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Longtime no see, blog world! I’ve sincerely missed blogging and I’m striving to carve time out for it in my life again moving forward.
Now with the formal “Sorry for not posting in forever” intros out of the way, I want to pop in with an awesome update!
As those of you who follow me on Instagram and Facebook may have seen, I was recently honored with the opportunity to speak at Valio Con, a designer conference here in San Diego. It was my first speaking gig and such an exhilarating, inspiring experience. I met so many awesome people, listened in on talks from some incredibly talented creatives, and all-in-all spent 4 days soaking up a wealth of knowledge I can’t even begin to encapsulate in this one post.
Coming off the high of this past weekend, I’m super inspired to keep the momentum going and continue sharing my insights, experiences, and learned knowledge as a designer/photographer/creative of many talents.
While I impatiently wait for the recap videos to come out, I wanted to share a few points from some of my favorite talks.
Ash Huang closed us out on Thursday and her talk was by far my favorite of the first day. Even though this was a designer conference, Ash spoke on her experience writing and publishing her first fantasy novel – something that totally spoke to my long-lost writers heart. I absolutely loved her “why not?” attitude and her statement, “Don’t wait to be chosen.” So if there’s something you want to be doing, go out there and make shit happen. Even if it means scrapping everything and starting over, keep going for it.
The second talk I loved was the last talk of the conference from Alex Medina. He talked about his journey through music and design in the hip-hop scene. Coming from a migrant family living in New York, he didn’t let limits be his limitations. His mother challenged him, saying if she could finish school with her broken english, what was his excuse? I loved Alex’s pure passion for his work. One particular example really spoke to me. He designed the cover for Lecrae’s book Unashamed, and after designing several iterations, the publishers chose his least favorite option (as clients are notoriously wont to do). But that didn’t sit right with him and he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if that was the cover that went out into the world. So he fought for a second chance to make something better, and mocked it up like crazy to prove it was the better option. He challenged all of us with the notion that we, as designers, are hired for a reason. We need to trust our instincts and be willing to stand up for them. Our ideas are valuable.
Anyways, make sure to check out these designers and the rest of the talented people listed on the Valio Con website. Their work is all so incredible and I’m still beaming from the opportunity be among them.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
