is a completely separate vice. But it really rubs me the wrong way when, for example, a person is reasonably talented in photography and just because they know how to slap things together on photoshop, they also call themselves designers. Sorry to break it to you, but you're not a designer, you're a tool. If you went out into the industry calling yourself a designer just because you know how to use the program, that's what you'll be: a tool! You'll be considered a blue collar worker basically. The brawn to the brains! It just seems kind of greedy and arrogant to believe that just because a person has an eye for photography that that automatically qualifies them to call themselves a designer. Ugh. But then again, I like those people more than those individuals whose egos are bigger than their creepy 50-yr old pedophile-looking hair but their work sucks. How is it possible to have the background and foreground in focus and the mid-ground blurry? How???!!! Gah...you fail.

Update: I finally put together my portfolio (graphic design) and went for a couple of portfolio reviews. One of my reviewers said that I should apply for an art director's job and another said if he worked for a magazine he'd hire me! Woo! The problem is that they wanted me to create a separate book for my photography work but I don't think I have enough pieces to put in a separate book so that means I will have to do a couple of new photoshoots.....and soon! But it's okay. I'm really just looking for an excuse and I have a bunch of concepts I wanted to flesh out and put into action. I've just been heinously busy. It's my thesis year and I'm looking for a job that does not involve coffee slinging which means I have to design a whole system of promotion (business identity + applications, portfolio, direct mail, pdf presentation, etc...) before I can even think of asking for interviews. I'm still a big worried about finding a job because graphic design is a ridiculously competitive field and I'm 4 years out of highschool, 4 years out of university so in comparison to the people I go to school with, I'm pretty young. I'm not saying that young people can't produce fantastic work, because I am one of those people who believe that age isn't a factor in creative innovation and technical skill. I don't know why people think it's such an issue. But my field is one that relies a lot on personal experience. I'm not even talking about experience in the field (though that is a factor too) but rather graphic design is about life experience, the more you know, the more of a step up you have. The more you have lived; the more you have experience only makes your work richer.

Anyways, the point is that I'll hopefully have time to do some photoshoots. I'm still not sure whether or not I want to include more of my GD work here....but if you're interested you can look on my Flickr: [link]

~TY