fresh air

There is a thunderstorm outside. Actually, the sky has just gotten incredibly dark and the wind has picked up and is blowing the trees and sending a cool breeze of air through my window. I hear distant thunder. It's not even raining yet.

I'm on an island with my computer screen, surrounded by people who I give shorts laugh to their jokes and try to come up with an answer their questions and marking my little postit with their telephone messages. I am making things, making documents that serve a strict purpose. That will be viewed by people wanting to make purchases. I make the things you never really think about someone making them. But we're there. We're making them. We're laying them out and proofing their prices and checking their margins. Someday I want to be making things that people look at and say, 'i wonder who made that'. i wonder what the person behind that design is like, how they came up with that idea, what went through their mind when they used those colors and that brushstroke. i want to make something that affects people, that makes them want to send it to their friends or hang it up on their wall. or become interested in the concept i'm advertising. something that makes you say, huh, i want to be a part of that. like those little astericks above people's heads on the truth tobacco commercials. they've suddenly gained knowledge.

Lightning now.

I am working for a guy about my own age who started his own web design business. he gives me design concepts for websites which i lay out in a week and then give back to him. i do all of the html and css work, all of the designing in photoshop and dreamweaver. he gives me no concept from the client, no direction. he says that's the way he believes design should be done - you put something in front of the client and they will like it. they will like anything. but what if i have no idea who the audience is and what kind of business they are providing and i have to make guesses based on their name? that's not good business. in order to do a real website, you have to be in tune to eactly what the business is going after. otherwise there's no point in cluttering the internet with design that doesn't serve a purpose.

i want to be inspired. i want to do something that i can engage in, that i can learn from. this is just too one-sided. i don't feel anything from it. so what's the point?


Lightning bug outside my window. Loud claps of thunder now. Still no rain.

Jack and I talked to a girl the other night at a bar about a portfolio school, right in town. Maybe this is what I should focus on, building my portfolio so that I don't have to work for design firms like that. so I can find my own clients and not need the middleman. So that I can do things on my own time at my own house. or with a design form that I agree with their principles, in a different city.

i'm going to order a pizza.