“Sometimes you have to do some stupid things just to try them. Trust yourself and explore.”- Yuka Izutsu
Quite simply, I was in love with New York. I do not mean “love” in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and you never love anyone quite that way again. -Joan Didion
(Basically how I felt when I first went to Amsterdam)
Podcasts for Creative Minds
I’m a big time a multi-tasker. Very female of me I guess. I don’t just design a logo. I design logos while eating a sandwich, flipping through five blogs, and talking on the phone. But my favorite thing to do while “working” is listen to interesting podcasts. I pretty much listen to anything to be honest but I really enjoy podcasts where I feel like I’m learning about the creative field. Below are my current fave creative podcasts.
Debbie Milman from the Design Observer interviews some of the most succesful people in Graphic Design, Branding, and New Media. This is great if you love the design world. She always inserts her own interesting anecdotes and is really good about pulling the background story from people.
This is a much more casual podcast by illustrator Sam Weber. He teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York and interviews many fellow illustrators in the city. I like the casual tone of his interviews and the way he keeps it real about the struggles of having a creative career.
This an amazing creative business podcast from Design Sponge’s Grace Bonnie. She interviews many creatives in various fields and gives a lot of helpful tips and thoughts about starting your own creative business. It is good all around nuts and bolts information on the creative industry today.
Ok this is not a podcast but more like Ted Talks for the creative industry. Tina Roth Eisenberg of Swiss Miss created this series a few years back and it has since become a global entity. I often listen to them like podcasts while I’m sketching. Very inspiring.
5. Seth Godin’s Startup School
This podcast is more for people who are interested in starting their own business. It’s not necessarily for creatives but Seth Godin has a unique outlook on going off on your own and gives sound advice to those who want to bypass the MBA education.
“You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt
Happy New Year!
Happy New year!! I’ve pretty much been MIA since I’m spending the holidays in majestic Scotland. It’s been a beautiful and whiskey filled trip. I’m vegging out pretty hard today and reflecting on the past year. 2012 was a year of big transitions. My three year rendezvous with Amsterdam ended which was pretty hectic and confusing but thankfully my transition back to Austin has been relatively easy (and tasty).
I’ve also had some big career changes. After leaving the Amsterdam magazine world, I finally pushed myself to get a studio and start selling my own designs/photography which has been amazing. I’ve barely scratched the surface but I really want to make a big push to make and sell more work this year. Along with my photography print shop, I plan on opening a second design shop to sell all my handmade creations and I’m super excited to see where that goes.
2013. Lets do this.
What are your plans?
On Sluggishness
(image via The Oatmeal)
Wow what a month! I went from going a million miles per hour to pure gluttonous sloth-like laziness. Thanksgiving eased me right into this transition and I think I may have entered the in-between. The in-between is the time you have to catch your breath before you dive into another project/job/move. Its a chunk of life that seems almost unattainable when you’re drowning in work and errands and parties, etc and you make grand proclamations that if you ever had this time you would surely spend it training for marathons or writing a cookbook or painting a master piece.
Well let me tell you about me during the in-between. I finished my studio tour and design contract only a week ago and I have gone from a buzzing happy bee to an insomniac who munches on turkey legs whilst watching travel documentaries until the wee hours of the morning. I think to myself, “Hey! I should write on my blog, or work on my etsy shop, or work out!” and every time the next thought that enters my mind is “Yes! You will do all those things, but since you’re sooo free, just sleep in a little and relax….FOREVER.”
So I guess I’m very lazy when I want to be and very productive when I need to be. But my erratic schedule throughout my twenties have shown a pattern: When I’m busy, I can conquer all. When I have no obligations, I can barely make it to the post office.
My motto in my in-between is “The post office will be there tomorrow right?”
When I’m busy, I’m like a whirling tornado and little errands just get sucked in and scheduled around my other commitments and all miraculously gets done.
The only thing I do know is I might as well enjoy this pajama wearing time because another storm is likely to come sooner than later. What about you? Do you use down time to catch up on things? Or is it spent staring off into space like me? I’m curious!
P.S. Check out this mostly Japanese winter themed mixtape by Hello Sandwich! Its whimsical quality can be equally enjoyed while being productive or in lounge pajama mode.
F. Scott Fitzgerald on Writing
“The amateur, seeing how the professional having learned all that he’ll ever learn about writing can take a trivial thing such as the most superficial reactions of three uncharacterized girls and make it witty and charming—the amateur thinks he or she can do the same. But the amateur can only realize his ability to transfer his emotions to another person by some such desperate and radical expedient as tearing your first tragic love story out of your heart and putting it on pages for people to see.”
-F. Scott Fitzgerald
(via Jessica Stanley )
Failure
“The only real stumbling block is fear of failure.
In cooking you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude.”
― Julia Child
I just finished reading Julie and Julia and I’m going through another cycle of Julia Child Obsession. I like her approach to cooking. and life. And with that thought in mind, I cooked fettucini alfredo tonight. I burnt the whole thing. What-the-hell.
Design Talk: Debbie Millman
“Money is never about money and sex is never about sex.”
And more thoughts on being a designer can be found in this great lecture by Debbie Millman.
Maira Kalman Does it All
I just listened to this great archived interview with Debbie Millman from Design Observer and illustrator/writer/artist Maira Kalman.
I love Maira Kalman. I wrote about her a while back when I saw that she illustrated Michael Pollan’s latest book Food Rules. I love her because she’s a total eccentric and I love her because she does everything and is not at all flustered by the randomness of her work. If she feels like writing a play, she does, if she wants to write a children’s book she does, there are no boundaries when it comes executing her wild ideas.
Sometimes I beat myself up over the fact that I’m interested in too many creative endeavors. I literally go from working as a graphic designer during the day to running over to my studio to paint at night, then coming home and updating my photo shop. Sometimes I feel this interest in everything can be too unfocused, or ultimately leave me not accomplishing much of anything. This is all probably true but at the end of the day does it really matter? People make things because it makes them happy and so what if that means diving from one thing to another (Clearly, I’m arguing with myself here).
Now onto Maira Kalman’s approach on randomness:
Debbie Millman: What inspires you to do one thing or another?
Maira Kalman: Boredom and impatience, I don’t want to do the one thing all the time. And I’m multi-curious and really not knowing how to do something and wanting to do it is a nice combination because then you just try new things. I guess if you’re open to whatever serendipity of inspiration is around, sometimes you just find yourself sewing and sometimes find yourself playing an imaginary viola.
Debbie Millman: Do you ever feel afraid about starting something new?
Maira Kalman: I lied. I’m always afraid. You know what happens? In a moment of fantastic enthusiasm I say oh I’m going to do this thing. Only after I’ve said it and initiated it do I realize what I’m doing and how terrified I am and think I really don’t know what I’m doing! What’s going to happen? But I guess what’s the worst that can happen? You can fail or it can be bad which has happened, but somehow the world doesn’t come to an end. So I’m ultimately very brave and terrified.
If you are a random, don’t you worry. So is Maira Kalman and she’s great!
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