For the last 29 days, I’ve been training my brain to rethink a few things.

One thing is rethinking that my art isn’t good enough, but rather to think that my art is a gift.

Now this isn’t my idea. This is the idea of James Victore and I like this idea, not because it is pretentious, but rather because it goes back to the basics.

My art is a gift to myself. Not to anyone else.

Anything that I make is for me. It doesn’t matter what other people think. If they vibe with it, that’s great. If they don’t, it doesn’t matter. As a designer, I’m not for everyone. However, I should be for myself.

Anything that I make, I should love in some sense. If I know that it needs improvement, then that is perfectly fine. I can take a critique, but I already know that I need to improve. Instead of wasting time idling with the thoughts of another person, it should be focused on the next project. The life span of something that I make isn’t that long nowadays. It’s a day at best with the rise of social media. This gives me even more of an opportunity to keep creating until I figure out what works and what doesn’t work. It’s not about perfection in the beginning. It’s all about quantity.

Keep trying because no one will remember what you did yesterday or last week. Not even you.

It’s nice to know that my most recent work does not define me. It shouldn’t define me. I’m not as good as my last piece of work. I think about the compounding effect in which these small steps will compound into something greater if I keep doing it.

29 days ago, my designs were very simple. I didn’t understand why I did certain things, why I should set type in a particular way, and why i shouldn’t set type in a certain way. Now I know better. Still a lot to learn, but now I know.

These are 2 weights and 1 point size

James Victore says that the game is fear. You have to learn how to live with it. It’s an emotion that is meant to be felt. But is fear the thing to be scared of? Victore says no. Fear is nothing to be scared of. Rather, he states that what you are actually scared of is yourself and your creativity.

If that isn’t enough to inspire, I don’t know what is. Think about it, if you’re doing something that makes you fearful, you’re probably doing something challenging, something you haven’t done before, something that can cause pain. But you’re doing something that is right. It may not be right for someone else, but it’s right for you.

So instead of hating the feeling of fear, embrace the feeling, let them into your home, and learn to live with it. It’s fear that pushes us to keep food on the table. It’s fear that pushes us to keep making, to keep posting, to keep trying.

Just like the last ones, these designs are 2 weight sizes and 1 point size.

I’m at a point in my life where I can’t be around negativity.

Most of my life, I’ve dealt with some sort of anxiety. It can’t be helped because I lost my mother when I was younger. However, after 16 years, I’m done with using this as an excuse. I’ve used this L as a way to motivate me to go after certain dreams. I still want to use it as a motivator, but even more, I want to use something else as my motivator/ my why-power.

From now on, I really want to just be around positivity which does hint at being ignorant at what is going on in the world. I’ve mentioned this before that ignorance is a double edged sword, but if I want to achieve the bigger dream at hand which is working at an agency or working for a skateboard company (vans, adidas, or nike), I can’t be around negativity or cloud my brain with it.

This month, I’ve accomplished a lot. I’ve created a lot of designs. There’s only 4 more days to go of this. I’m going to keep going because this habit is a healthy one to keep creating. It’s cost me a few things though. Time hanging with friends, not eating, and not sleeping. The not sleeping half is actually kicking my butt today. I went to sleep today at 1AM and woke up at 7:30 because I need to take my dog out. Anywho, surrounding myself with positivity is important right now.

Below, I decided to keep moving with the typography challenge from The Futur. These were supposed to be 2 weights and one point size, but then I just went with my gut and forgot. However, these turned out really nicely. When I look at designs like this, I can definitely see improvement. I’m really happy with the first two designs below. They just feel really clean and modern for a magazine spread. I’ll most likely use these designs as a template for something. Practice makes fear go away. I’m starting to feel more confident in typography. Still a long way to go, but so much better than I was when I first started.

Not just as a creative person, but just in general, I’ve always compared myself to other people.

Whether it was in cross country running, school, or skateboarding, I’ve always compared myself. I can trace that to my upbringing and how I always compared myself to my sister because I always felt that I was inferior. That story is not for now nor will it ever be on this because that is an area of my life that has been worked through and digging that hole up again would be reviving some bad memories.

Any who, when it comes to being creative, this statement “I’m not sure if this field attract low self esteem or creates low self esteem” fascinates me. There’s so much that is loaded in the first half because often times, creative people are very vulnerable (read as open) people. They are people who have some trauma in some sort of way. Mine is that I lost my mother when I was 8 and have dealt with a lot of that trauma through therapy and my own form of therapy through art. I’m not entirely sure how I was drawn to art, especially during my last year of college which catapulted me into the career I’m in now. I do recall when I was younger that I loved drawing Dragon Ball Z characters. As for the second half, “it creates low self esteem".” I think that comes from when you create something, someone out there is creating as well and the feeling that your work is inadequate when you look at it, creates that lack of self worth. It’s an interesting statement to just hear, read, and examine. But let’s look at the word self esteem and change the focus to self worth.

Like I said yesterday, Self worth shouldn’t come from someone else’s approval. It’s nice to have a hype man in your corner, but if you really want to get something done, you gotta be the one to do it. No one is going to come and rescue you. Understanding that and knowing that my decisions affect the outcome motivates me to try a little harder, but be smarter. I’m not the 14 year old freshman in high school who is staying up late every night to finish homework. (Well, I’m staying up a bit late to keep creating and pushing myself). The difference is that I know that I need help along the way. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. But the best person to know, is myself because the best truth that I know is the one that is inside of me.

Below, I decided to keep moving with the typography challenge from The Futur. These are the designs using one point and one weight size and one image.

I keep changing my mind on what my goals are for each day. Bad, but it’s because I need to practice my typography in one way or another. Best way is to keep doing it.