Today was another quite excellent day. I proudly quote:
“We’re big fans of Lisa’s uncompromising immersion into the magazine and the manner in which she has documented it. It wouldn’t come as any surprise were Buisnessweek to come knocking when she graduates later this year. Any design studio or publication that do manage to snare her will have a rising star on their hands.”
Yes, Intern Mag published my work - and to my big surprise they even wrote an article about me, a very nice one. I’ve never been called “a rising star” to this day and of course it’s music to my ears. This really made my day!
One question remains: I designed this Bloomberg Businessweek documentation in August 2013, that’s almost half a year ago. Why didn’t I uploaded it to platforms like Intern Mag or Design Made in Germany before? Three reasons:
a) I made it in ten days and I didn’t think that something I made in ten days can be good enough. That’s DISPROVED. In fact, I’ve seen results from 5-hours-workshop published in design magazines. In my opinion it’s all about intellectual preparation. I prepared this magazine in my mind a lot. There were eight weeks time between the internship and the date on which I started to design the documentation for it. And during the 3-month-internship (at Bloomberg) itself I already started to think about the end product. So when I said that I needed 10 days to design the magazine with 64 pages, all I did was bringing the layouts, texts and info graphics from my mind on paper. (Yes, also the Layouts. Sometimes when I’m bored, I’m pushing images, paragraphs and graphical elements around on an imagined double page.)
b) In spite of the time, I just didn’t know the work is good. Because nobody told me: “Wow, it’s so good, I bet Intern Mag would publish it on their website!” What I’ve learned from that: I shouldn’t listen so often to my own opinion or the one from my close enviroment (friends, class mates), but let people from far away decide if they like my stuff or not. There are so, so many magazines, blogs and other platforms on the world - somebody eventually will like it. Maybe the secret of good design is just to increase the critical mass of people who find it likeable.
c) I thought: “If somebody find it on my website and likes it, they will tell the world.” Well, that was naive, incredibly naive. I didn’t expect that the whole world suddenly says: “OMG I LOVE IT!!!!”, but maybe I expected that somebody would say: “Hey look, I found this designer by coincidence - she’s not so bad!” Coincidence! Ladies and Gentleman, I proudly present one of the biggest mistakes in the thinking of a designer or artist. It goes like this: “Some day, somebody will discover me. I just have to wait.” I hope I will never think like this again, not even subconsciously (like I did it in this case). I think it’s right to say: Everybody has to push; but the more you are just average with your design, the more you have to push. And you ARE average, because they are hundreds of designer who are better than you. Which isn’t a problem. They can’t design day and night. And design blogs need something to blog about. And design magazines need something to write about. And what I’ve learned in the last three days: Design blogs and magazines are likely to publish something that’s not as good as your work - just because you didn’t push, but the other designer did. If they don’t know you, they can’t publish you.And yes, these blog curators have something better to do than looking on design blogs 24/7. So there’s no harm if you let the world know that you can do nice designs, too. And if this is not a good point, then take that: I always try to make myself aware of the worst case. And the worst case is….that they don’t publish you. And nobody ever knows that you tried.
Weeeeell, this post is a little bit too “I explain you how the world is working”. But what do I know? Not so much. Maybe in half a year, my opinion is completely different.
But to sum it up: Asking blogs and magazines to publish my work has been a good experience so far. And it’s nice when nice people write nice stuff about you.