“.. almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

when I first heard this it resounded with me very heavily; not because I was facing a near death situation, but it was such a simple truth that I failed to remember every day of my life and I saw how much that truth could change my life if I had actually exercised that way of thinking. So with that step, I followed my heart a little more and started working on and developing some other things I truly have a passion for.

I mentioned in another part of my site that I started working on an inkling of a brand called SLVT, which is just in it’s infancy right now, but I hope this first step is part of another longer journey that will bring me closer to fulfilling that idea that I have nothing to lose. I’ve started printing just 3 designs for the time being, but I do hope to be printing out a total of 9 designs in the next few weeks to mark the beginning of the slvt life.

If you’d like to follow me or support me on my first step forward you can visit the Facebook fan page here and click “Like” to show your support. Or you can check out Tumblr here, and follow me as I build the brand and show a different side of me to you. Last but not least, I’m also on Twitter here.

I see everyday hundreds, if not thousands of flyers being passed out by individuals as employees or representatives on the street and not once have any of them caught my attention to want to take one and digest it’s contents. Why hasn’t anyone thought about how much of a waste of resource it is financially and how poorly time is spent for an employee to just stand on the street passing out often meaningless sheets of paper to people who just don’t want it? I know friends who actually take them off their hands as a sympathetic gesture but are really never interested in learning about what’s being offered. So why are businesses still spending their hard earned money on this type of marketing?

Design it better? Think of better content? I’d say invest some money into more creative endeavors that might resolve into having someone still stand there to pass it out, but at the very least make that product attractive to the people that matter. In a world as fast as ours today, we’ve only got 5-8 seconds to convince someone to stay on our website! Yes, someone sitting there with no where to go physically will only give you 5-8 seconds of focus before moving on! So what makes anyone believe that the passerby who’s rushing off to their next meeting or to work will stop for that split second to pick up your flyer?

Make yourself bright, have your representative cheerful, but above all be enthusiastic! The world is a weird place these days and anything goes, why not attach a chupa chup to your next flyer you pass out so people would actually spend an extra second more to what you have to tell them?

In design, it’s all about communication, but really at the beginning of every project when we present a concept to a client, it’s about telling a story that the client will buy into conceptually and logically. Without it, you’re just chasing your own tail. A convincing story is the brick work for the solid foundation of the concept you want to present to your client; but it’s not just that, it’s also the focus of what you’re trying to achieve too for your client.

What I really fail to understand is that why when I went through school, there wasn’t a course specific to the art of story telling. This is an essential tool for every designer, and this really should be a part of the curriculum of every design/creative education, if it isn’t already in other institutions. I don’t believe that it’s entirely intuitive that design is about story telling, because we’re given the concept that it’s all about communicating a message, but in every day language the communication aspect is often perceived as a reactionary event, sort of like a knee jerk reaction that happens over a longer span of time. Brilliant designs & advertising all give you that “damnnnn” feeling when you feel overwhelmed by it’s message & execution (of course a good sense of marketing and understanding is at hand too). We’re fed it every day and it’s so common that we just no longer detect it. Not everyone is a good story teller, and even some of the best just weren’t born that way. Countless hours of experience culminate to a greater story to be told. There’s one quote from Paula Scher that I remember very fondly of and it was her talking about the design of the Citibank logo:

“It took me a few seconds to draw it, but it took me 34 years to learn how to draw it in a few seconds.” – Paula Scher

I think this really sums up the notion of story telling. Yes it’s a skill she’s attained, but it’s the ability too to deliver the concept (the story) with pinpoint accuracy. And all that through 34 years of experience in that one moment. Beautiful & great stories are told every day so learn the mechanics of it, and how you would translate that story into your own language. I don’t think anyone can teach you how you can tell a story with conviction, it is something you, yourself has to grasp and spend time on perfecting it.

With a new start comes a new perspective. I’ve always tried to work online with the perception of speaking in a neutral business voice, but it really wasn’t me and I really found it difficult to post/voice out what I wanted to say. There’s so much information on the net that I’d be surprised that even 1% of what I say reaches out even to the people that would be interested in what I say. We’re all brought up to conform, and abide by rules, but the real leaders of industry almost always break a rule or two to get to where they stand or have stood.

So break few rules, in the grand scheme of things, it might just do you good.