Me & Mine

Its interesting to hear the differing opinions over the decisions I took with my site, which is about three weeks old now. I have to admit that its not complete and the fact that I’m still uploading projects gives evidence to this. That said even in the build up and research I simply had to draw the line and move to the next stage.

Its technically a copy-driven site and so I needed to have something to say that was coherent, relative, motivating and resonated beyond just myself. I feel its done that. Of course I could have a copywriter do it but I still needed to have the crux of the statement there myself, and besides this is a very personal story of identity and the future.

I’ve stepped off the gas for bit now and sampled the opinions of those I’ve asked directly and I’d say I’ve reached success - I’ve managed to get both positive and negative reactions, but it doesn’t end there. Its in the intensity of the comments that has me feeling good. I’ve been noting enthusiastic responses from people both at home, in Ireland and those here in Tokyo, remarking that they’ve never seen that approach by a creative before. Long gone are my days of simply stating - oh I’m a graphic designer and I will do anything for money. That’s gone.

Intrigue circles around the “Go Hard” slogan, and so it should. Its up to everybody to make that message their own. That’s its power. Essentially though those that really get it will find out that by going hard they ultimately make their own future and a community will form with them, not around them, on the way.

What now? I still have a lot of ideas for mini-projects and designs, but first I need to act on my recent insight. What I have now is a beta version.

Get back on the horse - Go hard.

During last week while jumping from one task to the other, I saw a tweet that caught my attention. It referred to typography errors and the basics. As a new creative director in a creative video studio I often find myself still covering some basics with regard to type and its use. I don’t proclaim to be a master, however I would like to highlight the benefits of even a simple grasp of the skills of applying good typography to any design, moving or not.

The following link was a great help in summarizing the essential need-to-knows in one downloadable pdf. (At which point I immediately took it and uploaded it to the company’s basecamp project for typography resources.)

Its worth noting that although the above link takes you to a fellow Irish man’s page (hurrah!) (Ray Elder), its not actually his production. The original is produced by the designer Jim Godfrey and was printed in letterpress as evidenced in this link. Both are great; the pdf for its attainabilty, and the original for its print quality. Unfortunately I’m a little late in discovering that it was indeed printed so I’ve yet to get my hands on a copy. Better luck next time perhaps.

For all those out there inserting double spaces between sentences even in official documents please look at rule number 1!

Thanks for your patience. Here are the remaining words broken down to conceptual and administrative sections. I hope they are useful for all those budding linguistic creatives out there.

I know that Japanese is often considered to be a language where stock phrases and ways of saying certain things are used and reused but please consider that these are by no means a definitive list. Just something to help you get through the maelstrom of unknown words in an industry that will require you to explore a new lexicon.

Thanks again, and I hope you get some value from the list.

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