notes on the incredibly mundane

030

2009-08-31T16:50:00.007-03:00

today i feel compelled to quote from a great fiction writer, douglas adams, as sometimes life seems nothing less than fiction: "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

i realize the previous post was a while ago, and since i intended to keep a somewhat up-to-date and accurate account of my design ventures i'm clearly late in doing so, but with an excellent excuses. those being—since the last post i have:
1- gone from a freelancer to a hired, full-time professional (if only for a couple of months);
2- rented my apartment;
3- moved to a different country (usa)
4- moved in with my brother, sister-in-law AND nephew
5- and, on a more personal note: fought, made up and then broke up with the now former boyfriend.

even though my list of activities is pretty impressive as is i have also managed to work on a few designs as i adjusted to the office politics. as always, i'll be posting the final, approved, version of the designs on my portfolio site so below are the preliminary pieces sent to those i shall be referring to as "'em bosses":

029

2009-07-07T20:49:00.000-03:00

I have this recurrent dream where I’m free falling in circles down a bottomless well that is just too wide for me to hold myself to. I fall without a sense of time, just a feeling of despair that eventually sparks with hope and gives me the strength to reach out a bit more, stretch to my limit and try to stop myself from falling, hands and feet against the cold moist circular rock. Inevitably after all my trying all I manage is to weakly rasp my fingertips against the walls and experience a renewed and even stronger sense of despair than I had before.

I wake up and instead of having that sense of despair dissipate through the day it often intensifies. There are moments the weight of my inactions have me be inert even in thought. The constant artificial light emanating from the computer screen a fool-proof reminder that I have gone wrong in quite a few ways. At times I force myself out of this mental tepidness and delve into strange waters of uncertainty. I surf the net and find that maybe the path lest traveled by is not even an option anymore. I laugh sardonically at my naivety in thinking, even for an instant, there might me a path altogether unexplored. The weight of expectations is unbearable.

028

2009-06-03T13:28:00.003-03:00

i spent a sleepless night last week designing promotional material for a brazilian film production company called "lacuna". it was an insanely rushed job... i was asked to design twelve page booklets, flyers and business cards for each of their three different tv series as well as a tease postcard-format flyer for the company. they sent me the final text on thursday around midday and i had to send send the printers the final files by friday (some by noon, others by 6pm). there wasn't much time for planning and experimentation but they were really happy with the resulting booklets. i was happier with the teaser flyer you see above. unfortunately i can't take credit for neither catch-phase or idea of the tv with lacuna written on the screen. however i am responsible for the illustration, color and type choices as well as that cute idea for a background (all based on 50's ads, based on these -among other- resources).

027

2009-06-02T13:07:00.000-03:00

sometimes it's hard not to think like a capitalist, and impossible not to think like a designer. i followed a link in my sister's blog and ended up surfing the moroso website as thoroughly as if it had been sent to me as an assigment. all i could do was alternate between thinking "i'd want one" and "why didn't i design that?!". fortunately i'm not an industrial designer so i managed to keep my self esteem somewhat intact even after seeing eric ku's chair/chair on a sister site. it's a noce idea but the result isn't exactly astheticly pleasing. the picture above is a whole different story. one of the plus sides is i can look at it without feeling the least bit of guilt for not coming up with that idea... and doshi levien's "my beautiful backside" sofa are just plain gorgeous.

026

2009-06-01T22:18:00.002-03:00

The words had barely left her mouth and already she wished they could be taken back. Not that this was an unusual thing for Josie to want, she had had her share of awkward moments. In fact, ever since she was a little girl Josie had managed to say not the wrong things, but the right things moments too soon. Her family thought she just didn’t pay enough attention to the way things worked and therefore hadn’t the social graces necessary for polite conversation. Her friends thought she paid a little too much attention.

Josie had the knack for guessing exactly what people would say before they had even thought about saying anything at all. At least that’s what they said. Instead the truth, as it happens, was just a little bit weirder. Josie didn’t guess what people would say. She was positively horrible at guessing and was far from being one of those intelligent types that can calculate the probability of something happening and make assumptions based on it. Assumptions that seem like eerie guesswork. No. Josie simply heard what was said before it was said at all. Her body and mind lived in the present, but her ears seemed to hear the future. Not the distant future, she could not hear something a few hours ahead. Her talent made her hear all things minutes before they were said. This had generated quite a bit of confusion.

This particular morning Josie had been bickering with her colleague at work, Sam, about the amount of changes he expected her to make (by noon) to her piece on the origins of human settlements in remote areas of the globe. They had already finished arguing and Sam was about to get on the phone with his wife when Josie had said it. One little sentence that would eventually get her an appointment with the company’s physiologist.

