Ideas

Author: adrian_daniels

  • BG | Proposal Snapshot

    In thinking more about the overall strategy behind Big Generator, particularly as it relates to the human element, it occurred to me that I need to re-think how I am submitting bids for work advertised online, via channels such as ELance.

    The method I have used thus far involves a one-page attachment (PDF) that is essentially a letter conveying who I am, context relating directly to what the client is requesting, and a brief explanation of how the project will run.  While this information is useful, it does not immediately address the client’s fundamental needs:

    1. Can you do the job? (ability)
    2. Are you expensive? (cost)
    3. When can you have it done? (timeline)

    The project proposal should be able to convey these three points in about ten-seconds.  Right now, my “cover letter” concept is flawed for several reasons:

    1. While the letter is not lengthy, it can still be considered too long – is the client even reading it?
    2. The letter is customized for each project proposal, but only on a surface-level.
    3. There is no connection between the cost of the proposal and services rendered – is the bid high or low?
    4. It assumes the reader is interested in a “one-size-fits-all” project proposal – what if they need more detail?
    5. There is little traceability between the portfolio, cost, services and timeline – what are you offering again?

    At the end of the day, the bid price could still be beyond the client’s budget and your portfolio may not be aligned with what she/he is looking for.  However, if you can address the immediate needs of the client (ability, cost and timeline) before you are offered the job, you are that much closer to gaining their trust and a subsequent acceptance of your original bid.

    In a future post, I will share what my new approach looks like – I call it the “proposal snapshot”.

    [Note: Posts that begin with the letters “BG” focus on business-development concepts that tie directly to my design firm,  Big Generator.]

  • BG | Creating the Strategic Vision – Part I

    In my last post, I focused on the importance of having a personal vision for the future.  In the business world, defining what the future entails is typically found within a strategic vision statement.  In this post, I’ll share a five concepts that are helping me define a strategic vision for my design firm.

    Concept #1: Strengths

    The first step is to start with your strengths.  In the workplace:

    … people who do have the opportunity to focus on their strengths every day are six times as likely to be engaged in their jobs and more than three times as likely to report having an excellent quality of life in general. – Tom Rath, Strengths Finder 2.0

    As most people spend a considerable part of their life working, doing what you can to align opportunities with your strengths can significantly increase your quality of life.

    As an example, here are my top five strengths as identified in the text Strengths Finder 2.0:

    1. Strategic – “.. enables you to sort through the clutter and find the best route.”
    2. Learner – “.. you will always be drawn to the process of learning.”
    3. Individualization – “.. leads you to be intrigued by the unique qualities of each person.”
    4. Relator – “.. a relationship has value only if it is genuine.”
    5. Input – “.. the world is exciting precisely because of its infinite variety and complexity.”

    If I want my business to succeed over the long-term, I need to make sure these strengths represents at key part of its foundation.

    Concept #2: Personality

    Another major part that plays a key role in a successful business is one’s personality type.  Understanding key facets of one’s personality allows for continuous refinement and increased understanding of one’s behavior and motivators.  The key is to take full advantage of those personality traits that will give direct benefit to the business, and place less emphasis on those that may not.

    The core of my personality type (INFP) is sometimes called “The Idealist”.  Thus, coming up with scenarios of possibilities and detailed descriptions of “what could be” comes naturally.  As we’ll see, this aspect of my personality will play a key role in my company’s strategic vision statement.

    Concept #3: Interests

    Your interests represent another piece of the puzzle.  While it may be obvious what interests you, there are methods that you can use to explore your interests in a more formal way.  One such method is via a deck of “talent” cards made by a company known as Mastery Works.

    The core interest areas that I discovered through this method include both “Ideas” and “People”.  More specifically, I was able to narrow down my detailed interests down to ten: (in no particular order, and from a total of 52)

    1. problem solving
    2. questioning
    3. writing
    4. explaining
    5. innovating
    6. developing
    7. strategizing
    8. collaborating
    9. leading
    10. teaching

    If you are doing what you are interested in, your skills in these areas will continuously improve, and this will further expand your ability to help your clients and their customers.

