Veerle's blog

It seems to be embedded in human nature to try to label things to identify it. Labeling itself is not bad, but I’m talking about making things sound more fancy or smart. It’s already hard enough to get everybody on the same line when using well known terms. It’s all subjective and everybody has a different vision or interpretation. 

It seems that my deadlines article has sparked an interesting discussion. One of them being an article entitled ”The Tao of Deadlines” by Andy Rutledge. To be honest I had to look up the meaning of Tao (Taoism) to understand its true meaning. Hey, I’m just a simple girl and don’t believe in making things sound smart or fancy job titles as those aren’t making you a better designer. The strength lies in what you create and not in what you call it :)

Picture this: you are sitting along the river in beautiful surroundings creating what’s bound to be your best work yet and you aren’t feeling pressured. Sounds lovely, isn’t it? Too bad it isn’t reality. Now there seems to be an almost impossible deadline around every corner.

It has been some time since we last talked about being a print designer. How fun and exciting the web can be it’s still no replacement to physically holding something you created in your hands. An essential tool in doing that is Pantone, you know the industry standard for color specification introduced 45 years ago. The designers landscape has changed a lot in those years and it’s time for something new.

If I take a trip down memory lane to the time that I was looking for a job, I immediately remember very vividly how hard it was to get noticed or heard. I’m talking pre-internet days so things were handled via snail mail. If you were lucky, you got invited for an interview to show your portfolio and hope for the best. So fresh out of school with nothing much to show from the ‘real’ world in my portfolio, except for school work was a hard nut to crack to be honest. Even desktop publishing was in its early days so most of my work consisted of hand crafted dummies, painted logos and lots of sketches, paintings and drawings.