Ok, it’s time. I’ve been meaning to re-evaluate this project for like 2 weeks.
I feel isolated, overwhelmed and this results in a feeling of treading water. I’ve been here before.
Sometimes I feel like I’m drowning in stuff, and maintaining this blog - writing the posts, creating the daycards - is like the cherry on top, if the cherry on top was made of tungsten
I feel like I’m not really doing much designing. And what I see others doing and calling design interests me less and less - designing another UI for another app.
I think all of these things had been brewing under the surface for a while now, but they really bubbled up last week, when I read a few big-picture articles about design, especially some of Mike Monteiro’s. (Like this one that reframes designing as a service for the people who are going to be using the product, instead of a service for a client.)
All I can say at this point is smth smth design ethics. I feel my interest in creating nice looking UIs waning. Something older and deeper is on the rise… Could I bring my values into this and make it more than just a job?
This is all very fresh and kind of confused. Abstract even. But things have been stirred up that can’t be unstirred.
And so I gotta ask myself: how much of what I’ve been doing during the first 24 days of this challenge do I want to call designing?
Read about type (as in typeface): learned about how to choose the right type for the occasion, the OpenFont standard, types of numerals, and some basic vocabulary like cap height and tracking
Worked hard on my CV design: continued with the simplified grayscale version, tried out some different ways to group information, and added content to the Values-section. Made some screenshots of interesting CVs for inspiration
I emphasize that I worked hard, because it felt like that: spending lot of energy to little effect, fiddling with details without being clear about the message that I want to convey. This was hard work, not smart work.
Working on a CV tends to bring out some deep-seated conflicts within me. This happens almost every time I do a redesign. I come back to some fundamental questions:
Do I focus on getting a job ASAP or getting better at designing? - Should I go with a template or invest some time in learning how to do a layout?
Should I follow “established conventions” or do things my way - like maybe be radically honest from the get-go?
And the kicker:
Should I even be investing all this effort into achieving a goal which I’m not even that excited about (working at some company, possibly full-time)
The answer is probably no. But something in me is stuck and doesn’t see an alternative. Hm hm hm.
Redesigning My CV
Hyper-insecurity. A vibe of “my whole life has been a failure and I am nothing.” Skipping the ’Work Experience-section, because (feeling like) there’s no work experience worth talking about. Trying to fill in the resulting white space with something. Looking at the whole and only seeing a mess. Deciding to embrace the mess and be honest: mention depression in a section called My Story! Coming back the next day and feeling like that’s the most ridiculous and unnecessarily exhibitionistic thing in the world. Doubting the whole be-radically-honest-plan. Maybe I should rewrite everything? Maybe I should put depression in like the footer of the cover letter?
