ONE Year Old!! for This Kaleidoscope Body…

Today is my 1 year anniversary, and I have completed over 90 posts!  I am so thankful to all of you who came along for my journey and kept reading even through my long exam break-periods and my random weird talk.  I really feel as though I’ve made so many friends through this blog and I’m so grateful.  I also started using this blog as an inspiration journal, so I want to thank all the readers who don’t think those posts are crazy talk.

My goals for next year is to always provide better content, keep the blog more focused, post more of my work, get more followers and gather more comments.  I feel like this blog and I have grown so much from my first post, and I want to thank you so much for sticking by me and staying with me throughout this real life journey.  PIZZA CELEBRATION!

The Importance of Side Projects

If you didn’t already know, side projects are IMPORTANT.

In whatever industry you are daring to work in.  Even the ‘irrelevant’ projects.  If you didn’t already know this, you are super late to the party.  I have heard so many great professionals, artists, and entrepreneurs speak about the importance of side projects, so listen closely.

In my opinion, and again, from what I’ve read from great people, side projects are arguably more important for your personal sanity and career of choice than school in a chosen field, or even employment experience in a chosen field.  This is because it shows:
1)  initiative,
2) potential (no client!! no limits!),
3) dependability and dedication, and
4) SAMPLE WORK

These four things are so essential for any hard working individual who inspires. Initiative and hustle are very important with everything being so fast and available these days (-> laziness runs rampant).  You have to be the one to grab it!  Also, when you work on a side project on your own time and money, it can literally be anything you want it to be, and thus holds so much potential.  It can be long-lasting and over the top and epic and beautiful, but also, if you fail, no big deal.  Just start again tomorrow.

Dependability and dedication are a given with side projects.  There are no real deadlines, you are not getting paid to do this and maybe no one will even see it.  Its almost more the opposite – often friends don’t get it, tell you its not as important as hanging out with them, and you run into at least two snags during the process (its becoming not what you were planning, you run out of materials, you are off schedule, your dog pooped on part of it).  But from this, you become self-motivated AND you become dependable.

It’s also a great way to build a portfolio, and continue to let your creative self naturally evolve.  Even if you are really great at writing fiction revolving around 9/11, sometimes you just have to move onto the next phase of your creative life and write romances taking place in the turn of the century.  You are no longer that person who wrote your first novel – you’ve grown, you’re happier/more depressed, you’ve explored it.  A side project is a great way to do that without pressure, or your editor saying that they’re not  really interested in this new kind of novel from you at the moment.  It is really one of the best ways to get the kind of clients you want and to focus your work in the area you want.

One fabulous example of a side project is starting a blog….. but there are SO many people doing all sorts of different side projects out there.

Here are some amazing examples:

- Jessica Hische.  Jessica works as a letterer and illustrator, and with her early web presence started posting many different side projects on the internet.  Some of those include Daily Drop Cap (where she created a new letter of the alphabet every day. So far she has gone through 12 alphabets, but has since stopped the project).  She also made Mom, This Is How Twitter Works, Don’t Fear The Internet, Inker Linker, Should I Work For Free?, a doodle blog, etc. etc…  All while working and maintaining her own personal blog…. She makes me feel so lazy. Check out way more of her side projects right here (since she is the Queen of Side Projects, for reals).

-Tina Roth Eisenberg, aka SwissMiss.  In addition to starting her design blog as a side project, which has since become one of the most popular design blogs of all time, Tina has also created Creative Mornings a free, creative, conference-like lecture series that has since spread to major cities across the globe, Tattly, a design-y temporary tattoo company, and the design-y to-do app, Teux Deux.

-Ji Lee. Currently a communication designer at Facebook, Ji Lee created and started the famous Bubble Project, the word as image project, and so many other side projects.

-Aaron Draplin.  Graphic designer who created Field Notes as a side project!

-Kate Bigaman-Burt.  Drew copies of her receipts until they were paid off, and then drew everything she bought in a day, everyday.  She’s been drawing daily since February 2006.  Crazy.

I could go on and on, but alas, I must go floss.  Go start a side project! Tell me about it in the comments!  (Also, if you need some tips or encouragement, re-read this post or check out this link or this one.)

Nicholas Kirkwood Display Ring Pops

Although not as risky as I’d like to go with such a great theme, I really enjoyed this window and store display done for Nicholas Kirkwood SS12′ by Robert Storey.  He used such simple, basic geometry, and yet I feel as though he made the shapes side-by-side look so complex, neat and well thought-out.  I also love the mismatching of colors between the stands, the plateaus and frames, beside the mismatching of colors of the heel and sole of the shoe, and those on the body of the shoe.  Hat tip to CreativeBloq blog for an awesome post.