    Concept #4: Personal Vision Statement

    Being able to describe one’s personal vision for the future is a recommended exercise prior to describing a business equal.  Given the time investment required, you want to ensure that there is alignment between the two.  You can read more about this concept in my earlier post.

    Concept #5: The 10-Second Summary

    The “10-second summary” is perhaps the seed from which the company begins; it’s the first statement you’ll make when introducing yourself to future clients.  After all, what good is a strategic vision if you are not interacting with potential clients?

    Based upon the guidance conveyed in Get Clients Now!, the statement should be short and simple enough that a 12-year old can understand.

    Here is an example:

    My name is Adrian Daniels.  I help business owners and organizations get noticed.  I am a designer focusing in creative strategy and graphic design.  My company name is Big Generator.

    This particular statement can be altered to reflect the audience with whom I am speaking.  However, it’s always best to start with the basics and then elaborate.  Your initial goal is to gain understanding and peak interest.

    These five concepts represent the key starting points to develop a strategic vision statement.  In my next post I’ll begin exploring several ways of visualizing strategy with the intent of formulating a strategic vision statement that can be used to guide my business development path.

    [Note: Posts that begin with the letters “BG” focus on business-development concepts that tie directly to my design firm,  Big Generator.]

  • The Crystal Ball.

    “Begin with the end in mind” is based on the principle that all things are created twice. There’s a mental or first creation, and a physical or second creation to all things. – Stephen Covey

    One of the many things I’ve learned in project management is that “starting with the end in mind” is one of the best methods to ensuring a successful outcome.  When your team has a clear sense of what need to do from the beginning, task definition and assignment activities come naturally and the team is able to spend more time focusing on the “day-to-day” issues vs. continuously wrestling with an ever-changing scope definition.

    A similar approach can work extremely well when envisioning your future.

    An article in the Futurist magazine entitled “Envisioning your Future: Imagining Ideal Scenarios” suggests that:

    … having a vision is to be an idealist.  This idealism should not be confused with unrealistic ideas; it should be used synonymously with having “a standard of excellence”.  A person that is by nature a visionary looks into the future as though it is filled with possibilities, not probabilities.

    If I look at my future based from who I really am, and document a clear description of what that future looks like, my life starts to become what I’ve created for myself.

    After much thought, I came up with the following personal vision:

    “My vision for the future is comprised of positive experiences that intertwine my ‘personal’ and ‘professional’ lives into a single life structure.  Because of this, the long-held notion of “work-life” balance is lessened, and at its extreme, no longer required.  By thinking strategically, I am able to spend my energy on activities that pay dividends over both the short and long-term.  A continuous and purposeful stream of explicit and implicit challenges allows my mind to expand at an accelerated rate.  With this expansion comes possibilities, and possibilities spark further action towards an ideal state called “Ultima”.  My relationships are continuously expanding, but only at a rate where the relationships themselves are developing at a natural and lasting pace.  My ability to see the unique qualities of each person and strive towards relationships that are, at their core, genuine, helps build strong partnerships that ultimately become central figures in a life structure built around growth, energy, complexity, awareness and intensity.”

    Fortunately, I think this is fairly representative of what I want my future to look like.  The next step is to take this concept and apply it to my design firm.

    What does my business vision look like?  I’ll talk about that in my next post.

  • Reference Library.

    Reference Library While I am an avid reader, there are several books that aren’t necessarily geared for start-to-finish reading, but are used more often as reference material. To help organize this library and increase transparency, I created a new page aptly labeled “reference library”. The current library consists of the following texts:

    1. Layout Essentials by Beth Tondreau

    2. Typography Essentials by Ina Saltz

    3. The Designer’s Graphic Stew by Timothy Samara

    4. Type Style Finder by Timothy Samara

    5. The Information Design Handbook by Jenn and Ken Visocky O’Grady

    While these texts give a wealth of educational information, they are also excellent sources of creative ideas. I’ll make changes to this page as I discover new reference material.

  • Evolution.

    As I mentioned in my last post, this blog will start to focus more attention to the evolution of my new design firm, Big Generator.

