The expression of the urban

I'm researching on Art Therapy recently. I was inspired by the bilingual local newspaper, "My Paper". It has a section called "the person in the rain". The art therapist just used the drawing to analyse and identify the strength and weaknesses and any issues. She will provide some suggestions on how to cope with difficult emotions and feelings.

I believed that arts have the power to influence. Arts therapy has the ability to help to change and improve lives. We need not use verbal to communicate, we can use visual in art media such as drawings, photography and other forms of visual to express our inner struggles.

Art therapy is still a very new concept in Singapore. However, the local hospital such as Singapore General Hospital is using art therapy to help the cancer patients as well as disabled patients. I believe that it could really help people to open up themselves to be a mentally healthy and improve the quality of their life.

In order to feel what art therapy is all about, I decided to work on some paints. I have used lines as to depict sketches drawings and tried to use paints and shimmering to form the eye of the human, with the help of design software to do some graphics editing. These are various forms of expression on the relationship between the city, myself with arts. I called this piece of artwork - the expression of the urban.

Maybe in future, when i feel stress up, I will do some free expression painting lol Don't know is it because i did the research on this project. I do feel a sense of relaxation and freedom when I paints. Does it got to do with myself or the psychology part?

Typography in Helvetica

Being an inexperienced designer, I often don't care much about usage of typeface, as long as I like it. A typographer told me what kind of fonts and the size of the fonts I have used, simply by looking at my work.

To be honest, I'm kind of impressed. There are people out there who are so passionate about typefaces that they can breathe, eat and sleep with them. That is the vast diffence between a professional typographer like him and an amateurish like me. Of course, with constently looking at the details and study of typefaces, I'm sure in the years to come, I can be as good as him.

Recently, I watched a video about "Helvetica". It has bring me into another perspective. It is an interesting video talks everything about Helvetica, bringing the awareness to the designers about how Helvetica was created, its history. The famous typographers who take great passion in creating font types and usage of Helvetica.

One of the typographers said that most of the designers do not care about typography at all(which is absolutely true). But he doesn't care. A trend in design industry is that there is always a small group of people who pursue great design and large number of people are doing trash stuffs. If you care about your own works, you will care about the usage of typography.

I also realise that every typeface, like every one of us, has its distinguishing features. You might be forgiven for thinking that some fonts are clones, or identical twins. However, closer inspection reveals subtle differences and nuances that simply escape casual perusal. Something that can really help to heighten our sensitivity to those differences is getting out our magnifying glasses and really taking a closer look.

The two popular typefaces, namely Arial and Helvetica — faces that are often confused, and often the subjects of mistaken identity. But first let me re-introduce you to these two popular faces:



Helvetica
Designed in 1957 by Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann, Helvetica’s design is based on that of Akzidenz Grotesk (1896), and classified as a Grotesque or Transitional san serif face. Originally it was called Neue Haas Grotesque; in 1960 it was revised and renamed Helvetica (Latin for "Swiss").

Arial
Designed in 1982 by Robin Nicholas and Patricia Saunders for Monotype (not Microsoft), it’s classified as Neo Grotesque, was originally called Sonoran San Serif, and was designed for IBM’s bitmap font laser printers. It was first supplied with Windows 3.1 (1992) and was one of the core fonts in all subsequent versions of Windows until Vista, when to all intents and purposes, it was replaced with Calibri.

Sad to say, Arial was born of a hasty decision to avoid paying out massive licensing fees for a typeface that had grown to become the benchmark for most written communication.

I must say Helvetica is still always the prefered choice for mac designers, while Arial is for the pc designers. Most people do not know Helvetica is NOT FREE font. I should try to appreciate those fonts which famous typographers have created.

Credibility

5 months ago, I was engaged to design a website for my client's client, Mr X. This is my first time working with this new client. It's my friend's contact. This client was a sales manager. He was very sales driven therefore, he pushed hard for his sales as well as his project.

My client told me this particular job was urgent and required me to rush for it. Of course, I played my role and delivered the work to him. However, Mr X just doesn't seem to have any interest with his own website. Whenever my client asked him about the feedback, he always said that he's busy. Afterall, Mr X was the one who wanted to push the website to be ready 4 months ago.

3 months ago, my client felt bad about it and said that he will transfer the full amount to me first, even though the project has not complete yet. I told him this is not the way to do business. I told him I have to complete the project.

