A brief moment of anger.

A few hours ago, I came across an article from “etapes magazine” (which is one of the only french magazine dedicated to graphic design.) that talked about a “Manifesto” wrote by Pierre Vanni about making a portfolio. As I said before, making a portfolio is probably the worst experience for a designer, and I’m always curious as to know what others think about it. 

Basically, all that Pierre Vanni says is that you should make a big virtual artboard, jpeg format, and use the built-in zoom tools to make it happen.
At first, it didn’t bugged me, as it’s pretty clever and useful for non-developer or newbie graphic designers. I, myself, am pretty happy to read tips and tricks from other designers.  What caught my attention is the plethora of hard discussing comments about this position, especially the repetitive use of “pretentious”, “stupid”, ” dogmas”.    
Just because somebody tries to sum-up his position as a designer, toward his portoflio, he get flamed at just because he uses a dogmatic tone. How many manifestos were written and followed by people before, where they fluxus or Dada, without being flamed at? I really don’t find it pretentious, he never forced anyone to follow his ideas.
Worst than that, he gets insulted as being an “artist”.
How often do you hear someoneusing the term “artist”, as an insult for a designer. Such as: he is good, but he’s an artist, he’s no good for commercial work. I tend to think that creative people, be it designers or artists, are in the same basket nowadays. We work for money and prostitute our creativity for fame. There’s no real difference between a gallerist and a client, is there?
And then, we got a indexhiitisboring-galore.
Eventually, all of this leads to a simple pitch: those designers are bored because junior designers are all doing the same portfolio-thing on indexhibit, but flame a guy that propose an easy and itelligent way to make a portfolio a little bit more original. (And then, they just say he’s an artist, but it’s not really the subject here.)

Okay, so why do I get all excited about all this? Because I truly, and deeply think that it is important to explain your work and why you do it. Be it by a manifesto or any other form of writing. Graphic design is not only pushing pixels around. It’s also a way of thinking, building up ideas, and talking about them. I don’t get why somebody has to get flame at because he’s doing the fundamentals of his job.

There are no dogmas in graphic design. There are only rules, that you can choose to follow or to ignore, but that you’d better know. 
And now, I’m going to watch Alien 3, again.  
\o/ Zélia 

 I love those slightly disturbing plushes. 

Who couldn’t want a pink knitted sexy dominatrix outfit or a dead-by-carrot rabbit? Not only is this terribly cute, but it can also give a message to those you love (…) for X-mas. Ah, the joy of cheerful innocent grandma knits!!

I sooo wish I could knit right now. I’d do a fantastic dead black cat for my lover. With lot of inner bits. And blood.

Via Likecool, Via Gizmodo.

Because christmas tree is not an excuse to do nothing.

Spent some more time on FFFFound.

It’s not a surprise if I say that this week will be a tad special. I usually hate christmas, its abusive family reunion and horrible confrontations… But this year, it’ll be completely different. 
First, I’ll be only working three day, which means I’ll have a lot of time on my hand. Which rocks. From Wenesday, I’ll be free to do whatever I like. And let me tell you that I have a lot of things I’d like to do.
Second, it will be the first time ever I’ll celebrate with my friends instead of my family on christmas eve. Last year was quite a mess for everyone, and we swore that we would do something different for 2008. Here we are!
All of this makes me a little excited about the week to come. I look forward to all of this!

• I shall do my best to organize a wonderful eve, that no one will ever forget,a nd then conquer the world!
Geez, I may be a little optimistic here, but as long as there are some “foie gras” and champagne, no one will cringe over me. Will they?
• Update the blog to wordpress 2.7 and get my plugins up to date. I am a bit lazy about all this, but I know it’s for the best. I should also look a little bit more into coding to arrange the design better. I think I should start from scratch, it’d be easier…
• Write my 2009 goal list. There are new aims I’d like to achieve this year, let write them down, yay! (I’m becoming a list freak a little bit more each day. I think it reveal my control obsession quite a lot. Ahah!)
• Write a letter to my father. Haven’t seen him in 3 years & I quite dream a lot about him these days… I think it’s time to get in touch again.
• Eat, drink, give presents and love. And forget that this period of the year has once been the worst one. 
• and for now, go and cook tomorrow’s bentô (onigiri and red cabbage salad?)

I hope you’ll all have a nice christmas — without shouting, burnt meal or ugly sweatshirts presents, I guess.
See ya,
Zélia. 

Weekly inspiration mashup.

 
It’s been quite while since my last inspiration post. Let’s say I was not inspired at all (or more probably that  I did have a lot of work, I don’t remember).
I hope you all had an exhilarating week, full of incredible encounters, fantastic moments and a lot of brilliant creativity. It is more likely that you had a regular week, but as you notice, I’m in a “positivity blog moment”.

• This week, I listened a lot to PJ Harvey & David Bowie.
• And I suddenly felt that I should have pink or blue hair again. After over 6 months of hair asceticism, Time has come to get a bit more edgy.
• I suspect it has something to do with Zoetica’s hair. 
• My boyfriend bought me a componibili. Design galore!
• I spent some time on FFFFound, looking for nice interiors.
• My bookshelves finally go up to the ceiling. And those photographs of fantastic libraries around the world makes me feel peaceful.
• Haute Macabre talked to my inner goth.
• I cringed over Tokidoki for Fornarina shoes, over and over again.
• Undrln seems a good infos sources about ads and design.  
• I started to explore twitter. I need to work it out a bit more.
• I started wondering about my next year resolutions. It seems that I’d prefer to do a list of things I’d like to do. That is far more inspiring.