    As this blog has significantly helped me with my personal challenges, I think it will offer a similar benefit towards helping me keep up the level of motivation, persistence and energy that a new business venture requires.  I also think that the sheer transparency of what I am thinking about and how I am going about improving my business and design abilities can ultimately serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy of its own.  If I think positively, the majority of the work that I do, both from core design and business perspectives, is also more likely to result in positive outcomes.

    While increasing the level of transparency is important, it’s unlikely that I’ll mention specific clients within these posts at least until the project has concluded.  If the client maintains all rights to the work, then I won’t, of course, be allowed to publish any related information about the engagement.  Independent of the situation, the process of approaching a new design challenge and coming to a final solution is worth documenting.  In many circumstances, the process of documenting your experiences can refine your level of understanding and push you to think about the situation in new ways.

    At this point, the business “foundation” is nearly built – this foundation includes the core brand, web site, portfolio, letterhead, many project proposal letters, and a supplemental graphic visual suite.  The next step in the process is to develop a comprehensive client building strategy – to do this I am reading a book called Get Clients Now by C.J.Hayden.

    After reading the first fifty pages, I’ve learned the key to a successful client building strategy is persistence.  To achieve persistence, the development of a formal plan is required.  To summarize here, there are five such steps that need to be followed every month:

    1. Marketing Strategies – selecting two to four client-building strategies
    2. Marketing Stage – identifying the stage of the marketing cycle where you are having difficulty
    3. Program Goal – identifying what you want to accomplish during that time period
    4. Success Ingredients – identifying the missing ingredients that you need to be successful
    5. Daily Actions – documenting the specific steps that you are going to do

    In addition, there are six marketing strategies discussed in the text (from most effective to least effective):

    1. Direct Contact and Follow-up
    2. Networking and referral building
    3. Public Speaking
    4. Writing and Publicity
    5. Promotional Events
    6. Advertising

    At this stage, my next step is to finish reading this text and start developing a monthly plan of my own.  In my a future post, I will share additional details about what my client building strategy looks like and how well it’s working.  As indicated earlier, sharing the strategy in this manner will help increase accountability and will provide a history from which I can learn.

  • Press Release.

    The following is a press release that was recently sent to my personal and professional network.  It calls attention to the launch of my personal branding web site as well as a new business venture focusing on information / graphic design.  I’m including this information here as the majority of future posts will center around these two creative endeavors.

    The first is the formation of my personal “brand” via the web site www.adriandaniels.com. This is a project that I have been thinking about for nearly a decade and it was only after much thought that I decided to finally push forward with its release.

    While www.adriandaniels.com is my primary site, it’s ultimately intended to serve as a jump point for three other portals:

    Incubator: (This site!)  A non-fiction / experiential blog that is primarily focused on the generation of new ideas. Incubator incorporates personal and professional experiences and transforms them into formal essays and narratives.

    Microcosms: A blog that allows for unrestricted exploration of new concepts in a “fictional” setting.

    Pixeldust: A visual portal that shows how my art, design and photography portfolios have evolved over the past six years – and how they will continue to evolve and ultimately improve.

    As these sites ultimately encapsulate my creative strengths, this web portfolio is something I collectively call a “Supercharged Creative Exploration”.

    The second development that I am very excited about is the launch of a new information (graphic) design firm called Big Generator (www.biggenerator.com). For those of you who have seen examples of my work, you already have an understanding of what information design is all about – visuals that make complex information easier to understand and to use.

    I made the decision to launch this part-time endeavor after considerable reflection into my strengths, interests, and values and combined this reflection with more than a decade of experience in graphic design and related disciplines (e.g. computer graphics, illustration, industrial design).

    Ultimately, I am interested in doing what I can for my clients whether that need is strict “information design” or is classified under a general “graphic design” classification. In essence, I want to provide quality and effective visual solutions for my clients that simplify understanding and enhance and strengthen the customer experience.

  • The Grand Illusion.

    One of the fortunate and unfortunate aspects of experiencing trauma (loss) is that you ultimately seek guidance and a level of understanding on why it occurred and what you should ultimately learn from the experience.  In short, you are looking for answers.

