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.