Science Machine from Chad Pugh on Vimeo.
via YWFT Blog

(in case you can’t view the embedded video, Blip.TV)

So, as much as I question technology and the future, I have always been fascinated and intrigued by it. And, as I mentioned, I recognize benefits. I stumbled across this video where Clay Shirky describes television in contrast to the internet in a way I have considered before in relation to myself, however he doesn’t stop with the self but has theories about how it ties to societal behavior. You can find good and bad about television, internet, and any technology, but I appreciate the idea he suggests of a technology that involves the user. What potential does this hold and how can it benefit communities and education? How can it bring us information we need?

“When people are offered the possibility to produce and to share, they will take it up.”

“Here’s what 4 year olds know: a screen that ships without a mouse ships broken.”

via Bigspaceship on Posterous

TED Talks
Link: Kevin Kelly: Predicting the next 5,000 days of the web
on The Semantic Web, Web 3.0, “ONE”

I am not too sure how I feel about EVERYTHING being connected. What is the purpose of pushing things to be so closely linked? Sure there are benefits to this all and you could see some good come from this, but Mr. Kelly describes the internet in too poetic a way, I think. Don’t forget the crap that fills the internet. Don’t overlook the bad that will likely follow us into the rabbit hole. Personalized (Read: Stalker) Advertising? No, thanks. Knowledge of where I am at all times, what I’m doing? Again, potential uses in case someone kidnaps me….but in the overall, this is not necessary. There are other things in this world needing our attention. Aside from that, I am noticing how addicted everyone seems to be with the internet and technology in general. I wanted an iPhone, but do I really need it?

It’s bad enough that I’m on so much. And really, that isn’t a joking matter. Says a lot about the heart, about what worthwhile things I’m putting my time into, about addictions and willingness to allow such things to control me. I think I am tired of excuses about such stuff. I need to take control of my actions and consider the implications if this thing is only going to go further.

I think I may be growing into an anti-technology old man fast, haha. Read a book! Think! Sit outside! Ride a bike! (Please ignore the irony of me writing this online.)

find the dancing on the main uniqlock page…cool stuff on the dry in motion section though, too.
[via Blogasaurus Rex]

[via FFFOUND! via Todd Roeth ]

Project M Lab
“In 2000 I had the extreme good fortune to hear architect Samuel Mockbee speak. Samuel co-founded The Rural Studio for architecture in Alabama and won the MacArthur Prize for his work inspiring young architects to design and build homes and community buildings in Hale County Alabama. As I sat watching Samuel’s presentation, I thought “why isn’t there anything like this for graphic design?” By 2001, I had moved from San Francisco to the coast of Maine intent on creating a program inspired by The Rural Studio.”

+ DESIGN THAT CARES +
Help me to pay it forward
“Last June, I spent 4 weeks in Hale County, Alabama with Project M, an intensive summer program designed to inspire designers to show that their work can have a positive and significant impact on society.

After going through the M experience, I’ve realized it’s important that talented designers continue to have the opportunity to attend Project M. Proceeds will go directly to helping other designers like myself attend Project M.”

Buy A Meter
from Project M 2007.

+++

I need to look into the possibility of applying next year. Such a neat program and I’d love to talk to others about how this type of thing might/could/should be pursued as a career.

So, I’m a worrier. I used to experiment a lot with my design work when I first started out but after I got deeper into my college career, I fear I started to lose that willingness to push on when solutions didn’t look right, trying to find answers. I began to immediately edit because I felt like I’d seen it fail before or because I knew it wasn’t “right” or “good enough.” Part of it might be a good increase of understanding, however, I think that the main issue is simply fearing being wrong. My teachers told us in the beginning, “don’t edit” during the ideation stage, but I still would.

I ran across this video via 43folders and feel like I’ve come across something I’d forgotten. Do not hold back. Be zealous for art, beauty, solutions, communication, ideas. Do not let fear and lack of confidence keep you from thinking through things. Do not be afraid of asking questions or of being wrong. Think. Try, try, and try again….and learn from it along the way or you won’t go much further the next time around. I’ve lost that on some level but after this reminder of what it is to love your work and want to improve, I hope to find that thirst for answers again, in design for sure, but certainly thinking about how it fits with everyday life, too.

(in case you cannot view the embedded video, YouTube)

check out the 3 other videos with Ira Glass.
Makes me wanna go listen to some good ole NPR.

I had forgotten this video until my mom mentioned it recently. I love this woman’s story and how her understanding of happiness and success was challenged after a family member’s death. It is neat to see her respond so radically and passionately, with a confidence and certainty that quickly tossed aside her comfortable life. You wouldn’t think that giving up a high up job to live in the middle of nowhere, making much less money would be success, but I’d say it is. Hero, the organization she’s with, has been partnered in recent years with a design project that a couple of my friends have done now called ProjectM. (GOOD magazine article on their work.) I love to see the close ties between both social work and innovative design projects such as ProjectM.

I want my hands in the dirt like this, too. I hate passive, empty, fence-ridden, worthless, selfish living. I name none of these terms as if I am above or beyond them, but to say, despite my life often being described by many/all of these adjectives—I want to battle the error in each of them.

I am a designer. I stumbled across it when I was 15 and I didn’t really even understand what I had found. but I was overwhelmed by it. It was one of the few things that has ever kept my attention for very long over the years. I still find design to be powerful, although I have grown pickier, searching for solutions that are stronger, with more creative, innovative concepts.

