First off, Merry Christmas to you. :)  

But this post isn’t about the holidays where people are rushing to buy gifts nor is it a scrooge post saying how Christmas makes us melancholy.  Nope.  This post is about how prevalent the web is in our lives that some of us, present company not excluded, are spending some precious time online during the eve where we should be spending it with family.

One family in our clan tonight had to rush home to Skype with a family member from abroad.  Of course this is still time spent with other family, albeit through a screen.  Even my mother recently joined Facebook, I caught her changing her profile picture while preparing dinner.  We are not absolved from this either, upon coming home, we automatically sit down in front of our PCs and “facebook” to check photos of the parties we’ve missed tonight.  Yup, gone are the days where you have to wait for the line at the local photo store to have your film developed. Gone are the times where we pass around sheets of pictures and make remarks… now we just comment on a photo posted on facebook or flickr. You even see a friend logged in facebook and start chatting, sending Christmas cheer. 

Blogging, twitting, plurking is no exception.. I am doing it now.  Has it improved communication between families and friends? Or has it replaced valuable face time with virtual time?

There are rumors in the mac news blogs now of a new iPhone: a Nano version. I’m really curious to see the price point that they will make this at if it is true. There are mockups of 3.5 inch screens here. I thought of mocking up another version using 2.5 inch screens instead. Similar to the one here. Same size of the “home” button. Although it will be hard to use the on screen keyboard on a 2.5 inch screen.

As TechTote was recently featured in Manila Times,  I quickly came up with a one page site that show the current lists of TechTote products.  TechTote produces stylish laptop bags for women and can be found in all Powerbooks stores.  We used to put the brand TechTote under the original line of Blauorange. But TechTote now stands on it own and we thought of abandoning the old brand since we stopped producing the blauorange cloth bags for over almost a year.  Now we see that the original domain name has been taken by another, just squatters hoping to get a buyer for the domain.

Just a quick note on how I was able to upgrade my wordpress from version 2.2 to 2.7. I have other blogs in version 2.6, and they’ve really made some major design changes since. Version 2.2 actually looked very clunky and un-web-TwoPointOh-ish. But 2.7 now has a draggable dashboard similar to Google’s IG personalized home. I’m now writing this post in the new “QuickPress” panel. Kudos to the wordpress dev team!

So today I had some time to get my scale model back from the MMDA Landmark contest I joined.  I finally got to see the winning entries.  In all fairness, I thought that the 1st prize winner was a good competitor.  Now I have all the regrets going through my head and a lot of what ifs.  But I that’s all in the past as they say.  Here are the photos of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd placers in my category:

Last August, I participated in a contest and submitted a design to a local government agency called the MMDA.  The task was to design a landmark that would be built in front of the newly opened airport, Terminal 3.  

My concept was simple but I thought was solid: There were 2 landmark spots and I thought that they should work to support one another.  My concept was to make icons out of the Philippine flag.  The result was the 3 stars of the flag will be on the smaller landmark, while the Sun will occupy the bigger one.  I had submitted an elaborate essay on the materials, the idea, even the interaction of the landmark.Time passed and the promised date to announce the finalists have passed.  I thought, I didn’t get in the top 10 which is why they didn’t contact me.  Below is the model I submitted.  I used SketchUp to draw the model.
 

A month after the deadline, I got an email saying I was part of the top 10, but only on the bigger landmark part.  I guess this was the start of the breaking of my concept.  Alone, one landmark might look weak.  Still, I was happy to get in the top 10.  Now all I had to do was to come up with a scale model in 2 weeks! It was an exciting time, I worked with my uncle who is also an architect, he referred my to a scale model maker.  They said it would be hard to do, but it is possible.  Below was the result:

I was very happy with it.  I could already see its 8 storey granduer glowing from a distance as people drive to the airport.  I told myself, this is what great artists, designers, architects do.  This will immortalize my name.  I shall build my design empire with this iconic work.  I shall be the next great national artist.I was sure that I would win.  Family, friends and colleagues were also giving me confidence that I would.  But alas, I did not. Today, an awarding ceremony will be held in the airport.  I was invited, but I won’t attend, not because I am bitter but because I have to go back to little bites of work.   So it goes, I lose but live to fight another day.  I am still looking for that day… someday.

I’ve written about “why I write about design” on this blog before. And it has been quite some time since I have written anything, more than a month. Like Micheal Beirut said in his Design Observer blog, “I write to slow things down again, to question my own premises, to force myself to pay attention…”   I guess this past month has been too fast.  Sometimes too fast to pay attention. I often get stunned by the amount of work that I need to do and I have yet to do.  There are days where I say, “hey! I did a lot today.” and times I say “damn, I wish I did more.” And a lot of those times work involes little bites of chores.  Update the site here, call a client there, fix a proposal here, meet with people there,  go do social obligations, etc.

But aside from all of those things, I have been in a certain mood lately… along the lines of questioning my career in design.  I am still in that mood, and today another event pushed me further into questions.    So let me slow things down a bit and try to explain this event… which I shall post in another entry.

Back in college I had a professor that taught us the difference between “questioning the faith” and “doubting your faith.”  I’m not going to speak religion here, but more on looking back at my design career.  I will be using the same words but swapping the word “faith” with “design career.”

The past month was very busy indeed and one of the events that passed was my birthday.  This in turn leads me to question my career choices.  I ask myself: “Another year has passed, and what have I done to progress in my design career?”, “Is digital design a profitable career?”, “Am I lagging behind?”, “Am I too old for this?”

I sometimes look at the up and coming studios here in manila and realize that there are more talented people out there, and as time passes, more and more people will be better than me.  This leads me to believe that it gets harder and harder to get clients and design rates get cheaper and cheaper.  Some even don’t see the value in hiring designers and think they can do it themselves.

So I am at a point where I am questioning the design career.  In a developing country such as the Philippines, does it make sense to be in design?   Will design in a developing country be limited to just as and “add-on” and unessential?  Is design only profitable as a tool used in advertising and marketing?  Will design ever be given the respect it deserves?

On the otherhand, design has never been so big in the country.  Numerous design studios are cropping up everywhere while older firms are still alive and kicking.  So there is a market for design… but is it big enough to serve all that are passionate?  My professor said that questioning is good since it allows one to stop and look and then take positive action in identifying the problem.  But doubting just means to give up.  I do not think I am in “doubting” mode, but I do question the design career a lot… more often now than ever.  What do you think?  Do you live and work in the industry?  Do you doubt or question?

The Philippine Blog Awards is set for this sunday… and hooray! Perlas Design Studio is a finalist for the Culture and Arts category.  I going against a varied list of blogs:

Dalityapi Unpoemed
GIBBS CADIZ
pamatay homesick
Perlas Design Studio
Pinoy Power

It’s going to be tough winning against these gems.  I’ve been to their sites and they all write well and have different styles.  Which actually makes my nomination feel special, it goes to show how much time and effort the organizers have put into short listing the nominees.  I’d like to thank PBA for the honor of putting this blog on that list. :)  See you guys on Sunday.   

 I say mysterious because only one computer in the office has seen it.  I tried viewing yahoo.com on my mac, a newer PC and an older PC simultaneously but only the old one, using firefox, saw it.  Weird.  It seems like an easter egg prank is being played by yahoo.  TechCrunch also documented seeing this phenomenon.  But since we’re here, let me just quickly say I perfer the old logo, but using the purple color.  Purple being more “branded” for me as the yahoo color, more than red.  The typography of the new one is new-ish and maybe they’re showing that they are ushering in a new era of yahoo, probably differentiating it from the serif Google… still, I think there was much investment made with the serif “Y” to make it a recognizable brand.