    This, of course, is not surprising.  How often do you hear of people whose life mission becomes centered around the trauma they faced?  A mother’s loss to a drunk driver can redirect her pain into something that can benefit the greater good – e.g. M.A.D.D.  The degree of the trauma can, I think, have a direct impact into the degree of the life change on the other end.

    This is perhaps my last post on the topic of my past relationship to a woman who I believe has borderline personality disorder.  What I thought was true love turned out to be, I think, something else, and this is the hardest part to comprehend and ultimately accept.

    Within this post, I’ll refer to several other sites that I have researched over the past two years to connect the pieces of this complex puzzle. Ultimately, this post symbolizes the need for closure that will never happen in a relationship of this type.  In addition, and perhaps of equal importance, it’s about helping others who have experienced something similar and seek some level of comprehension to make their lives better.

    First, it’s important to understand what borderline personality disorder is.  At its core, it’s an intense fear of abandonment.  This fear is sometimes established at an early age and can be caused by an interruption in one’s normal psychological development.  The loss of a parent is a concrete “seed” that can result in this disorder taking shape.

    Because close relationships, by their very nature, have some degree of risk, relationships with someone who has BPD are very intense and unstable.  To be more specific, because there is risk of abandonment, partners with BPD swing wildly from love to hate and back again.  People with BPD will frantically try to avoid real or imagined abandonment and they will do this by projecting unacceptable or threatening feelings to their partner.  This type of psychological defense mechanism is called “projection”.

    Not surprisingly, projection can do much damage to the relationship over time.  The main reason for this is that the person on the other side of BPD will be unable to bear the burden of their issues as well as their partner’s, and the relationship ultimately collapses.

    In looking back at the relationship, I equate my experience with a bell curve – with time on the X-axis and the question “Am I the true cause of these problems?” factor on the Y-axis.  In the early stages of the relationship, you will naturally look past the obvious problems / conflict.  However, as the relationship progresses,  you will begin questioning what is happening.  After a certain amount of time, you will start to think that maybe you are the problem – graphically you are at the top of the bell curve.  It was during this period where I started to focus on issues that I was bringing into the relationship and started to think about what I wanted from my life.  After about a year, I moved past the apex and back to where I originally started – “Why is this happening?”

    Unfortunately, and ironically, it’s around this time where your original goal in providing a sense of security and comfort to your partner is turned completely upside down.  You are now the source of your partner’s abandonment fears.  You become the problem.

    At this point, it should be clear that a relationship of this type is very damaging to all involved – particularly to the “non-BPD” partner.  Your belief in yourself, your ability to make good decisions, and your belief in a true partnership are all significantly damaged and take a considerable time to return to some level of “normalcy”.

    It is, however, important to convey the numerous positive outcomes this experience has brought into my life:

    – Expanded self-awareness
    – Increased assertiveness
    – Enhanced communication and articulation
    – Accelerated maturation in personal and professional lives
    – Positive career direction
    – Increased tolerance for independence
    – Accelerated creative exploration via photography, industrial design, writing
    – Launched new business

    I started this blog in November of 2008 as a vehicle towards understanding something that, at the time, was incomprehensible. This post is a symbol of a journey that I didn’t expect to take.

    And that is the tragedy of it all.

    Appendix: Web Sites

    While there are a multitude of web sites providing information about this disorder, there are a few that are extremely beneficial:

    Appendix: Common Themes / Quotes
    (from a few of the sites listed above)

    “We are initially drawn into a borderline relationship by the charm and glamour of extreme idealization about who we are and whom or what it is we represent that is presented to us – we are split white. This circumstance feeds our ego and makes us feel safe, wanted and loved.”

    “When it’s good, it’s really good. You think you have found the one you are going to be with forever.  But it doesn’t stay good for long. Something happens to change the tide. That is what is sad for all involved with this disorder. For the person with BPD, it can’t be easy to live like that. And for the person who loves them. You’re left with WTH is going on?”

    “If you’re with someone or love someone with bpd and they are not getting help, then be very very careful with your decisions. Enjoy the good times but also know that tomorrow it may change. Be ready and have your boundaries”.

