100 Days of Design - Kickoff

For the next 100 days, I will be designing a web, elearning, or game interface every day.

I have a close friend who decided one day that he wanted to be an animator. He was in his mid-20's and had never gone to school. He didn't even have a high school degree. But he wanted it, and he was ready to do whatever was necessary to get it. For the next several years he drew as many drawings a day that he could - he didn't let his lack of skill stop him, and he would soak up tips and tricks like a sponge. He wrote everything by hand, in perfect cursive, no matter how long it took him so that he could train his hand to do what his brain was thinking. And then, later when I met him, he was phenomenal. It seemed to me that he had "made it." He was there; he had gained the skills he wanted and now he could do the work he dreamed of doing. But he hadn't stopped. He still drew like a fiend, multiple characters a day - everyday if he could. He was convinced that he was still not very good, and the only way he could get to the good drawings was to churn through "bad" ones every day. They say you have to make 10 terrible films before you can make a good one; well he took that to heart and then some. He believed that he would need to go through that much in a single day to get into a groove where he was happy with his work. And that's remembering that the sketches he thinks are the "bad" ones look better than just about anything I've ever drawn in my life.

I think I need to take a page from his book.

Recently design and development for my large game project lost its funding, and I've found myself between work and between projects. So, for those of you who subscribed to this blog for the "Game Design Journey" posts, those will be on hold for a bit while I sharpen my design skills.

And that's exactly what I intend to do - sharpen my skills. I want to run through a regimen of design challenges so that I can emerge better at what I do. It's been awhile for me, and in that time I've taught design seminars, applied for design positions, and talked a lot of design theory - all in all it's been a lot of design talk, but it's also been awhile since I really stretched myself to design an original interface. So, I've decided to get back into a groove of actually designing interfaces and I hope to ground myself again in this type of work and further improve my skills (I've already started reading graphic design blogs and I'm getting super excited because that is something I could really use some help on).

As always, any feedback, criticism, encouragement, or other comments are SUPER helpful.