People's history museum visit

During our visit to the People's History Museum in Manchester I took the advantage to take a detour from the main exposition we went for.

Although I am going to talk about the other rooms, there was one piece of work that grabbed my attention, and it was the 'carpet' made out of lottery tickets that weren worthless at some point. Thinking that they were sold 10 pounds each this piece makes very visual the amount of money we throw away.

I could not avoid finding the next pictures interesting as I am writing an essay for COP called construction of femininity. These are examples of how society used to see women and how they were used to advertise products for men, making them mere objects of attraction.

I also found very interesting the communism section as they had a part of the history of my country that I never heard of: how the English communist party helped the republican side in the Spanish civil war. As Spanish I found this astonishing, as it is very dificult to find an exhibition like this in Spain. Despite what media and the common knowledge says, many intelectuals have claimed that Spain is still in the post-Franco era, and recent political events have confirmed this. The owners of museums in Spain are normally part of the bourgeoisie and they do not want to share this part of the history.

It was also very interesting to see the designs for posters asking to help Spain. I find them very similar to the posters of the second Spanish republic.

Who am I?

To design my own brand the first thing I need to identify is who I am as individual, which will define who I am as a designer. 

If I had to define myself the word that's probably the most accurate is 'eclectic', as I like different things that are not related but make me unique as individual. I decided to write down the names of the people that I admire as artists and also write the characteristics of why I admire them and try to be like them. 

The words that were repeated were mixing, hard made look easy, familiar (more the 'I am like you' kind of essence) and Clever. This last word could be represented by the way I brand myself. The key words then were mix, familiar and 'hard made look easy'. Then I started to write random ideas that became a little manifesto:

"I am not just a designer. I am Pete Rock, I am Michael Jackson, I am Hideo Kojima, I am Freddie Mercury, I am Salvador Lleo, I am Carlos Núñez, I am Andrej Dragan".

I got to the conclusion that the concept is I AM.

But taking it a bit further...

"Who am I? Well, that is a tricky question I can answer by saying I am not just a designer. In fact, I am not even an individual, a single person... I am too many of them. I am Pete Rock's mixes, I am Hideo Kojima's delusions, I am Tsugumi Ohba's complexity, I am Freddie Mercury's voice, I am Salvador Lleo's eyes, I am Carlos Núñez's ears, I am Camaron's heart, I am Paco de Lucia's shyness, I am Michael Jordan's flights, I am Massimo Vignelli's canon, I am Andrej Dragan's criticism, I am David Blaine's magic, I am James Gandolfini's credibility, I am Common's commonness and I am Michael Jackson's uniqueness. I am an heterogeneous being, a conglomerate. I am a hybrid."

Then I stripped it down to something a bit more ambiguous and simpler:

"Who am I? A tricky question I can answer by saying I am not just a designer. I am not even an individual, a single person... I am too many of them. I am Pete Rock, I am Hideo Kojima, I am Tsugumi Ohba, I am Freddie Mercury, I am Salvador Lleo, I am Confucious, I am Carlos Núñez, I am The Chieftains, I am Camarón, I am Paco de Lucía, I am Michael Jordan, I am Massimo Vignelli, I am Andrej Dragan, I am David Blaine, I am James Gandolfini, I am Common and I am Michael Jackson. I am an heterogeneous being, a conglomerate. I am a hybrid."

Thought of using hybrid mythological animals

madehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hybrid_creatures_in_mythology


Other questions I should answer about myself are:

- What have I learned? There are innumerable things I've learned during in my way to being a Graphic Designer, but one of the most important things I think predominates in my work as visual creative is about being obvious or ambiguous. In my first works as video editor making music videos everything was very self-taught and I followed my intuition, but looking at others people work, people I liked and other I didn't, I realised that being more subtle leaving messages for those that want to explore them is something I find way more interesting rather than a plain and meaningless obvious choices. 

- What skills do I have? I have always liked to solve problems in the creative field as I have had to work thinking big but with few resources. I've not always been able to do what I planned to, but I always find alternatives. I rarely say "this option is just impossible". That's probably why I ended up studying Graphic Design, to improve that part I really like about me. In more tangible terms, I am skilled in digital design, and this is related to the "problem-solver" side of me, as everything I've learnt has been by asking the question "how do I do that?" and found the answer either by experiment or research.

- What do I know? I always answer: I don't know much about a single thing, but I know bits of this and that. As I defined myself earlier, I am an eclectic person, and I see it as a positive thing, as my sources of inspiration or information are always different and they mix in strange ways to make me evolve as a professional in my own way.

- What do I believe? There are things that are unquestionable to me in social and ethical terms, such as respect and freedom of choice for everyone independently of who they are, and I always defend those values when I think someone is attacking them, even if the attacked is someone I don't agree with. I own a Facebook page where I constantly share content about social and political issues, and they are normally related to discrimination (racism, sexism, etc). It makes me happy to think I am able to make at least one mind change.

- What do I have to design? As I am mostly a digital designer who is also into making videos, I think I need to implement all these characteristics about me into a logo that represents me as practitioner. From there, I can create an animation to present the logo in the videos I create.

Despite I don't usually attend to places where other creatives are, I think is positive to have a business card I can always hand to another person. I've always thought it's the kind of thing someone doesn't need, until you do.

An e-mail signature could be also helpful and distinctive to those I mail to, working as a business card.

A mock-up of a website where I intend to show all my work.

- What tone of voice best reflects me, my practice and my ambitions?

I've always tried to be very methodical with my designs and when it comes to professional behavior I like to be serious but friendly, making see my work reachable and easy to understand but backed up by a reliable professional individual. 

- What experiences have shaped my opinions and views both in and outside of the programme?

Before studying Graphic Design I didn't know about Massimo Vignelli. He's methods and the way he sees Graphic design are not far from the perspective I had. Also having feedback from others that think completely different from me is something totally mind opening and helpful. It helps you to be able to look at things differently.

Outside the programme, I think my views have been shaped by working with diferent people in different countries. A type of design can be very attractive in one place, and totally ignored in another one. When I realised about this fact, and after having read Vignelli's canon, it made me realise that timelessness is directly related to trends and the places where these trends happen.

Can also make something simpler with shapes and typography, similar to David Bowie's Blackstar album: showing pieces of what creates my two initials combined (A and Z) as parts of myself that can be used as tools for different purposes.