Nhi Vuong 

Reflection 7 

Nov 14, 2018

Inspiration can be someone or something that motivate us to do something or have passion for something. At some point, I have a feeling of giving up and I want to change to another major. Sometimes, I feel like graphic design is not interested anymore. Sometimes, I don’t want to do any design. I lost the passion I used to have for it. So, how can I keep up and study this course? I find the inspiration from others. It could be a video on Youtube, an advertising poster on a train, an old movie. It could come from my friends, family or the professor.  I tried and look for an inspiration.

Inspiration is everywhere. It is a passion, a motivation for each designer. You are amazed by your friend’s design. It is an inspiration. Have you ever look at your friend’s work and think that I could do better than him or her, or I need to improve more and she or he is going overhead of me. I think of it. You don’t want to be behind. When I can’t come up with an idea I always watch my old anime movie again. It reminded me of how I want to start to be a designer. We inspired each other to move on, to achieve our goal and to be successful in our career. 

A TED talk video of Marian Bantjes isn’t strong enough to inspire me. It may be because I don’t see myself through her. I think to be inspired by something or someone you will see somewhat reflect yourself. However, I still learned something from her. Her work is come from what she sees in her daily life. It is her inspiration to design. I never thought of design a card for my friend on a Valentine day, but she did. I could see how amazing it is when you do work with passion. It brought you new ideas, a new way, which nobody will think of. It delivers your style, skills, and creative mind to other. 

Even though the Marian Bantjes video wasn’t inspired me, I found an inspiration from Maryam Zafar presentation. It didn’t come from her work but her story. I can feel how excited and happy she is when she shared her story to us. She shared it with her passion and her experiences. “A life of a designer” isn’t the title is hitting our curiosity. Isn’t it hitting our question that we want to find an answer for? We are the young designer and we always wonder is it the right path or not. We always worry what it is going be when we become a designer. What is the life of a designer?  She got the point for it. Her story made me want to work harder cause I realized it is not easy like it seems to be to get the job and to work as a designer. Maryam talked about what she did until she got the position she deserved it today. It is a long way of hard working. Who wants to work for free? But she is willing to. I learned that it is not all about the money, but skills and experiences. She did so many works for free but she has a good portfolio to show and she has the experience. I still remembered there is a quote that she shows at the beginning of the presentation and show it again at the end: “ Always do the best give it 200% effort.” The story of a student who has an internship with her is an example. She asked for one but he came up and shows her ten of them. The more you give out the more you will receive. The presentation inspired me a lot to keep up and work harder. I even set up a challenge for myself to do design even week and post it on my Instagram account. It changed my thinking a lot about design and I learned a lot from her too.