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What happens when my job involves no art?

"Our partner team needs a logo?" Sure! I'll do it. "
"What? Even team's foosball tournament needs a logo? Yeah, Let me make one. "
Believe it or not, for a support readiness project I owned, I even created my own poster and meeting invite image. Occassionally I insisted in using flash to create a presentation, even though it is just a diagram illustrating a work flow...
If this is not design-madness, I really don't know how to call this.
Yes, I had been there, feeling burnt out, yet I don't feel abnormal when standing among a big crowd of over-performers here. Though, I understand sometimes your passion can do more harm than you would expect.
The picture was taken after a quarterly meeting on a Halloween day, where I covered a mouth full of fake blood as I presented to the larger team. Result?
My group manager generously commented, "It was better than I dreamed of... you were funny, informative, articulate and engaging..."
I honestly don't know why I created this, besides solely for the fun of it. (hey, design is healing!) "Kung Fu", in Chinese means hard work. This work initiative I own is a product of hard work and a collaborative effort with a partner. I was so looking forward to giving this presentation hence makes the meeting invite looks like a movie poster.
Resonating our CEO changing his infamous line from 'Developer, developer, developer' to 'Advertising, advertising, advertising'. Yup, can't agree with it more. This explains why I am on call 24 hours when ads break. :) Work poster
For the lack of better pictures, let me explain this.

It was around career review time and I wanted to share my view of career growth and contribution with my manager. Having sat down for days I ended up with 5 major areas/perspectives of how my performance can be evaluated. After having them written out, I considered the following:

  • Digital docs is getting overwhelming these days. Using traditional medium may catch more attention
  • Audience isn't 'all-that-geek' but she pays attention to details and appreciates visually pleasing material.
  • Review isn't the most enjoyable activity, I am dying to do something fun

What was her response?
"Wow Kalen.. you said you can't sell yourself, look at you! This looks great! I... have never had any reports who have done that to me!"

Looking at how her eyes glow, I realize all the time I spent picking the right type of paper, choosing the right color tone, etc. paid off. (Yo - I have good content to begin with!)

The significance of this exercise though - is another a strong voice to head: Design to enjoy, design to impress.

Created this for my team after a re-org. I tried the concept of color palettes since what distinguishes display advertising from search advertising is art and design, as opposed to plain text.
A logo for the Search advertising support team. It takes a while to convince them their initial concept of using a Formula-One race car for a logo the background is just... Well, I perfectly understand that designers need a lot of soft skills other than the blah blah blah Photoshop, Illustrator. :)