Catherine's Time Machine

I could say this year blows and it did suck balls, but it has been a learning experience. 2011 is.. was my very early quarter-life crisis but what more fitting a year to have it than the year of the rabbit whose characteristic description states “They work very hard to avoid conflict or unpleasant confrontations.” In other words, cowards; in fact, if you look up coward in the thesaurus, you’ll see rabbit there.

Incidentally, I met a rabbit who did just that and another, although not rabbit but a tiger, who did the same. Rabbit or not, I learned boys are selfish deserters. Even the nicest looking boy can pretend to like you, compose a damn song in your name, and throw you away even after you write an email saying, “I’d still like to have you as a good friend.”

I’ve asked two of my guy friends who, coincidentally, have the same name as this large douchebag tell me they’ve met cold women, but never a woman who left without a courtesy memo. An “I don’t like you ugly ass,” would have been fantastic because although the truth hurts, it doesn’t hurt as much as being lied to or mislead. Boys. Only boys. But me? I am an earth dragon and a woman who thanks these immature cold-hearted boys because they have helped bring out the strength inside me that was dormant. They made me second-guess my every trait, made me feel I did something wrong, made me feel foolish, ugly, and dirty when all I wanted was to show my affection and love. They made me reevaluate my entirety.

But I’m glad they did because I’m learning about me as if I just met myself. I am beautiful, I have many imperfections… my skin, my indecisive nature… but the quality of who I am is infinite and incomparable. I make mistakes, but I do not run away from my problems. I am afraid to face them, sure, and feel the anxiety and fear flow through my bones, but still I manage to deal with it and importantly learn from it, slowly but gradually. Thanks to them, I realized how many people care about me and read what I have to write. Not millions of people, but more than a handful of supportive wonderful generous friends lent their ear, shared stories, and wiped my tears with compassionate honest words. Honesty, that’s all I could want in a true friend.

It was such a difficult year. Terrible internship, terrible dating choices, terrible waste of giving your best to people who didn’t deserve it, terrible uncertainty of graduating magna cum laude and unable to find a career, terrible skin problems, terrible health concerns, and the terrible feeling of not knowing who you are or your worth. I keep saying this year ‘was’ instead of ‘is’ because I am not going to waste another day sobbing over the shit of what happened and start appreciating that I have today, a messy blackboard wiped clean.

I still don’t know all of who I am, but I found out many people are in the same rut. At least, I am discovering myself in bits and pieces. Not thinking about problems and the people who’ve left a deep scar isn’t easy, but I must remember that there is a good reason they are not in my life, that the people in my life are here for a better reason. I could be bitter and untrusting, but I am not… I’m not because my friends remind me to stay who I am, a caring loving passionate person. They remind me that after all has left and gone, I still and will always have them. Glad I’ve hit bottom this year because now, I can only soar up as my year, the year of the mo-fuckin’ dragon arrives. I am content.

Thanks to Mad Men and the countless ads on TV for schools that “allow you to express your creativity to its fullest potential”, the thought is that every design job is a sexy glamorous job. Once you’re through with school, you’ll land a job at Leo Burnett, BBDO, Nike, Apple, or another company that has a pool table, sexy promiscuous secretaries, very entertaining socio-political drama, or something your parents and friends would recognize on the shelf.

The reality of it is the vast majority of designers will work to make ugly things for strategically incompetent people only to have more people still think very little of you. The GAP logo for instance, was more than likely the victim of a long line of vice presidents, product managers, communication directors, marketing chiefs, and other people with business degrees who think themselves experts in design solely because they work for a company that is reputed to care about design. Even designers across the world joined the flogging though they, by personal experience, know how little it takes from a VP to completely destroy the integrity of a project.

Dustin Curtis, a designer who openly criticized the site design of American Airlines on his blog, received a response from a designer at AA that was thoughtful and intelligently outlined the bureaucracy and red tape at a corporation that prevents good design. You could say this designer reached out to provide good customer service and was promptly fired by AA. 

There is also the myth that by sheer virtue of your talent, you will receive adulation and recognition. That is the most accurate theme in Mad Men that can translate to today: we are an industry of networking and meritocracy. Who do you know? What clients have you worked for you? If you went to a fantastic school like SVA, Parsons, SCAD, SAIC, ACD, or another acronym that none of your friends or family will recognize, it won’t matter till your portfolio can reflect where you want to work. You are an ant in a colony with many queens. 

