Ellie Thomas

Things are pretty great at the moment, design-wise.

I’ve been shortlisted in an art competition I entered thinking I had no chance, I have a few business developments shaping up and I’m working on some sample work for Leeds College of Art which will hopefully lead to an interview. Good times. There’s also all the likes and reblogs I’ve been getting on here and nice comments on my Flickr which, sad as it is, make me happy.

I think the reason I want to be a designer is because it’s always a challenge. Give me an 18th century satirical novel and I’ll analyse it like that but doing things I find easy bores me. Which means that, although I love art and design, I also have these crippling moments of self doubt when I wonder if I’m wasting my time, if I’m good enough, if I can make a living out of this or if I should just go to a nice red brick university and study literature.

But when someone says they like my work or I win something or even that moment when a project starts coming together and you can see the final piece in your mind - that’s when I know I’ve made the right decision. And that, in 20 years time, I won’t just be doing a job, I’ll be doing what I love.

Click here for the video, didn’t embed it because it annoyingly starts playing automatically.

I stumbled across The Creators Project today, a website full of interviews with creatives from all over the world. There’s this profile on Stefan Sagmeister which is really interesting plus interviews with lots of other equally cool people like Spike Jonze and Jeremie Rozan. There’s a cool interview with Phoenix too, talking about their staging for gigs - which is amazing by the way, their performance at Leeds fest was one of my favourites.

So yeah, check out The Creators Project. It’s an interesting way to waste a couple of hours.

Spent the evening watching fireworks at my local park. Well, I say “watching”; I was trying out the bulb setting on my new SLR and the open shutter meant I didn’t get to actually see a lot of the fireworks. But fingers crossed I’ll have celluloid evidence that there were in fact fireworks taking place.

I’ll get the first roll of film from this camera developed over the weekend and I should have some photographs to post early next week.