Tuesday, October 25, 2011


Design does not equal client work.
It’s hard to make purple work in a design. The things your teachers tell you in class are not gospel. You will get conflicting information. It means that both are wrong. Or both are true. This never stops. Most decisions are gray, and everything lives on a spectrum of correctness and suitability.

Look people in the eyes when you are talking or listening to them. The best teachers are the ones who treat their classrooms like a workplace, and the worst ones are the ones who treat their classroom like a classroom as we’ve come to expect it. Eat breakfast. Realize that you are learning a trade, so craft matters more than most say. Realize that design is also a liberal art. Quiet is always an option, even if everyone is yelling. Libraries are a good place. The books are free there, and it smells great.

If you can’t draw as well as someone, or use the software as well, or if you do not have as much money to buy supplies, or if you do not have access to the tools they have, beat them by being more thoughtful. Thoughtfulness is free and burns on time and empathy.

The best communicators are gift-givers.

Don’t become dependent on having other people pull it out of you while you’re in school. 
If you do, you’re hosed once you graduate. 
Keep two books on your nightstand at all times: one fiction, one non-fiction.
Buy lightly used. Patina is a pretty word, and a beautiful concept.

Develop a point of view. Think about what experiences you have that many others do not. Then, think of what experiences you have that almost everyone else has. Then, mix those two things and try to make someone cry or laugh or feel understood.

Design doesn’t have to sell. Although, that’s usually its job.

Think of every project as an opportunity to learn, but also an opportunity to teach. Univers is a great typeface and white usually works and grids are nice and usually necessary, but they’re not a style. 

Helvetica is nice too, but it won’t turn water to wine.

Take things away until you cry. Accept most things, and reject most of your initial ideas. Print it out, chop it up, put it back together. When you’re aimlessly pushing things around on a computer screen, print it out and push it around in real space. Change contexts when you’re stuck. Draw wrong-handed and upside down and backwards. 

Find a good seat outside.

Design is just a language, it’s not a message. If you say “retro” too much you will get hives and maybe die. Learn your design history. Know that design changes when technology changes, and its been that way since the 1400s. Adobe software never stops being frustrating. Learn to write, and not school-style writing. A text editor is a perfectly viable design tool. Graphic design has just as much to do with words as it does with pictures, and a lot of my favorite designers come to design from the world of words instead of the world of pictures.

If you meet a person who cares about the same obscure things you do, hold on to them for dear life. 

Sympathy is medicine.

Scissors are good, music is better, and mixed drinks with friends are best. Start brave and brash: you can always make things more conservative, but it’s hard to make things more radical. Edit yourself, but let someone else censor you. When you ride the bus, imagine that you are looking at everything from the point of view of someone else on the ride. If you walk, look up on the way there and down on the way back. Aesthetics are fleeting, the only things with longevity are ideas. Read Bringhurst and one of those novels they made you read in high school cover to cover every few years. (Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby.)

Stop trying to be cool: it is stifling.

Most important things happen at a table. Food, friends, discussion, ideas, work, peace talks, and war plans. 

It is okay to romanticize things a little bit every now and then: it gives you hope.

Everything is interesting to someone. That thing that you think is bad is probably just not for you. Be wary of minimalism as an aesthetic decision without cause. Simple is almost a dirty word now. Almost. Tools don’t matter very much, all you need is a sharp knife, but everyone has their own mise en place. 

If you need an analogy, use an animal. 

If you see a ladder in a piece of design or illustration, it means the deadline was short. Red, white, black, and gray always go together. Negative space. Size contrast. Directional contrast. Compositional foundations.

Success is generating an emotion. Failure is a million different things. Second-person writing is usually heavy-handed. All of this is too.

Seeking advice is addicting and can become a proxy for action. Giving it can also be addicting in a potentially pretentious, soul-rotting sort of way, and can replace experimenting because you think you know how things work. Be suspicious of lists, advice, and lists of advice.

Everyone is just making it up as they go along.

This about sums up everything I know.

—Frank Chimero

(via http://lepeuintroverti.blogspot.com/)

Monday, August 1, 2011

un femme est un femme




(last photo via favim.com)

I watched "Un Femme est une Femme" over the weekend and I am absolutely in love with Anna Karina's style! I must get red tights and sweaters asap! I loved the font and colors of the text throughout the film as well.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011


(image courtesy of cinemaspartan.com)

I've been watching this movie all weekend! Dawn Wiener is my newest hero, seriously. I loved her clothes, charm, painful awkwardness and quirkiness. I suddenly want kitten sweaters, big hair accessories, a shimmering altar, neon green leggings, bare back floral dresses and a DIY club house in our backyard.

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Saturday, July 16, 2011

My home girls





Yesterday I spent all day in the printshop at Parsons silkscreening these dolls (:

Monday, July 11, 2011

Christmas in July









Last night we got Vietnamese sandwiches from Baoguette on St. Mark's Place and after that my friend, Nina Choe, gave me boxes upon boxes and bags within bags of her art supplies! My friends are seriously too amazing! It felt like Christmas in July.

Saturday, July 9, 2011


Today I drew a girl with pizza and unicorn tattoos. I think something inside me wants pizza and unicorn tattoos too.

Friday, July 8, 2011

My current wish: a large, cold cup of bubble tea with my best friend


That's my best friend, Michelle on the left and me on the right! She lives in California but goes to school in South Carolina. Drinking bubble tea together is so fun, except when we make each other laugh TOO much. Choking on tapioca is no fun!



(<- sketches from my museum visit!)

I went to PS 1 earlier this summer and enjoyed it very much! You should definitely stop by if you have the chance! It's absolutely free for New School students (: My favorite exhibition was by the brave Laurel Nakadate, entitled "Only the Lonely." This body of work is comprised of videos and photographs that encapsulate the social disconnect between the artist and the strangers she encountered in New Jersey. My favorite piece in her show was a video series entitled "Oops!" (shown above) which records Laurel with three random male strangers she met by chance on the street. She asked these three men to take her into their homes to record a reenactment of Britney Spears' "Oops! I Did It Again" music video. I told you she was BRAVE! The exhibit also shows pieces about exorcisms, pretend birthday parties, dancing on the beach for Britney Spears, crying everyday for a whole year and photographing each session, making love to invisible lovers in Japanese hotels, morning strip teases, and so much more awkwardness.

I also found Nancy Grossman's collection of leather headpieces quite intriguing, but mostly scary. I love scary things.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

current inspiration: Mark Warren Jacques

Mark Warren Jacques "Seeing is Conceiving" from Joe Lumbroso on Vimeo.


I am currently obsessed with Mark Warren Jacques' work. I can't wait to see his show in San Francisco this winter!