    “The borderline’s insecurities and feeling of inadequacy are never sated, so they continue to project these insecurities onto their Non partner with accusations, explosions about certain occurrences, and the like. They will start fights about, well, you don’t know. In the end, you will end up feeling like you are always rebuilding the relationship and starting from ground zero with regards to trust, respect and all the foundational elements and building blocks of a solid relationship.”

    “… I miss the person I thought [s]he was.”

  • Victim of Changes.

    In August of 2009, there was a segment on the Today show that told the brief story of a man who had found his life partner only to eventually discover that she was seeking to end his life.  Fortunately, the “hit man” was an undercover police officer and the experience ended void of any tragedy.

    While it’s difficult to generalize people’s responses to this story, I imagine most people place immediate blame on the wife and less on the husband.  After all, he is the victim.  But is this an appropriate response?  Remember, he chose to be with this woman and is now faced with trying to understand why he didn’t see the signs that led to this nearly tragic outcome.  At some level, he can be blamed for a situation that may have ended his life.

    Let’s explore this concept further by looking at this from two opposite viewpoints:

    Viewpoint #1: I am the master of my domain.

    The first viewpoint is the belief that you are solely responsible for things that happen to you.  If you take this viewpoint, everything that happens to you is ultimately because of something that you did.  You can no longer claim to be a victim of circumstances, because the circumstance in question is something that you ultimately created.

    For example:

    If you get hit by a car, you are at fault for being in the path of the oncoming vehicle.
    If you are in a career that isn’t going anywhere, you are at fault for making ‘wrong’ decisions that led you there.
    If you are trapped in an earthquake, you are at fault for residing in that target location.
    If you are in a relationship that isn’t working, you are at fault for participating and not leaving.

    Again, if you employ this mindset, you are no longer the victim of circumstances.  You cannot introduce “higher authority” figures into the equation (e.g. “God has a plan ..”) or make similar statements like “There is a reason why this happened …” because these statements are perhaps masking the truth of the event.  Within this viewpoint, you are making decisions about what you do, who you interact with, where you live, etc. and those decisions ultimately result in events and things that impact your life – positively or negatively.

    Viewpoint #2: I am a victim of circumstance.

    Now let’s take a completely opposite perspective – one where your reliance upon a higher power guides your life path.  “God has a plan” or “I will pray that things will be better” or “That’s life!” are statements that reflect this viewpoint.  In some degree, you are taking responsibility (some if not all) off of your shoulders and accepting that things happen independent of your decisions or actions.

    What’s interesting is that these viewpoints can be reversed depending upon the situation at hand.

    For example, let’s say that you got a promotion at your job.  Even if you employed this “higher authority” viewpoint for things that generally happen to you, in this particular case you probably equate your recent success with your own abilities and decisions.  After all, you are the one who got promoted – and you wouldn’t have been promoted unless you were doing something right.  In most circumstances, your first response is not “That’s life!”  Instead, it’s one where you have taken charge of your destiny, and because of you, you have ultimately succeeded.

    However, if someone close to you died unexpectedly, your first response would be – “Why did this happen?” or “Why did God let this happen?”  Because the situation is beyond one’s control, you cannot rely upon yourself to make immediate sense of the situation.  It’s only later in the grieving process where you may eventually shift your mindset and start to ask “What can I do to prevent this in the future?” (if applicable) or “What can I do to help others deal with an event such as this?”

    In essence, your “life mindset” is altered depending upon what happens to you.

    While I have taken the perspective of a given person, others’ responses to things that happen to you can sometimes take an opposite view to your own.  For example, if you are in a bad relationship, others may empathize but will ultimately question why you got in the situation in the first place.  If you were recently promoted, others may think of other reasons why you were promoted vs. focusing primarily on your core abilities.  If someone who you knew died in an accident, others may quickly decide that “God has his reasons …” which may be the direct opposite of how you may feel – especially if you played some indirect role in that person’s death (i.e. giving them the car keys, etc.).