My client has told me that Mr X has decided to stop the project today. To be honest, this is my first time doing project without completing it. Although I still get paid for my service, I just don't feel good about it. Because the project was not complete at all.

I always think that credibility should play on our part but in reality, i think it works both ways.

Design Costs vs. Values

Two days ago, I got a call from my friend's whose girlfriend wanted me to design a web site for her image consultant business. She asked me how much do I charge per website. I told her that depends on my client's theme and requirements.

She told me she needs 10 pages of website. I told her $300 - $500 for customised design fee (not using any design templates) and $150 per page. Without even looking at my portfolio yet, the only reply I heard is, "That is expensive! You are limiting the amount of contents I want to put." and she continues saying that she will call me up when she needs my service. Apparently, she didn't. Of course, I didn't upset over it because it doesn't worth my time doing it anyway.

I’ve read an interesting article written by Chris Pearson on how much a site/blog design should cost and his experience when dealing with the customers and project costs.

After looking through the designers' comments from the design industry, I feel that my pricing is reasonable. Like most web professionals out there, they are charging $1500 or as high as $2000 just for the basic design cost. In fact, most of my designer friends have told me I undercharge most of my clients. To me, money is important but the experiences and challenges to do that is even more important.

Why is it okay for dentists, lawyers and a number of other highly-paid professionals to charge $200-300/hour for their services, why is it okay to shell out $100-150/hour to an interior designer, but it is a sin to pay that much money to a web/graphic designer?

And what’s even more intriguing and interesting to find out is why we never question and simply accept the high prices of dentists, lawyers, psychiatrists, interior decorators, plumbers... but behave so differently when it comes to building our brand name awareness in print and online?

What do you think should happen in order to change people's mindset on design costs and values? Or do you think that nothing should change, that it is the way it should stay, that there are no reasons why designers should get paid any more than those working night shifts at 24 hour drive-thrus?

Just simply because some people just don't know the value of the work of a good web/graphics designer. Quality creative designers go through the design thinking process while the designers just work like a factory worker. Everyone knows Photoshop but that doesn't mean they can be a creative designer.

Chris quoted that everybody wants a killer design, especially after seeing one that they lust over. Problem is, nobody wants to pay for it.

True indeed.

Harmless ";"

Last night, I was busy rushing my client's website. It is just a maintainance of the website. Finally, i finished all the updates and went to bed. I was rather tired because few days ago, because I was rushing other projects as well.

My client emailed about the whole website fonts are all screw up today. I was kinda puzzled, so I went to the site to take a look. It was indeed the website is screwed up. I recalled what did I do last night.

Thinking back, I did nothing MAJOR revamp to the website. Just a couples of information update. Then I remembered I did touch on the CSS style sheet because I want to tidy up the coding. I checked and checked, the piece of coding seems perfectly alright.

After half and hour of checking, I spot that harmless ";" hidding itself in the codes.

Now I know that 1 harmless ";" can be a silent killer that screw up your entire website. Thank god that my client didnt screw me up, they are nice people. Grateful!

To Lose Weight

On 24th April, I vow that I will lose weight within 3 months. Today is 7th Nov. I feel so guilty about it. I broke my own promise. I not only didn't lose weight. In fact, I put on weight!

Starting from 54 -> 56 -> 59!!! I can't believe it myself until someone placed a weighing machine in front of me.

Reasons for not succeeding:
1) I didn't exercise for 3 months.
Mistake: Wasn't enthusiastic to lose weight.

2) When I am super stress or happy, I eat much more than usual. Mistake: Never control diet.

3) Want to lose weight in 3 months
Mistake: Never set realistic timeline.

I know above are just excuses! Now i want to set it straight again.

Motivation to lose weight
1) Doctor says I have slight hypertension. I'm SHOCKED. I still very young, I don't want to spend money on pills!

2) I want to be HEALTHY. Reason: I don't want to fall sick easily.

3) I want to be LOVE myself. Reason: I want to be responsible about my own body. Take really good care of my body.

4) I don't want to be the fake pregnant lady anymore!!!

With these 4 strong motivation, I must SET realistic timeline:
1) Be choosy about food, no more fried food for me right now.
2) Exercise twice per week Tues and Sat eg Swimming, Yoga, Jogging, Gym exercise
3) Set exercise time.
4) Motivate myself.
5) Monitor my progress.

I must not break my promise to my body again. I shall set this as lifetime piority in my life.