I quit my job
I also have a canker sore
Hello.
I had a blast last weekend celebrating my friend Leona’s birthday! Here’s me and Jae solving a mind puzzle during one of their party segments:
Good times yeah good times. It’s nice to have friends and even nicer to be invited to fun stuff with them yes mhm.
I also developed some film that I had in my point and shoot for a long ass time (over a year).
Gonna start shooting more photos. I’ve been watching these Walkie Talkie videos on Youtube and they have really been inspiring me to pick up a camera and bring it wherever I go.
I also have an annoying canker sore in my mouth that’s been killing me. I’ve tried putting salt on that bitch and it stings like a muther. That helped to numb the pain but tonight I’m going to try baking soda. Wish me luck.
I heard that alum powder is a very successful remedy. Big Canker must have some control over alum distribution because I have not been able to find alum powder ANYWHERE.
I quit my job
My last day of work as a designer for Laundry Service will be this Wednesday.
I started working at Laundry Service in January of 2024. I found out that I got the job on the beautiful beaches of Palawan, Philippines. It felt like a dream! I was to design advertisements for an agency, reaching a professional goal I had hoped to achieve since graduating from Northeastern.
When I started in January, after a three-week-long vacation in the Philippines and China, I was overjoyed. I felt I was finally where I wanted to be, surrounded by likeminded creatives that were hungry to make interesting work. There was a bit of imposter syndrome at first, but I quickly adjusted thanks to the welcoming spirit of my fellow designers, copywriters, and art directors.
My client was TurboTax, who was unexpectedly liberal with the content they would allow us to put out. I pitched this “banana ripening” idea, where we would countdown til tax day, using the visual language of a banana browning:
In my day to day, I mostly illustrated and designed graphics. This is one of my illustration animations:
I also designed logos and introduced 3D graphics into the visual design language:
There’s a ton more stuff I put together, but you get the gist: I was having a lot of fun at work. I felt fulfilled, my manager was an amazing human being, and my coworkers were also my friends. I literally had zero complaints and could not have been happier about my career status…
And then I got recruited. I was given an offer that I couldn’t refuse and will be continuing my career as a Senior Designer at VaynerMedia!
I was super reluctant to leave, considering the comfort and excitement I still had when working at Laundry Service, but a door was opening for me and I wanted to jump in before it shut closed. I think I made the right move and I’m pretty excited for what my work will look like. You guys will hear about it in a couple weeks.
I’ll always be grateful for the people at LS and for the memories I made there. If they hadn’t taken a chance on me, my career and attitude about life in NYC would be drastically different. I am a more creative, ambitious, and relentless designer because of it.
I wish all of you readers the best of luck in your careers. It seems to be a season of changes and although that may be anxiety inducing, fear not! With conviction, I manifest that you all will make the right decisions for yourselves and for those around you. Godspeed.
Mascot Work
An area of illustration and design that I’ve always wanted to break into has been character/mascot design. As you know, I love to doodle weird freaks and creatures.
I was presented with an opportunity to design a mascot for a friend (and distant family member). Brian has a label with a couple friends, where they DJ around the DMV area, called Therapy Sounds. He approached me at a family thanksgiving about a character for his brand and we quickly got started cooking.
Therapy Sounds wanted an anthropomorphized heart character that resembled the style of old cartoons. This was the first exploration:
After some deliberation, Therapy Sounds decided to go forward with a combination of number 2, number 13, and number 15. This was the next round:
and this is our final guy:
I am so in love with it! He’s so cute and so funny looking. I did some more drawings of him for fun…
Super super proud of this work. We’re working on building out a whole combination mark logo at the moment! I’ll share when it’s all done :)
Check out Therapy Sounds here:
REX
Stranger than Fiction
I didn’t expect this movie to make me cry, but it did.
The premise is that this man starts to hear the voice of his narrator. He hears her narrating his every move and it starts to drive him crazy with questions. Eventually, the narrator reveals that the man’s death is impending… and the plot thickens.
Such such such a great movie with amazing writing. You gotta check it out.
Thanks for reading. May all your dreams come true <3