Another thing I liked about this piece, other than the fact that its super fun and current, is that it kinda has something 80′s-revival about it, without being so obvious.  The whole pedestal thing for the shoes obviously has to be there in order to adequately display the product (fabulous shoes), but for anyone who has ever studied art, that pedestal implies pedestals used in traditional Greek and Roman art. For me, seeing those platforms done with that funky colored lucite is just such an unexpected 80′s throwback reference, that I’m not sure is actually intended…  But I love it.

Also, this display is totally reminiscent of Ring-Pops.

IMAGES: here

Vernier Panton

Vernier Panton is such an amazing artist and so influential to me!  He really embraced and pushed the futurist, space-age style of the 60′s and created environments, not just restaurants, bars or hotels, with his designs.

IMAGES:  1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6 // 7 // 8  // 9

Try Something

If any of you are worried that you aren’t ready yet for something or if you are waiting to learn stuff first or get knowledge/experience under your belt, remember to just Try Something this week.  You really can’t wait until you know who you are to start a project.   (The secret is you will never know yourself well enough to start a project.)

On the podcast, Design Matters, I was listening to Debbie Milman talk with Design Army, and the power-couple being interviewed said this:
“It’s never an idea until its excecuted.  You have to excecute. There are so many ideas floating around, and until you do it, it’s really doesn’t mean something.  So many people say, ‘Oh well, I had that idea first’.  Well, you didn’t do it first, so …. “

Its easy to feel like you don’t want to embarrass yourself or waste people’s time, but in order to do something amazing you must put yourself out there.  It might start off embarrassing or bad or clumsy, but it is the only way you can practice and evolve and create something that is worthy of your good taste.

People even identify with the unclear ideas, because in reality, even those of us that brand ourselves well on the interwebz, don’t know ourselves nearly clearly enough.  We are constatly changing and evolving.  Sometimes I wish my About Me picture didn’t look so friendly. I sometimes wish it looked more polarizing and weird and aggressive and “murder-y in a hot way” (Lena Dunham, poet).  But I hope with time, and with the development of my blog and myself as a professional, that I will be like wine and fancy cheese.  I will age well, and get more expensive with time.

To get a client or to impress your boss or to get into grad school or to get an A, you don’t have to be good enough for yourself – you only have to be good enough for them.  Others can see things in your work that you don’t see, or will know how you and your work will look in a month better than you will.  I’m not saying lower your quality and settle for other people’s assessment of your work, but put yourself out there in order to give yourself opportunities you’ve always hoped for even before you are up to your own standards.  From someone who knows, sometimes you just have to jump and hope for the best.

Ways to try things this week:
-Don’t wait until you buy excersize clothes.  Just go in old shorts and a camp tshirt now.
-Start the website you’ve been wanting to
-Apply for the job
-Join a group or club
-Watch this video from Alex Beadon
-Talk to or email one of your heros
-Compete to win
-Raise your expectations, and believe the new expectations are possible

Cheers,
Dayna @kaleidoscopebrain

Uniqlo Displays

I’ve recently noticed that there are so few websites online that feature display and exhibition design, so I’m going to make it my job to show you guys some beautiful work in these fields as much as I can.

One fabulous example is Uniqlo‘s recently showroom, styled by Nicola Formichetti, the stylist who also worked on the company’s lookbook.   I love the creativity and the importance she put into details of the styling in the showroom.  She took a component (mannequin heads) that most people ignore (either that, or do the quirky, color-wig thing), and not only used it to style the collection, but helped bring interest or life to the displays, as a human wearing the clothes hopefully would.

See how she uses different the materials, fabric, form, shape to create related, relevant (life-style-wise), but still unexpected headpieces?  To read more about them, check out the article SuzieBubble wrote!  I also borrowed all of my pictures from her fabulous blog.

IMAGES: all viaSuzieBubble.

Button-Down Shirts Put to So Much Better Use

Great installations by artist Kaarina Kaiakkonen.

This is one of my absolute favorite types of art – everyday materials reapplied just for the sake of being reconsidered (as color? as fabric?), rather than to even be environmentally conscious or to have a recycled-aesthetic.  (Not that those aren’t good reasons for reapplying everyday materials, but I just love when its just for the sake of the piece only)

IMAGES: (top to bottom) here // here // here // here

“Using hundreds of second-hand shirts Finnish environmental artist Kaarina Kaiakkonencreates site-specific installations suspended above roadways or inside large warehouse spaces. Her most recent work Are We Still Going On? (top images), was conceived at Collezione Maramotti, a private collection of contemporary art in Reggio Emilia, Italy, and involves hundreds of children’s shirts hung in rows to resemble the interior hull of a giant ship. The shirts are organized by color on each side of the skeletal boat to represent a sort of symbolic dialogue about gender. You can learn more over on Art Texts Pics and see a brief video of the piece here. (via global art news)” (via Colossal and Hattip to Chris at his amazing blog!)