    Independent of how you look at these “life perspectives”, I think that personality type and life experiences will determine which perspective makes the most sense to you.  I think the lesson here is not to focus exclusively on one particular perspective, but be aware of the extremes and try to live life in the middle.  Of course, this is not easy – especially for someone like myself who believes that my life is driven by my own choices and less on the need for a higher authority.  But it is during times of sheer despair and confidence loss where this “centrist” perspective loses its value and you are forced to seek another viewpoint.

    It’s a unique dichotomy that I don’t completely understand.

  • Next II.

    I thought of a few other things with respect to 2010 goals …

    Japan – One of my travel goals this year is to visit Japan, more specifically Kyoto and/or Tokyo.  Although with the prevalence of shinkensen (bullet trains), I’ll probably visit both!  Japan is somewhere I have always found intriguing and strangely enough,  one place that I feel some remote “connection” to.  While my initial interest in Japan was centered around their advanced railway system, the first chapter in the book I am reading now – “Japan Rising” – seemed to suggest an almost surreal tie to my own personality – a blend of opaqeness, paradoxes, power and purpose.  While I have much more to read, I may explore this connection in more depth in a future post.

    Since travel to Japan will likely happen in the summer, my primary goal now is to start learning the written and oral Japanese language.  Today, I purchased Rosetta Stone’s Japanese Level 1 as it is highly rated and thus a good starting point.  I started working on it this evening and am very impressed with the simplicity of the interface and overall design.  After only fifteen minutes in using the software, I am actually able to comprehend simple sentences!  Future posts will be designed to reinforce what I have learned on my own or through the course.

    To provide some foundational context, I learned there are four “writing systems”: Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana and Romaji.  Here is a brief description of each writing system from Rosetta Stone:

    Kanji (漢字) is used for nouns, parts of adjectives and verbs, and Japanese names.  Hiragana (ひらがな) is used for words that don’t use kanji, in certain word endings, and in place of kanji characters that are difficult to read.  Katakana (カタカナ) is used for foreign words, countries, names, and technical words.  Romaji, which uses the Roman script, is often used for acronyms, company names, foreign words, or as a transliteration of Japanese characters.  Romaji allows learners of Japanese to read Japanese without learning the characters.

    Since I am interested in learning the kanji writing system, I will primarily use Rosetta Stone with this method, but will switch to romaji if I can’t grasp what is being said – i.e. for me, it’s sometimes easier to read what is being said vs. a sole reliance upon the audio.

    I also configured my Macintosh to switch between U.S. and hiragana (I don’t know exactly why kanji is not listed) through the System Preferences > Language and Text option.  Once configured, you’ll see the relevant language icon located at the top right-hand corner of your screen – as shown here:

    When I switch to the hiragana input type, I can start typing in that character set using the set of Japanese typefaces that are installed within Mac OS X.  For example, these are the vowels a, e, i o and u: あえいおう.  I think it will be good experience to learn how to enter these characters as well as to physically write the kanji / hiragana symbols by hand.

    Edward Tufte – In my earlier post, I mentioned that I was going to focus more of my attention in the information design realm.  Edward Tufte is considered a pioneer and leader in this space, and thus I recently acquired two of his books – Beautiful Evidence and Envisioning Information.  While I have considerably improved upon my graphic and information design skills over the past decade, I think it’s appropriate to take my development to the next level through books such as this.  I’ve updated my current reading list to include these new additions.

    AdrianDaniels.com – With hosting plan finalized, I spent the past week refining the design and ended up taking a completely different approach to the design overall.  I recently posted a placeholder page which represents the overall “look” of the site – the lettering shown is “Adrian” in katakana lettering. If you are interested, you can visit the web site where I was able to obtain this translation.  While the design is nearly complete, I still have a fair amount of work to do in terms of the Flash conversion, thus I’ve set a deadline of February 1 to release the final version.

    Incubator – You may have noticed that I’ve changed the title of this blog from “Big Generator” to “Incubator”.  This is actually part of a larger strategy which will be discussed in the upcoming weeks.  In any event, you can now visit this blog via the new URL which is http://incubator.adriandaniels.com.  You can also visit my other site via http://microcosms.adriandaniels.com.  If you have a WordPress blog and are interested in taking advantage of this subdomain mapping, visit this link for details.