-“I’m not you honey and stop saying you love me”.

Josie had long since learned to cope with her “ability” to hear the future, and could usually force herself to answer in the present questions that she had heard in the past (but were actually the future). Unfortunately she wasn’t very good at it when she got excited over something. Having to re-write twenty information-laden pages, written over a period of three months, in less than an hour had definitely gotten her excited. She had controlled herself splendidly as she tried to find logical reasonings with which to support her point of view on the subject. That is, until she lost the argument and let her ears snap to the future where Sam told his wife he loved her before hanging up the phone. You’d be hard-pressed in trying to explain that to even the most open minded of mental health professionals.

Maria, the company’s physiologist, was a stout, middle-aged, latin woman that had a mouth like a toad and a face to match. She had the habit of biting on the corner of a red-tipped felt pen top as her patients talked. Also, she was definitely not open-minded.

025

2009-05-28T05:00:00.001-03:00

i love that people don't take wedding invitations too seriously nowadays. a graphic designer friend of mine was asked to design the invitation for her cousin's wedding and in turn asked me to illustrate the bride and groom. i've been out with them a few times but even so i asked her for a few photos of the couple and an idea of what she wanted to portray. they both studied physical education in college and she is into running. my friend also asked me for an "almost stick figure" illustration style and what you see above is the final artwork. i've designed a grand total two wedding invitations up to date — my brother's and my ex-boss'. both were very different from each other and quite fun to do. and now i've also illustrated two wedding invitations — my brother's and my friend's cousin's. yey. best wishes for the happy couple. anyone else?

024

2009-05-27T05:00:00.000-03:00

it's a pitty many people tend to allow no time for the creative process of anything design related. i try to explain over and over again that even if logos appear simple they require a lot more research and experimentation than your average pamphlet. a lot more, really. here again i was given the opportunity to design a logo for a really interesting and promising project (and i hope i'll be able to take part in designing other media for it). unfortunately i didn't have nearly as much time to research and create as i hoped, but i am quite happy with the options i've presented the client. right now i'm waiting on commentaries and changes.

023

2009-05-26T05:00:00.000-03:00

sometimes there just isn't a great concept idea behind a logo. even less so for a redesign. for jr pedras para revestimentos (literally translated as "jr stones for tiling") all i could do was play with the letters jr, since even the company color was already set in stone. sometimes eluding to tiles with the letter themselves, other times just trying to create an interesting yet readable icon, i handed in five options of logo and business cards duo for the re-design of jr. above are three of the proposed logos... the final one ended up looking a lot like their previous one, except cleaner and with more of a design purpose to it.

022

2009-05-25T05:00:00.000-03:00

lately i've had the good fortune of having people ask me for logos. i think it's really a great opportunity as building brand identity is one of the most fun and also more mind-crushing activities a graphic designer can partake. it's always a kind of dare to try and summarize an entire companies' philosophy, dreams, work ethic, and such in one simple graphic element. a graphic element that has to be able to scaled down to fit on a give-away pen or blown up to cover half a building. something that should work in one color as well as the full-color version, that can be printed, etched, silk-screened, embroidered and god knows what else.

above are the preliminary options for a business-consulting company. the final version of this and other works will be published in my personal/portfolio site.

021

2009-05-24T10:14:00.000-03:00

i was asked by the great guys at suma project v to design a wine lable for a home made basement wine. although this project embodies the typical communication problem i sometimes have with my clients i was happy with the result. i've decided to show you what happened in six easy, simplified and stress-less, steps:

1- "we'd like a modern sort of look for our wine, using one of these great photos we took." cool. i had a look at the photos and picked what i deamed as the best one.

2- "ummm, it's a bit too sexy, isn't it? i love this picture too and i loved what you did with the type, but maybe is would be best to have something a bit less sexual? can you make the picture into a drawing or something so it looks more classy?" sure. voilá, option number two.

3- "yeah the picture is still too sexy. it's a basement wine." how about with an altogether different picture? an organic product type pallet? i present thee option 3.

4- "no, no... try this picture instead. and put the text over there, and change the typeface, it's looking way too modern." okay. sure! is this - option four- what you had in mind?

5- "ummmm" no? no matter- i've made this other one, all-type and just black and white cause i have a feeling this is what you are trying to get me to do...

6- "great! that's it! approved!"

and there you have it. the final layout is the all-type, black and white, square lable.

