As has been the trend for the past nine months of my life, from getting married, to moving, the changes keep coming. April 1 will be my last day at Telligent. I’ve been offered an exciting new opportunity at NBC Artworks as a Senior Interactive Designer.

During the time that I’ve been at Telligent I’ve learned a lot and have made some great friends. I want to thank everyone at Telligent for this great opportunity and the experience that I gained during my time here. Specifically to my fellow current and former creative team co-workers, I thank you for you patience with me when I was starting out and your continued mentorship. I have many great memories for our time together and hope to see that continue.

And now on to new things, I’m ever grateful to all of you. Thanks for a great experience.

-Ben

All of my life I’ve been involved in the eternal struggle between due process and due personal logic. That to mean my way of doing things VS the way prescribed by given “expert”, text, or authority. I’m finding more and more as I get older that the adage about cat skinning wasn’t too far off. As a designer I am charged with the task of coming up with a solution to a given problem in the best manner that exists and when one doesn’t exist, to create one that does, then if after much trial and error no suitable one rears it’s head (ugly or other wise) then resort to the next best compromise. The creative process for me, much like many other things that I get myself into is not an easy or clean one. I used to like to describe it like this:

There are all these chunks of idea floating around and then some of the meet (bang!). Then the zygotal idea begins to grow and grow until it forms a concept. Finally when the concept is fully developed it comes out. Out of the loins of my mind.

It seems like the the biggest misconception of what I do is that I spend forty to sixty percent of my time everyday just goofing of online and the sixty to forty making a few pixel and opacity adjustments on an idea that I took way too long to come up with. I know it may be hard to believe, but the moment when you walk into my office an I’m browsing good.is, I’m not just reading up on how the U.S. lags in environmental performance (which is a bit concerning) but I am studying the way the site’s designers chose to display related articles and recent comments. Just like when I was a kid and my Dad and I would get into arguments over the best practices for mowing the lawn (front of the yard first or the back of the yard first), my idea of what methods make sense are is a good use of time often differs from what those in my senior feel. It would be very easy to declare victory on a given design challenge after thirty minutes of fumbling around on a Fireworks document but what’s the fun in that? I’m quite certain that I’m not alone on this.

I remember a few years ago hearing a What-A-Burger commercial that flaunted the fact that they made all of their burgers by hand and as a result were a “model of inefficiency”, but also totally worth waiting for. I was sold. On the flip side, I could site times when I’ve been known in times of extreme time shortage to produce works of greatness, but there more to that than meets the eye. There were many hours of research and exploration before that made it possible. I have a bag of tricks that I’ve collected on deck should I need them at a moments notice. Despite what it might seem like, nothing good is every created quickly.

Thinking about it; in this economy and really any other economy the constant problem of most creatives is finding enough money to do what it is that we really love to do. I have for a long time now had a passion for making films, and do so when ever I can mooch one off of a friend for a day or two. For quite some time now I’ve been meaning to get to a point where I could drop a few thousand on a new HD camera , putting off creative hopes and dreams until the day I have one. But in this economy…

Anyway, I stumbled on this video by director and film maker Matt Wolf, who’s work I really love and respect. It’s called ‘Boca’ and features a great song by Mr. Owen Pallet Final Fantasy and The Arcade Fire. He shot the entire thing on a camera phone! The Nokia N95 (insert Flight of the Concords joke here). I found it quite amazing, inspiring and as a really kick in the ass. Something that I used to to do a lot but have gotten away from that I’m a bona fide “creative professional” is to find new and creative ways to find solutions for the projects that I want to do. I rember gurry-rigging a small, live PA mixer with a couple of cheap pre-amps and recording the first Streets of Simon Lee EP, and being really proud of ourselves for figuring it out. Or the time that in the early days of Kite Flying Society (Now El Salvador Pictures/ Benberry Media) Shooting our first production “The Run“(circa 2001) on my dad’s old VHS camcorder and somehow figuring out how to get it into the computer to edit it.

Well, the point is, that “In This Economy” I’ve decided that I’m going to come up with more new ways to do the projects that I want to do. “Creativity is born out nothing” or something like that I think I just misquoted someone important.

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