But I also have a heart for social work and working with people in need directly, and I find the human heart and nature to be extremely compelling to attempt to understand. There is something about weakness, need, and hopelessness that I nod my head at. I get it more than I do happy-happy, joy-joy carefree prancing about. Sure, I’ve had a good life so far, but any of us have felt brokenness. We’ve been disregarded, spit out, pushed around, and spent. We’ve felt suffering physically, spiritually, emotionally. This is a topic that leaves me with a desire to help and drives me with an interest in seeking resolve, in my own heart as well as in the lives of others.

How do these two relate, design and serving others?

Some days, I don’t believe they have much in common at all. Design often seems stuck in the business realm, then confined to understandably state only what pertains to the given company’s goals. The designer relies on his clients to create work that matters. Even then, he will only speak with a company or organization and then create, leaving a large chasm between the designer and the real work and results.

I admit that I tend to want to have my hand in all of the cookie jars. What can I say, I love cookies and I’m greedy. As a kid, I wanted to write great stories, then act them out, as well as to film and direct the piece. I wanted too much control. Perhaps I should just stick to doing my work as a designer. But I am still left to wonder if there is not a way to be more directly involved. I think back to the part of school I found most frustrating. I created work in a vacuum—I didn’t get to interact with a real client. In the real world, though, even as I interact with clients, I see that the connection tends to stop outside of meetings. The designer is an outsourced role, an external adviser. Writing these thoughts out, I suppose this gets to my issue of trying to understand what my work should or can be.

Is design always sitting in an air-conditioned office, reviewing notes and images, and plotting out the best course of action for an organization or company that you will only direct from afar? Is the designer simply a third-party and nothing more? Can a designer be successful only getting a second-hand description of the work?

Rosa Loves is a neat project that produces shirts that raise money to benefit individuals directly. This twists the norm and calls for the designer to not rely on their clientele to have a worthwhile cause, but for the designer to become an entrepreneur and social advocate, to do more than organize the concept of a campaign, but to piece together the organization itself. Maybe that’s where I fit. I am interested in resources, whether that is delivering them or putting a face to them. It’s exciting and frustrating to think this all out, as I have to look at my skills, my interests, the current structure of most studios out there as well as considering creative solutions that I see lacking.

And with all this said, I want to note that answers aren’t going to necessarily be in one’s job alone. Maybe it will be in the neighborhood you live, maybe it will be through traveling to other countries to be more informed about what life is like for others, to learn how to help in a variety of ways, for a variety of needs, and perhaps even stepping in yourself to help. Maybe all, maybe just some. However it goes, I don’t want to waste my time in a career creating worthless work and not using my time and effort to love and serve my neighbors, especially those in need.

Note: this is my new design blog! the new location: post.justinpocta.com, which can be located via the site’s navigation. I have been driving about the country a bit and freelancing lately! I hope to post new work soon, so stay tuned!

I recently spoke with my soon-to-be employer, Deluge Studios. I will be working with them part time in Memphis while I am out there taking part in a discipleship/ministry program for the next year. They gave a list of recommended books to help me as I begin to focus more on web and interactive design. This really excites me and I look forward to learning new information and developing a stronger grasp on usability, CSS, and coding that I have had to forgo over the years while in college.

These books look pretty practical and show examples about how the issues discussed affect usability and experience. I will give a better description after I get through them, perhaps. Bulletproof Webdesign & Don’t Make Me Think!

I like this guy’s approach.

via swissmiss via oneplusinfinity.

So, this blog has been a mish-mash of personal writings, random ramblings, and some design in the past, but I’ve decided to narrow the scope and focus more on design here: post.justinpocta.com. I had to think through the problem of updating friends and family as I move about the country over the few months and how to maintain a blog on my design site as I create new things and dig deeper into the field. I finally concluded that despite the ease of mixing both together, a design portfolio website is geared toward a different audience and it works best to narrow the focus of a blog’s content to the specific topic. I hope to use the design blog for posting items that do not belong on the finished work page, but that I want to showcase as I develop them. This will include personal design work, works-in-progress (WIP), as well as entries about the design field and other subjects pertaining to life as a designer, that I expect to be considering as I come upon different issues and topics.

On Thursday, I had an internship interview which went well and got me excited that there are actually design studios that see Dallas and the use of design in a similar way as I do. This gives me hope of returning to Dallas in the future. It also helped me to decide to save up for my move to Memphis through freelance design. I find it funny that everything seems to be fitting so well as more clients are coming my way and my needs are being taken care of without having to worry over how to make things work.

I accepted a design position in Memphis where I will be mainly focusing on web design. After thinking about it, I recognized that this is how I began as a designer almost 10 years ago, what I am most knowledgeable in, and where design is constantly changing and growing. I want to focus my efforts and work over the next few months toward interactive design, as I begin to study over different areas such as Flash, CSS, and design usability. I thoroughly enjoy the use of digital media to create a more complete experience that is able to engage people and express an idea through the use of time, sound/music, and interactivity. As technology advances and the internet becomes more traditional and regular, the design field will be redirecting its focus in the coming years. It is an exciting place to be as there is constantly more to learn and plenty of ways to push the envelope through experimentation.