#jonathan mak

My portfolio is finally live. I'm no programmer, but I did my best to create a layout that displays reasonably well across different screen dimensions, as well as to introduce a degree of sophistication to how the text is laid out. This blog remains the place with the most current stuff I'm up to, but the portfolio gives a nice overview of my work.

American designer James Victore once spoke in an interview that doing a compilation of his work was like packing his old stuff into a box. It was the only way to move on. The interviewer teased him by saying that publishing a book was the exact opposite of hiding things in a box, to which he pretty much laughed and shrugged.

Joking aside, I think it says something about how one looks at his/her past. On one hand, I do kind of tire of certain old pieces of mine, sometimes not because of its quality, but simply because it's "old news" (what that says about the timelessness of my designs I don't know, heh). But for me, in a way, to get rid of something in my mind is to put my creations out there. So there is an interesting "keep it private/public", love/hate relationship there.

It really is the only way to move on. And that I'll do.

At long last: some proper design work.

I'm going to shut up first, and let it speak for itself (for better or worse).

I was going to incorporate this video into my post on the Cannes Lions, because my experience of working on this animation was very much affected by other things out of my control. This is one of the last projects I did for my student exchange programme here in Germany, and I really wanted to get it right. I've only done one "proper" motion graphic piece before, and was looking forward to getting my hands dirty again.

It turned out to be a torturous process, because it's unbelievably taxing on the brain when you have so many emails and other business to handle, yet all you want to do is to sit down and just... create. I need time and space for my brain to go blank (before it can be filled with ideas), and there wasn't much of either of those things.

I'm proud of the result, not because it's particularly groundbreaking or clever. I was able to pour my blood and sweat into something quite purely "artistic" (there's no "message" involved), and escape the insanity for a minute. It was cathartic, and a proof to myself that I am still doing things for my own enjoyment amidst the frenzy. All this attention hasn't completely corrupted me yet. I hope.