020

2009-05-23T09:45:00.000-03:00

and we're back!

yup, i know it's been a long time since i've posted anything here, but i've been trying to figure out exactly what i'll be posting, since my portuguese blog is about cultural events in são paulo, but it doesn't make too much sense to write about them here. if you can read portuguese or want to have a go at it just click on the link to "the other blog" right there, on the right hand side of this page. if you are curious about what i've been doing in são paulo but hardly as brave as you would have to be to take a chance in reading that god-forsaken language that is portuguese just have a look at my flickr, it's informative enough at times.

ok, so you must be asking yourself exactly what will i be posting here, then. the answer is i'm still not sure. but i'll try starting with a behind the curtains view of a few of my design projects, intermitted with the random thought or short story, as the muse of creativity might command.

019

2008-11-21T02:58:00.001-02:00

as i avoided doing all the things i should be doing i started playing around with the concept of ten part yoga and whatnot... i eneded up making this logo and business card for my cousin, which will stop by here on saturday to see what she thinks. i really hope she likes it, because i sure do :)

018

2008-10-19T05:55:00.000-02:00

a bit of a pause.

so ive been running around italy for a little while now (10 incredible days). i got to rimini yesterday and whilst all the cities arent huge this one was really small... not small, just a bit void of the ruins i like so much (we can thank world war ii for this). so there wasn't much to do. the hostel im staying at is really nice, the staff is great and it was a kinda cold night so i stayed inside and started reading one of the books they have on a quaint little shelf by the pool table: Orkowei, by alberto manzi. it was just something to kill some time, i intended to go to ravenna early morning the next day. intended being the main thing here. i started the book and couldnt stop. eventually i had to, cause i was called to go out and rimini is famous for it so i went... then when i woke up today the first thing i did was run to the shelf to continue reading and hopefully finish this book at a decent hour and still catch the train to ravenna... ha ha ha i got caught up talking to some of the people here at the hostel, went for a walk in town, walked barefoot in on the beach, bought lunch/dinner (fresh raviolini for less than an euro!) came back, cooked and finally finished the book. basically i wasted a day in italy but it was a little pause for culture the way i figure it... just a different kind :) the rest of the italy trip will be posted when i get back home. still checking my email a few times a day hoping to get an answer from frabica in the meantime...

017

2008-10-06T15:49:00.001-03:00

i went by renwick gallery the other day and saw some works by lino tagliapietra... i also had the opportunity of sitting in a talk he was giving and chatting with him a bit. oh wow. it had been a while since i had felt such awesomeness when facing a wonderous work of art. his work is amazing. it kept me light for hours and still brings a really dumb smile to my face when i think of it... the photo doesn't do it justice but hey, i try. btw- grazie per tutto, sr. lino!

i know i've already said it but his work is just amazing. if you have the opportunity of going to this exhibit - do. right now "Lino Tagliapietra in Retrospect: A Modern Renaissance in Italian Glass" is showing at the Renwick Gallery, in DC 'till january 2009. After that it goes to the chrysler museum of art in norfolk; palm springs art museum in, duh, palm springs; and the museum of arts and design in new york (in 2010)! for more info go to http://www.museumofglass.org/exhibitions/lino/ where they have a more detailed schedule and a few paragraphs on this amazing artist. i know it sounds corny- and i'm not the type of person to get too emotional about things... but the vases in this exhibit transcend space and time... when you step into a room filled with these beauties you feel like you've left that muddy world which is reality behind and somehow a small bit of paradise seeped into the room... it's overwhelming. i definitely recommend it... i mean... after going to this exhibit i spent a day at the national gallery, paroosing around works by van gogh, da vinci, calder, botticelli, dali, renoir and whatnot and as much as i loved all of it none were so transcendent as lino's. and no- i'm not getting payed to write this. it's just that these works haven't been plastered in all your art history books, calendars and coffee mugs ;)

016

2008-10-02T15:05:00.000-03:00

i spent august in brasilia and helped out with an event on peppers for Embrapa. I designed a couple of posters and a gift-bag.

014

2008-09-20T22:03:00.001-03:00

So, i felt like i needed to do some current issues, political and what-not pieces, for a change. I wanted to do something to do with the gay pride because it still gets to me that in this day and age there are still people who are shocked by the mere existence of gay men and woman. But, as any good modern day citizen i'm always multi-tasking... i'm going to rome in a few weeks and was also looking at random sites about the city... turns out rome will host the europride in 2011. So i thought to myself, what da heck, maybe i'm a few years early t why not make a poster for it? That's basically what you are seeing above.