Most clients are small, so your work will likely go unnoticed. Nobody who looks at a can of Coke thinks a big agency hired a small firm who in turn assigned an underpaid designer to typeset the word “classic” on the can. The credit goes to one hotshot designer that billions of people cannot and should not be able to name. I say they shouldn’t because the biggest myth about design is about recognition.

Design isn’t a job, a career, or a calling. It’s a total lifestyle. We dominate decision making that is about cultural construction and make-up: music, food, bikes, clothing. You can’t walk down the street and safely guess who’s a doctor or lawyer, but you can guess who has an interest in graphic design. 

It’s not simply pushing a button and clicking a few functions in Photoshop. It’s a complicated industry with its own ecology made up of incredibly hard work individuals that is routinely undermined by its own customers. 

I love what I do. I wouldn’t change much about what I do. Some people can’t go vegetarian, I can’t stop thinking or practicing design. 

PS. Everybody who has thought about hiring a graphic designer shouldread this blog and try to let who they hired as an expert do their job the best way they can.  

I think many writers fancy themselves to be something wild, creative, passionate - at the very least intelligent, I suppose.  We are an opinionated lot, a bunch of wordy loudmouths with too much to share, not too much to gain.  Let me preface this by saying that I am very fortunate to even have a job, as when I graduated from college I remember thinking a degree in Art History would qualify me to be a snob at parties.  Not to mention that I’m a *writer*, an occupation that is rife with unemployment.  Yes, very lucky.

I am part writer, which is the supposedly creative field in which my brain batters off words that delight and applaud the senses, and part personal assistant, which to this day is basically a position created out of spite for humans (this I am sure of!).  What people don’t understand is that yes, the surroundings are lush! Yes, the people are fabulous! Thank God, YES, the room is air-conditioned! But the constant servitude, the irrelevant, asinine assignments on a whim, and multiple Starbucks visits “for the team” are coupled with snarky, derogatory comments about your aptitude as said human.  I work hours are well over the 24/7 mark, and in return have been told to “pretend that I’m a good writer.”  On paper, the idea of travelling to Paris, Milan, London – ahhh kill me, my 5 year old self just peed in her pants!!  Little does anyone know that you don’t even see the cities – you arrive and hide in various offices, showrooms, and apartments, waiting to be let go, listening to snotty jokes and catty remarks.  You don’t have weekends – there is a Facebook emergency.  You don’t meet friends for happy hour – there is a couture emergency. You have no life whatsoever, you are to only have the life that employs you – which for some, may be tops, but for me – it’s very hard to see the use in waxing poetic on the latest mascara. 

I see the importance of working in politics – it makes a difference.  I see CNN clips of dolphins being trained to work for the military – fascinating developments! I read about starvation in other countries and at home, and what can I do to help!!!  And then… my phone is ringing and I have to rewrite a paragraph on nail polish.  There’s a whole world out there… right?

The psychologists call it “deindividuation”. It’s what happens when social norms are withdrawn because identities are concealed. The classic deindividuation experiment concerned American children at Halloween. Trick-or-treaters were invited to take sweets left in the hall of a house on a table on which there was also a sum of money. When children arrived singly, and not wearing masks, only 8% of them stole any of the money. When they were in larger groups, with their identities concealed by fancy dress, that number rose to 80%. The combination of a faceless crowd and personal anonymity provoked individuals into breaking rules that under “normal” circumstances they would not have considered.

Deindividuation is what happens when we get behind the wheel of a car and feel moved to scream abuse at the woman in front who is slow in turning right. It is what motivates a responsible father in a football crowd to yell crude sexual hatred at the opposition or the referee. And it’s why under the cover of an alias or an avatar on a website or a blog – surrounded by virtual strangers – conventionally restrained individuals might be moved to suggest a comedian should suffer all manner of violent torture because they don’t like his jokes, or his face. Digital media allow almost unlimited opportunity for wilful deindividuation. They almost require it. The implications of those liberties, of the ubiquity of anonymity and the language of the crowd, are only beginning to be felt.