Brain Teasers

The fact that Eddie Redmayne (as seen in films such as Les Miserables and The Theory of Everything), will have the honor to star as Newt Scamander in the new Harry Potter spin-off movie, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. I've been his fangirl since his amazing performance as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, because you know; Tall, brooding, long-faced, British accented men never cease to make me... Sigh... Fall in love. 

The fact that Sylvia Plath's quotes always resonate my visions and ideologies in life:

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.” 

And, oh, introducing The Bell Jar, her novel that I bought when I was 16 years old: full of life confusions and currently suffering from self-identity crisis.

The fact that searching for a random Tibetan girl in the middle of philosophy class and then draw them on your notebook is always the best way to keeps me awake. By the way, there's this one beautiful movie that tingled my mind these past days. Take a look. Simply beautiful. This movie is my number one for the most beautiful movie ever.

The fact that drawing your favorite blogger brings you inspirations. Meet Evita Nuh, a blogger I know for years and yes, she's inspiring. It's somehow interesting to watch her since she was around 10 and now she's teenager. 

The fact that working on this painting is such a pain in the ass (not literally) and back (literally). Yes, I join painting class for elective this semester and it's such a fun time for me to explore several art movements and styles. And oh, this one's dadaism.

The fact that books will always be my loyal friend, whenever and wherever I am.

"Good Design is Goodwill" -Paul Rand

Good day, mate. I finally found a new, better way to keep myself blogging. It's by writing some thoughts and opinion that someone asked me via ask.fm here, in my blog. It's way better than writing them on the spot, for there were some limitation such as you can only put a picture while you can put gazillions of videos (which I find it super weird). So, here we go.

This question came from an anonymous, which is exactly the point of ask.fm: to be an anonymous to deal with someone else's life.

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I started my freelance experience since I graduated from high school (I wrote a story about it here) and I've been experiencing those bad things since that time. There are genuinely dozens of them, but I'll share it for you some of them that bother me TOO MUCH:

The most annoying thing that clients had ever done to me is to hit and run. Basically, we dealt about the design, I've done all the things that should've been done and then poof, the client's gone without any trace, without any transactions. This is the worst because, it seems that you are untrusted. If you're going to be a designer, there are at least a hit and run encounter that happened to you. And no, it doesn't mean you're no good enough. It means they're stupid. :)

Then, there's always that time when your client really want you to do their favor... Too much. I had this one client who made me do thousands of minor revision every single hour of the day, which implying on massive crash to my laptop. This is really annoying. Yes, we, designers must do our job to get a life, but we also have a life to do. I can't sit on my laptop 24/7 tweaking on your endless revisions. So, the only way to get rid of this annoying thing is to be clear and make your own rule. For me, I set on maximal revisions of three times, and if the revisions are exceeding the deal: Extra payment. Yes please. :)

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This thought always came to my mind, as I waiting to client's respond or while getting ready for another revision: Why am I being a graphic designer? We knew all those horrible things that happened: clients from hell, underpaid designers, and discrimination toward designers especially in the country where I lived. 

I may said, what we get is not as much that we give.  It's tiring to be a graphic designer. Physically, to spend most of our times in front of our computer, tweaking on the most working design. Mentally, to deal with people.

But, it isn't tiring when it comes to the final revision. That hellish client finally smiled. But it isn't tiring when it comes to working design. Teenagers asked their parents to buy them a new phone while looking at a billboard on the highway. People broke into tears and empathy when they see a social campaign against domestic abuse. Children laughed when reading a story book with a cute, imaginative characters.

Yes, I said it was tiring. But it all paid off.

I never regret my decision being a graphic designer.

Making a design; a good design, is goodwill.

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Well, that's all for today's kinda deep thoughts of mine. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoy writing it. 

Bye, for now.