013

2008-09-01T23:38:00.000-03:00

i was going thru my old college stuff and found this little magazine type thing i did for a seminar about push-pin graphics and sagmeister. A friend of mine wrote the part about sagmeister, i wrote the push-pin bit. I designed the magazine type thing and she made a flash presentation full of post-its and push-pins. curious?
don't be shy, have a look:

Get your own - Open publication

012

2008-08-30T15:36:00.002-03:00

My sis is taking a course on business and whatnot. Actually I'm not even sure what she's supposed to be learning–but i was glad to help when she called me yesterday asking for a quick logo for a fictional company in the pool security field named tchibum (that's the sound we say in brazil is made by an object falling in water). As i said it was a VERY quick logo- but i kinda liked it, so i decided to post a bit of my handy-work here. :)

011

2008-08-27T00:07:00.001-03:00

having a little logo - $0
uploading it to google maps - $0
seeing your logo online on google maps - priceless ;)
(and is case you are all wondering -
no, i didn't get payed by either google or mastercard...
though i'm not saying no if they come knocking :)
silly and free, but oh so cute.

010

2008-08-24T23:14:00.000-03:00

and fast and angry and... oh i love almost all of their stuff...

009

2008-08-24T00:29:00.000-03:00

great reporting:

IJING, Aug 23 (Reuters) - The Spanish silver medallist could not help throwing up on the podium.

The Ukrainian bronze medallist had to be picked up by the rescue boat after fainting on the finish line. And the German silver medallist from another race spent several hours in hospital.

With such short distances of 1,000 and 500 metres, canoeists and kayakers out on Lake Shunyi push themselves to exhaustion.

After the second race of the day on Saturday, two of the medal winners had to be driven the short distance to the press conference because they could not walk.

Spain’s David Cal, who had entered as the C1 500 metre favourite, looked white and repeatedly threw up while collecting his silver medal, while Iurii Cheban of Ukraine fainted several times on the side of the lake after finishing third.

On Friday, Germany’s Thomasz Wylenzek was taken to hospital after collapsing following his silver medal-winning performance in the double.

However it seems that a gold medal can override all pain. Russia’s Maxim Opalev who won the gold over Cal and Cheban danced all the way to the press conference, waving his flag on the way.

(Reporting by Kate Holton and Balazs Koranyi; Editing by Alex Richardson)
taken from http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/canoe_kayak/news?slug=reu-canoeingpain_pix&prov=reuters&type=lgns on sunday aug 24, 2008.

008

2008-07-30T23:43:00.000-03:00

Strangely I feel as though a hoard of hippos has flown thru my viscera just recently. Though I cannot swear to it and have no tangible proof of the fact I can certainly describe the remembrance of utmost despair such an event caused, as hippos are clearly too tangible to fly thru anyone without leaving a most gruesome track of destruction. I can’t say that I have danced with any such amiable characters since the yonder college years… yet I would have, without a doubt, preferred it to what I’ve experienced in stead. Regardless of the state of my inner digestive organs my brain isn’t collaborating with the better functioning of my system. It seems utterly oblivious to the fact that there are such things as one cannot change and such sad tales that exist because they are inspired by some remote truth and not in spite of it.

oh well.

007

2008-07-21T00:02:00.000-03:00

a reminder to myself: not everyone is decent,
and those who aren't sure tend to be creative.

today a couple of friends and i were walking in paulista when we were met by a guy claiming he had been robbed and he was an english teacher living in brazil for just one year and he needed money to go back home. Ok, the guy had no accent whatsoever so maybe he really did need the money... god knows i've had to ask for money twice in my life (ok it was just a couple of dollars to get out of the metro and the second time i wanted to trade dollars for reais.. but still i depended on the generosity of others). So we gave the guy all the money we had... which wasn't much, 15 bucks and some change. I just got home and my friends called me... their cousin told them he fell for the same stunt... and so many other people have that there is a community in orkut about this guy...

So my hat's off to you, fake steve mason guy, for thinking of a brand new way of getting money from unsuspecting middle class fools.

006

2008-07-18T02:06:00.000-03:00

005

2008-06-27T23:53:00.001-03:00

Just thought you should know- i SO didn't die.
(this would be really freaky if i left this as my last post and did die... but i haven't so it isn't freaky, just sarcastic.)

004

2008-06-26T00:50:00.000-03:00

Now I'm scarred I'm going to die of gas poisoning.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted —the true reason why that is would be because I was working so hard I forgot I should also have a life— but I like to keep my many readers on their toes, never knowing when a new post will be made available online. Post number 004 is brought to you at one am on a particularly freezing tropical day, and is made possible by the total fiasco of thoughts presented on post 001 and my subsequent quitting of said job.

