Woes of September

It's not right to always put nice nice things in here. After all, this is my personal design blog that's supposed to keep track of everything I've done design-wise, feelings and struggles throughout the creative process and of course, self-criticism on my own work. I revel in showing my own designs here that I'm proud of. On the other end of the scale, I'm ashamed to show these sub-standard work. I know I am better than these. But by the end of me struggling to save the design, I simply thought numbly "I don't know how anymore."

Maybelline brief. Design a graphic to put on a bag. The brief is pretty loose, so long as it's able to portray the spirit of Maybelline and New York.

I did some shit first. Composed several images and sent it over to the lecturer for approval. But after I set about executing it, I gave up. I don't see the point in tracing over images with no real purpose in mind. Fine. Scrap that. Start over.

Then I did this ornate design thing. I love it. Really. But the feedback I got back from the lecturer was "I have nothing to say, hope the client like it." Well, that did not tell me much, did it? So I turned to some people I hope will be able to give my some honest feed back. The general consensus was it looked like stock vector (never mind the fact that I drew and traced it painstakingly in AI). And then there's the ever reliable Yueh Yih. Comments memang tak bagi muka one. I showed it to her, and she out right told me, "Re do." I was just trying to make pretty things, not thinking. I hated her. Must she be so honest, even if I asked for it? Every designer is fortunate to have such a jerk for a friend. Good for the soul. Strictly no sarcasm intended.

Then I proceeded to redo this thing. And finally came up with something I could have cried over by the end. It's like shit.

It's bad when I couldn't even look at it directly. I look at it from far far away and couldn't see a single thing. Handing in this work filled me with helplessness. I couldn't really blame this on procrastination. I had ample time. This time, I just couldn't pull it off. Maybe I was thinking too much when the simplest of graphic would be enough.

But for the heck of it, I am owning up to this work (but no way is this piece of crap going into my portfolio). Owning up to it as I would my other designs that put a beaming smile on my face.

Ahh... solemn solemn post. Better things will come. It has to.