I’m a weird pancake for design. #AaronDraplin

Wait. Let me explain. I made pancakes for lunch celebrating Matt’s return to the rocky mountains and—because of the ridiculous combination of our mild food intolerances—I cooked up these vegan pancakes substituting soymilk for  rice milk because Matt is slightly intolerant of nuts. They turned out a little weird: They were super feathery and delicate. They were sticky and spongy. You poured syrup over them and it instantly disappeared into the recesses of the cake leaving nothing but a ghost of it’s presence. It was a Sham-WOW of pancakery.

So yeah. I’m like a vegan-rice-milk pancake about design. I’m in that amateur stage of my design career where things stick to me and I stick to things, where I feel delicate and I’m easily influenced and inspired by other people and the things I see.  And, of course when I just soak up things in a mysteriously limitless way.

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The review:

I attended Aaron Draplin‘s lecture last night and it was sincerely wonderful in many ways. First of all, Draplin is a fantastic speaker. No qualifier: He’s not a great speaker for a designer, he’s a great speaker compared to other people who speak. His talk was focused, had a narrative arc, was completely entertaining, was persuasive, engaging, inspiring, and oh-so interesting. I can’t think of a moment where anyone in the audience interests wavered, we were all caught up in his passion. He was so terrific at making an experience of his talk, not just letting us be passively exposed to his ideas like we were watching a YouTube video, but making us live in the moment.

Among other things, his talk asked us to really delve into why we were doing design. To prioritize to feel to capture to be inventive….but I’ll try not to just use a bunch of inflated phrases and run-ons of excitement and try to articulate a response.

Lately, if you haven’t noticed, I have been collecting ideas en mass. The ADCD’s student design contest was just a kick in the pants for me and I wanted to bring back the obsession into designing. I just want to keep doing things for fun. I want to re-do my website (which is in tragic need of revamping anyway). Instead of doing a bunch of things and spreading myself painfully thin, I want to focus my energies and passions into a few select things. I know that sounds reasonable, but I am a person who adores multi-tasking and stressful levels of responsibilities. Jack of all trades, master of none. C’est moi!

Which brings me to another point. Unlike a lot of other designers, I think I’m prepared to be bad at things. To blindly muddle around and be terrible, but keep on practicing until I become better. Think Ira Glass On Storytelling. I’ve never been naturally anything (but short). It all takes a lot of work for me. And, so what? Let’s go. BRING IT. I did my own FAFSA in high school, I can design some stuff!

Ok, and thirdly, Draplin is a great guy. His design and his lecture is great because it has personality. Specifically, his. It’s hard to explain exactly, but he’s both confidently opinionated and completely affable and receptive. Superb. I was lucky enough to even be a hanger-about after his lecture since Nick knows him. I even was a seat filler during the dinner afterwards. Typical to Jacklynn style, I remained completely silent and left no impression whatsoever on anyone. Just the constant look of curiosity from other guests at who I was, why I was there, and why I hadn’t left yet.

Oh well. Not everyone understands the weird pancake.

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