There I was, late at night waiting for some ppt presentation to beautify, when I thought a good scolding shower would do me good. That’s what I thought… and that’s when everything started going wrong. I went to he bathroom to turn on the hot water but it just wouldn’t turn on. No matter… I went to the gas water heater near thee kitchen, turned it on via kitchen sink and proceeded to stick a match in it after having guessed the problem was it’s lighting mechanism. The match not only blew out but also fell inside the heater. O.K. Clearly I couldn’t try to turn the heater on now… so I got some tweezers and tried pulling the match out… as Murphy would have it the match fell in deeper… Still non-fussed and accustomed to handy work I got a couple of screws and made my own extra long tweezers in order to rescue the spent matchstick…. Need I say what happened next? Of course it fell to where I couldn’t even see the damn match anymore. Since I already had the screwdriver in my hand I decided to go ahead and unbolt and open the whole apparatus and simply take the match out of it, close it all back and proceed with the taking of the shower. Keyword being simply. I just couldn’t take the thing entirely apart… and now I can’t put it back together because whatever rusted metal this ruddy contraption is made out of won’t bend back to whatever shape it was supposed to have and won’t bend further out either. Coming to this conclusion on the nature of the metal wasn’t as smooth a thought process as is here related and…well… now I’m afraid I might have budged some gas pipe and will soon die of the afor mentioned gas poisoning.

Just in case I have opened quite a few windows around the apartment and because of them I am freezing while still neurotic about the possibility of gas. If I kill myself I want it to be on my terms, damn it! So (taking a deep breath of what I hope oxygen) I leave this post as a sort of disclaimer to people saying I committed suicide and promises to post again soon in case I don’t die.

003

2008-04-01T12:52:00.000-03:00

"death and taxes"

Yesterday i decided to walk home from work. It´s a pretty safe thing to do, it´s only an one-hour walk across one of the best neighborhoods in town and into mine. There is only one not-so-cool part under a pedestrian bridge where a couple of people live... but they seem to be ok. I turned my ipod on and walked by the beats of a variety of happy jazz tunes till the corner of the bridge where, as i walked toward it, i could see one of those bums on the floor, as if sleeping, with his hands under his head and legs tucked in. Around him were five other people, three innocent by-standards who seemed concerned with the man on the floor standing with their backs to a wall. The other two guys were cops. As I walkeked closer i saw one cop nudge the sleeping bum with his foot. When I got even closer the second cop took the bum´s wallet from his hips. As i passed by them, not even a meter away from them i looked to the guy on the floor. The dead guy on the floor, who was probably beaten silly by someone and who´se head was oozing cumps of dried blood. For a second i felt i was going to get sick, then i sped up and went home. This morning there was a pop-corn cart over where the dead guy was yesterday, and not even a cross or any sign that would clue someone other than the five guys and i, to what had happened not 24 hours ago.

City life if full of contrasts. Starving kids asking you for food while you dine at a restaurant, your house with a view of a favela and so on. I wonder what happened that all this became normal. We must have done something seriously messed up. I wonder if there is any going back. I wonder if i´m human... i just walked past the guy and didn´t stop. I sped up.

Un-named dead guy #4: Sorry.

002

2007-10-04T16:28:00.000-03:00

Ok guys, I´ll let you have a sneek-peak kinda like pixar lets us have of the most wonderful little logo i´ve been working on. Please note it´s strickly confidential (yeah, it´s just on a thing called world wide web for some reason hehehe... I´m counting on the fact that my blog´s popularity is next to null at the moment, though). It´s for a tinny historical town in the state of Rio, called Paraty. The one shown here if for winter (it´s a four-seasons thing), and if you ask me why da blazings hell did I put a damn fish as the symbol for winter I´ll have a killer answer on the ready. Go ahead. Ask. I dare you. Ok.. called a fish called (get this!) paraty goes to that place only in winter in order to procriate. Ahá. killer answer, I know. Hopefully it´ll be approved and you´ll be seeing everywhere.

001

2007-09-03T14:29:00.000-03:00

Today i got a new job, again. I hope it turns out to be as utopic as i imagine it someday.... at least the guys in this place seem to have some dreams left in them and i definately want that. I'm not sure about anything other than that i want to be happy and right now i'm not so much. I miss my dc life and all the stupid dreams i had made. Right now I have to make new ones, or so i'm told.