plans.

Portfolio pieces as of now right now.

1. 三百六十五 (that's 365 in mandarin)
A record of one year's time in Taiwan learning mandarin. Photos, drawings, collected artifacts, lesson plans, ideas. Learning Chinese is important for career development. China is big and being a person who understands it will be a key asset in my career--especially in design because 1,000,000 people a year graduate in graphic design in china, compared to 200,000 overall american designers right now.

2. Type portraits
Use typefaces to do intricate, large paintings of typographers.

3. Junk sculpture
Guerrilla art: use one year's saved junk mail to make junk mail monsters coming out of mail boxes. Done in efforts to vent my frustration on a the design medium I love so much (in its pure forms) that makes me create junk mail to sustain myself financially...sidenote: I am fully aware that it is necesary that I should "pay my dues" and I am happy to do so, but I think that while I'm paying my dues, there is no reason why I shouldn't be trying to understand things and make them better.

4. AIGA
Type-night poster. Band posters for alterna-fest

5. Make Data
Do something awesome and fun...a drawing...video...song...intensely, not knowing the direction that it is leading into. Use this drawing to inspire an intelligent document of important information which is designed very carefully, intricately, and intelligently.

6. Teacher Brand
Use the power of design to facilitate and strengthen something of importance. Teachers don't have the money to invest in design but deserve it.

7. RQ
Using design in a facet that will inspire creatively and make life more meaningful. The future of design will be inspired my the rising creative class. More and more we are seeing that science cannot do everything on its own and we need creative thinkers to drive good change.

8. Sketchbook
Evidence that a person is always thinking and always in search of new ideas.

9. Sustainability
Something?

10. Sagmeister
Postcard and photos. Important because I enjoyed being a part of something that was dedicated to a designer who has made his way doing what he think is right.

vacation makes me think.

I got sad while at our family tradition summer vacation home because it make me consider somethings. I am so interested in sustainability that I want to dedicate my career to it. I want to study change and understand what it takes for communicate the need (or lack of need) for different types of social change. The sustainability issue is so important, in my opinion, because if we don't do something about these problems, we will destroy human interaction with the earth. I say human interaction, because I believe the earth will go on just fine.

I got sad because I started thinking about my dear cousin, who has always been a part of the fond memories I have from my whole life of taking this vacation. She's 2 years younger than me and surprised us all by having this very impressive engineering career. The highest paid of all the engineers. I was sort of proud of her. Good for her, being a female doing something many females might shy away from. But I started to consider what her job is. She, as a petroleum engineer, is looking for ways to get the most out of oil fields. Get oil in the most efficient way.

Everyday I think about ways that will make oil a thing of the past. Oil sustains our reliance on gas and cars and global warming. Global warming will destroy the world as we know and love in ways we can hardly predict. It is disheartening to realize that you just might profoundly disagree with someone that you love, who you have grown up with, someone of your own flesh and blood.

I don't know her side of the story. I am scared to ask. I fear that I don't like it, and I don't want to know it. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe she is doing this because she is looking for a career where she can help. Maybe she wanted to join a flawed and dirty profession with the ideas that in the future she would be in a unique position to make it better. Maybe I don't know what I think I know. Maybe what I think to be true is wrong.

I got sadder when her brother told me that she might move to the outer banks because there might be oil there that could sustain the United States' oil consumption for 70 years. That is most likely the rest of my life. It makes me sad to think that for the rest of my life we will be using oil because I want this to change now.

I felt better though, when I heard that by 2015, Mercedes will not be making cars that use gasoline. Mercedes...a company being socially responsible and who will appeal to the greedy, brand-hungry masses. Put that way, it sounds kind of awful, but I am hopeful because what we need is for eco-effectiveness to be mainstream. We need sustainability to continue to shift full-speed ahead to be the acceptable standard. I really hope it does, and I think it will.