seaneill.com

With less than a day left in 2008 (tear, tear), I thought it would be a good time to write an article wrapping up the year. There are lots of year-end roundups out there, like this one and this one. But, I was way too intimidated by compiling such a list (how can I even begin to compile the best *fill in the blank* of the year?!?). Instead, I decided simply to reflect on the past year, my very first year in the world of design. So, here goes nothing. By the way, I’ve divided it up into three acts.

Act I: Introduction & The Eat Your Salad Era

Before I even begin to tell you about my design adventures of 2008, let me start off by telling you a little something about myself to help you understand my story a little bit better. You see, I have always been a person of ever-changing interests. What I do is I pick something interesting and I obsess over it. In the past, the subjects of this obsession have included music and baseball. For a few months, I learn everything I can about a subject, completely delve into it and convince myself that it is what I want to do for the rest of my life, all the while keeping up a 95+ average in school. And I would say that I am a very dedicated, perseverant and hard-working person - more so than most who know me would ever believe. But, for some reason or another, I always seem to lose interest in my obsession after just these few months. No warning or indication, my interest just disappears. And it is because of this that I am quite surprised by how long I have kept up my interest in design. But now, back to how I got in to design.

Going back almost exactly a year ago, on Christmas vacation like I am now, I was in the middle of one of my obsessions. I was obsessed with journalism. I read the NY Times everyday, I wrote articles for my school newspaper (which was typically reserved for seniors - I was a freshman), I subscribed to dozens of news sites, listened to news podcasts on the way to school, etc. As my school offered no journalism classes to freshman, I was looking for a way to extend this interest in journalism. After talking with my brother, we decided that a web site would be a good way to do as much. He had been encouraging me to learn HTML for a while, and this was an incentive to do so. With his help and the help of HTML.net, I learned basic HTML and CSS skills in the span of about a week. Looking back it all seems so elementary, but back then I was so proud when I completed my first navigation bar! Anyways, while still on Christmas break, I started eatyoursalad.com. Eat Your Salad was really my first step into the world of web design and design in general. (If you’re wondering where I got the idea for the name, It was inspired by my mom telling me to eat my salad!)

I then contacted a couple of friends about the new site and they said they would be interested in writing articles for Eat Your Salad. Over the next two or three months, we actually kept it up, operating under the witty tag-line of ‘Food For Thought With Zero Calories’ . We wrote a few articles every week (they wrote the sports articles and I wrote the news articles) and every Sunday, we released a newsletter wrapping up the week in news and sports. I used the application Pages to make the newsletters and they were chock full of reflections and drop shadows (hey, you have to start somewhere). It was a lot of fun. I got to both practice journalism and my HTML and CSS skills.

The thing is, as I was developing my web design skills (hello javascript!), I was continually changing the direction of the design of eatyoursalad.com. I couldn’t make up my mind about what I wanted it to look like. In addition, the articles slowed down as finals approached and the workload built up. As summer neared, we decided to wrap it up and put Eat Your Salad on a hiatus. As of now, if you go to eatyoursalad.com, all you’ll see is eys written in big fat letters. We’re actually planning on starting it up in a few weeks. I’ll keep you updated on that.

Act II: Post-Eat Your Salad & The Learning Stages

Now that I was free of the stress of eatyoursalad.com, I began to expand my interests beyond web design. I became interested in print design, illustration, typography, package design, all of that stuff. I took in all the information and resources that I could. I went to Barnes & Noble and flipped through whole books of illustration and layouts and package design and what not. Even while away on vacation, I read magazines and books. As school started up again, I decided I needed a place to vent my creative interests (given that my friends are weirded out when I identify typefaces in ads on the train). This is about where seaneill.com comes in. I bought the domain name and for the next few weeks, I slowly chipped away at the final design that you see today (that is, if you’re not reading this in 2010 or something). It was released on Nov. 3rd, just in time for the Future Of Web Design conference in New York which I attended. Even though web design was not my main interest anymore, I had a great time and was really inspired (especially by Nick La’s talk). I began to immerse myself in the design community using Twitter (yay Twitter!). Twitter helped me to get my name out there a bit and helped me discover lots of great designers.

At this point, not too much longer than a month ago, I began to take on “client work”. My two first projects (projects I am still working on) were for a photographer and for my school’s environmental club. For the photographer I am making a website and for the environmental club I am doing a canvas bag design, adhesive design, website design, mascot design and promotional poster (yea its a lot!). Working with the environmental club, I was exposed for the first time to the annoyances that I so often hear designers complaining about. For example, I had to present my designs to a room full of non-designers who didn’t know jack shit about design and all had their little suggestions to make. I guess it’s all part of the job.

Through it all I still had school, although I sometimes failed to remember this. My whole life I had always done all my homework and had consistently been a 95+ student. But, design had truly occupied me and I began neglecting homework, falling asleep in class, forgetting about tests. I failed my first class ever (two in fact) and got a 74 average in the last marking period (!). Yea, it was that bad. And what was worse was how much I didn’t care. In previous years, I would’ve been disappointed with a sub-90 average. But, I kept telling myself that I didn’t need school. All in all, it was a very unhealthy situation. My parents and friends grew worried, and my teachers (who just a year previously had seen me on the Principal’s Honor Roll) wanted to know what the hell was going on. To make a long story short, I eventually came around and realized that I had to find a way to balance my interests and my obligations. Over the past few weeks I have begun to pick up my act while still maintaining my avid interest in design.

Act III: Conclusion & My Plans For 2009 and Beyond

Anyways, this past year has been a lot of fun, although stressful. I have learned a lot both about design and about myself, heck even about people in general. I believe I have developed some true design skills, but I obviously still have sooooooo much more to learn. And, most surprisingly of all to me, I have kept up my interest in design for a whole year! While typically I would’ve lost interest after a few months, I have stayed the course for the past year and I think maybe, just maybe, this is, in fact, what I want to do in life, because I sure as hell love it. I have always been an athlete, so this design thing is kinda out of the blue, but I guess it kinda makes sense given that I have a family of artists. Also, I am really thankful for all of those who have supported me and all that sappy stuff.

In 2009, I hope to continue my pursuit of design enlightenment while still keeping up my grades in school. Balance is vital if I am to remain sane. I am hoping to attend a pre-college course at Parson’s this spring or summer (or maybe even both). I hope to restart eatyoursalad.com and maybe even start up some other sites (probably design related). In addition, I hope to start the formation of a design studio with my friend Kiran who shares my passion for design. Maybe we’re a little young for that, but there are so many aspiring designers out there that we figure we have to start now. Our agency will be multidisciplinary, doing everything from print design to motion graphics. I would like to expand my client base and maybe even start making some money from this. I would like to start developing a substantial portfolio and on an educational note, I would like to start attending college open houses and start making some big decisions about grown up stuff like college and money. That’s about all I can think of right now, although there’s probably much more.

Anyways, thanks so much for reading all my bla blas. I know this post is a little different from the design stuff I usually post, but I thought it would be good for my mind to wrap up the year. So, see ya next year and have a nice 2009!