Hair.

 Some daily inspiration from the internet.

Five things that happened to me this week: lover’s birthday, plane tickets to Bonnaroo, MRI, yellow jacket sting, and eighth month anniversary.

Come see my show! I’ll be stage managing again this year - it’s going to be amazing.

Ziba is a design consultancy with a focus on the experience - the brand. They have locations in Portland, California, Tokyo, and Shanghai.

We exist to design beautiful experiences.

Promise:

What is your brand DNA? Who is your target consumer? We believe product and service offerings must be a genuine expression of the soul of your brand. We help you to identify and define your brand’s authentic promise.

Offering:

What product or service offering will be relevant and meaningful to your target consumers? How does your brand promise translate into your offering? We partner with you to define the right products and services for the right consumers at the right time.

Delivery:

How do consumers experience your brand? How should your products or services be delivered across multiple touch points? We work with you to deliver the right brand offering across one or multiple consumer touch points.

A few terms ago I took a tour with my student AIGA chapter of the Ziba offices in Portland. It’s large, white, cement, and intimidating. They sat down the group of students in a large conference room and began explaining what Ziba does. It was here I realized that as a Design Manager, I might actually have a place. Ziba researches - not design. They create an experience, not a set of posters. I also received valuable feed back about what they would expect in a portfolio from someone who is not a “designer” but someone who understands and manages the process. The advice was to have  little text - explain the entire process in a sentence.

Great. As one of my teachers had annoyingly said - writing a 10 page paper is easy, but writing a one paragraph summary of that paper isn’t. Explaining my management process in a few words isn’t simple. But, I was set to try and it was thanks to Ziba.

Fast forward a few months. I am now in my foundation portfolio class, trying to figure out how to visually express something that isn’t visual - working with creatives. One of my assignments for this class was to conduct multiple informational interviews with design industry professionals. I was determined to get to talk to Ziba again.

I contacted a few of my connections in the industry and got in to have an informational interview with Heather C. - a communications designer at Ziba. Heather and I sat down at a coffee shop and began discussing her role at Ziba. She had a few great pieces of advice for me:

• money isn’t worth everything - being happy is
• keep a strong confidence about your work
• keep trying, and never let someone say no to you stop

Heather also set me up with an additional interview with Paul L. - an account director at Ziba. Paul’s job is a lot closer to what someone with my degree would actually be doing. And, he was awesome. We went up to Ziba’s design library and sat down. I don’t know how it started, but I opened up to Paul about wanting to be in the comic book industry…and that turned into us talking about comics for a while. Paul was an engineer for several years at a medical devices company, and came to Ziba around three years ago. He is the director over health care services, and was open and honest with me. He gave me some great advice, too.

• look outside of big design firms for project management jobs
• go above and behind, the little things add up
• keep being able to have conversations with people
• and, continue this blog!

I learned a lot about Ziba and what it’s like to work there from these two individuals. I would like to be on their team someday - if my career choices lead me there.

Happy Mother’s Day. I love drawing plants.

I wasn’t expecting you to call.
In fact, you knew where I was - surrounded by people, pretending to have fun at a party. It made my heart race, that you called me anyway.

I had never heard you cry.

It was cold, I was on the porch trying to make out your words.

It was bad.

You didn’t mean to.

You were sorry.

It was an accident.

You wanted to make it up to me. You wrote me a song - no one had ever done that before.

The song was beautiful, telling of your adoration for me. Your love. That I was, in fact, your only hope.

I didn’t care about what you had done.
It didn’t really matter in the first place.

However, now that song just reminds me of the little mistakes you made…and how you never apologized for the bigger ones.

I hate that song.

My birthday was on Monday - and as many people know my mother gets me ridiculous gifts all year long. However, birthdays call for her to step up her game. So…with no further adieu -

A giant silver horse head. That is solid. Why? Because it reminded her of me.

I’m awesome.

Okay. So confession. I usually NEVER buy Cosmo magazine…or magazines in general (unless it’s for specific photo shoots and inspiration images for mood boards). However, there is one time where I’ll buy trashy magazines - and that’s when I’m waiting around for three hours in an airport.

So, as I was flying to Philly I had a three hour layover, and decided hey - I’ll pick up a trashy magazine to pass my time. But, when once I could have enjoyed reading horrible articles and confessions I couldn’t help be feel completely overwhelmed by the terribleness of this publication. It’s with the layout design, photoshop skills, and the actual content of the articles. Do people actually take this thing seriously?!

Look at the cover - who the hell decided to put Katy Perry on the same color background as the inset of her dress? She looks crazy photoshopped and inhuman.

I think the creepiest thing I found inside was timeline of six actors. It started with a picture of them as a child (in some movie they were first in) and then juxtapositioned next to a picture of them “now.” Then there was inserts of weird comments, for example, of the one next to Daniel Radcliffe - “Fancy a game of naked Quidditch with Harry? So do we.”

What? The target demographic for this magazine, from what I can gather, is a woman in her 30s. (Because there was an article in the back about why the 30s are SO MUCH better than 20s).

So, if you’re in your 30s…isn’t it kind of creepy to want to bang Harry Potter?

Besides the creep factor - the magazine is hardly about fashion. It’s about how to give great handjobs (really…how much advice do you REALLY need on that subject??), trashy romance novels, and “confessions.” Which seem rather forced fed and made up now that we have websites like Texts From Last Night. Oh, then there’s their column on career advice which is supposed to be witty and helpful, but again falls flat. Does their entire demographic live in New York?

What is Cosmo’s purpose? Its articles and interviews didn’t teach me anything, weren’t interesting, and had been written before. Do women in their 30s really rely on Cosmo for handjob and sex advice? Or do they just pick up an issue from six years ago and get the same advice, without all the quips about text messages?

I don’t know. But, I can’t even look at it with any knowledge of design without wanting to punch their art director in the face.

Sometimes, there’s people in your life who have changed it for the better. Been there for you. And have shown you good times, supported you through bad, and are people you don’t know how you ever lived without.

I’m grateful to have my new tattoo symbolize one of those people in my life: Erica Mackie.

Design + Music + Only Love in our lives. Preach it.