My team won an award!

Last night, my design team won an award from the annual AIGA Minnesota Design show for a piece I conceptualized, the Weber Shandwick Calendar (also known as the Weber Shandwick Minneapolis 2008 Holiday Card). The winners from the juried show were considered some of the “most exceptional creative in the upper Midwest.” I feel very excited that a concept I came up with won an award as well as thrilled that the amazing design work of my team was recognized. The team includes Teri Firkins (our design director), Angie Koehn, Rachael Lybeck, Gerardo Obieta and Leslie Sorum. I feel this was a great showcase of all of their talents. I'm very proud of this piece. The piece will be on display at the Weisman Art Museum through this Sunday, March 22.

Here are the designs for those of you not in Minneapolis.

Proposed Creative Workflow

I saw this graphic on Daniel Case's blog, a really great blog for finding creative inspiration. Anyway, I felt this graphic fits exactly how I feel great advertising, design, or even, any mode of creative communication should work.

And, yet again I circle

Lately, I've been giving a lot of thought to the potential different directions my life can take. While this is something that is very common for me, I'm finding that my two main career interests appear to be circling each other again.

When I was back in New England for vacation, I met someone who got me thinking again about how important it is to do work that you find meaningful. The conversations both with him the night I met him and through email afterward made me start to question... How do I reconnect my background in human rights and international conflict resolution with my current work both as a designer and as a professional in the advertising and public relations field? Is there a way to do it without completely closing one of the doors?

I'm not sure what the answer is. One thing I have been considering is volunteer work. While that sounds a little insane with my current schedule of working a full time job, taking classes in art direction four nights a week, working on projects outside of class and attempting to sleep or occasionally go to the gym, I really think it might be something that is necessary for me to do. With that being said, I started looking into places in the Twin Cities that could be a good fit for my interests and with their needs. The solution, as of now, is the Center for Victims of Torture.

I applied to be a volunteer so now it's just wait and see if they want my help and what kind of help they want. And, of course, continuing to think about options to reconnect my interests.