  • Next.

    Now at the official end of 2009, I thought it best to provide an update on some of the things I’ve been working on and thinking about.  Given my experiences over the past two years and the end of an analysis cycle that spanned a similar timeframe, I am moving forward with a new sense of who I am and what I need to do to make my life better.

    First let’s review what was accomplished in 2009:

    2009 Accomplishments

    – Successful completion of Design Drawing I, Academy of Art University

    – Further expansion and development of graphic design portfolio

    – Further expansion of photography portfolio and related education

    – One-year anniversary of Big Generator blog

    – Creation of “Generator” publication (Big Generator – Year One) – to be released in late January

    – Creation of “Hierarchy of Needs” project management publication

    – Creation of “Microcosms” blog (fictional exploration)

    – Concept development of new novels – “Five” and “Citadel 9”

    – Completion of various personality, strengths and interpersonal / communication tests

    – Closure of “Spark” Plane and creation of “Genesis” Plane (Planescape Advancement System)

    – In-depth exploration of information design and the initial stages of starting a related business venture

    – Relationship counseling and meetings with life / business coach

    – Extensive BPD research

    – Read nine books and made considerable progress on three others

    2010 Plans

    Branding: In a desire to formalize my personal brand, I am moving forward with the design of a self-entitled web site – www.adriandaniels.com – and should have the first version ready for release in the next several weeks.  At this stage, the initial version of the site will be comprised of four main areas – “incubator” (concept exploration), “microcosms” (fiction), “pixeldust” (illustration) and “atomik” (sound).  The site is intended to centralize projects and concepts that I am working on so that I can review my creative and intellectual development over time.

    Books: I made a conscious decision in 2007 to read more books.  Now having read approximately thirty-two books since that time, I feel that I have accomplished what I originally set out to do.  As many of you have noticed, my current reading list has been rather lengthy.  To increase focus in 2010, I have reduced the current reading list with approximately five books that I am actively reading.  I am also thinking about creating a new reading page which could be classified as a “holding pattern” or “abandoned” section for books that are on the radar or have been temporarily set aside.

    I also decided to move entries originally found within an “interpersonal” section into the “What I Read in 2007 / 2008” pages.  These pages were originally password protected but I no longer see the need for this level of privacy.  Given the significant educational investment in this interpersonal / relationship subject area, I do not anticipate spending a significant amount of time in this area in 2010.

    Creative Writing: When I created the Microcosms blog earlier this year, I started to work on a novel called “Five” which was to follow five characters on a remote planet with a desire to connect seemingly isolated worlds.  While the concepts were developing fairly well, I was concerned that the sheer magnitude of the plot would soon become unmanageable.  Thus, I decided to switch gears and take on a more concise storyline.  In 2010 I will continue down this new path with a planned successful conclusion by the end of the year.  The title of this new novel is called “Citadel 9”.

    Illustration (Anatomy): The past three classes taken at the Academy of Art University have been primarily focused on industrial design drawing and sketching.  As I would like to expand my sketching ability towards people / animals / creatures, I need to spend more time understanding human anatomy and the techniques associated with drawing and sculpting the human body.  To this end, I recently purchased tutorial videos from AnatomyTools.com and am planning to attend a future workshop on human anatomy later this year.  I will also spend more time learning through existing tutorial videos purchased through the Gnomon Workshop.  The ultimate goal is to use this knowledge and illustration experience to supplement / complement the creative writing pursued via the Microcosms blog.

    Information Design: The self-analysis that I went through over the past two years led me to the area of information design. “Information design “… draws on typography, graphic design, applied linguistics, applied psychology, applied ergonomics, computing and other fields.” (designcouncil.org.uk).  Fortunately, this area aligns very closely with my strengths and interests and thus, this is the area that I will likely spend the most time in 2010.  Fortunately, a great deal of the other creative pursuits just mentioned will serve as catalysts / contributors to the ID creative process.

    I have other ideas that I am still thinking through, therefore this list could expand or contract.  However, I feel fairly confident that these areas represent the core of what I’ll be working on in 2010.  It will be an exciting journey!