The Blog of Zohaib Waliany

Catching Up

1. Redesigned my portfolio site
2. Attended the AD2ATX Job Shadow Day at Tilted Chair Creative (awesome people)
3. Joined Pinterest
4. Other stuff I can’t think of off the top of my head

I had a list of topics I wanted to talk about over the past few weeks, and I put them in my notebook to flush out later.

Music Review Project

It’s difficult for people, sometimes myself even, to take in new media or content, specifically music. People tend to listen to the same artists or type of music because it’s more accessible – it doesn’t take too much effort to like. For instance: if you listen to The All-American Rejects, it wouldn’t be difficult to get into The Starting Line (vice versa). In a sense, people become passive about media consumption (this applies to more than just music).

I’m the kind of person who is continually looking for something new. It gets to the point where I find more music than I am able to take time and assess. This has been especially true over the past few months. I have a “To Hear” playlist in iTunes, and it’s been getting bulky. So I did the only logical thing I could do: format my entire iPod. I have it synced to a single playlist containing only about four albums I haven’t heard. My plan is to listen to roughly four albums every week or so. I want to keep four fairly different albums in my rotation so each one gets a (relatively) fair listen. I feel like that’s enough time to really get a sense of the album. After that, I’m going to review them (hopefully). Below is my first review.

Music Review #1

Mind Bokeh (2009) by Bibio

The first thing to keep in mind is that this album is way more experimental than Ambivalence Avenue. It’s kind of all over the place, even within songs. Some songs sound like choppy Daft Punk and Ratatat mixes, in a good way. Parts of the album remind me of Emancipator and end.user. I feel like the vocals are from a singer from the 80s, like Roland Orzabal or someone. The best song on the album, in my opinion, is “K Is for Kelson” because it’s got this really tropical island sound – really happy. The album is good, but it’s kind of difficult to listen to as a whole, at least for me.

Boyfriend EP (2010) by We Are Trees

Lately, I’ve grown to really love EPs. They’re easier to listen to, and like. Mostly because they’re just shorter than full-length LPs; the bands have an easier time getting it to sound whole. But on the other hand, they can feel incomplete. I got into We Are Trees through their latest release Girlfriend EP, but I’ve only heard it a couple of times through. I decided to go back and start at Boyfriend EP. This EP is great, albeit a little short (maybe because Girlfriend EP is the followup). I immediately think of Grizzly Bear when I hear James Nee’s voice, and a hint of Awkward I too. The music is extremely simple: acoustic guitars, drums, and an uplifting violin. The drumming reminds me of Local Natives’ Gorilla Manor. Boyfriend EP is something I see myself listening to while going through old photos and letters.

Wheathervanes (2010) by Freelance Whales

So this, apparently, is the band that’s on the Starbucks commercial. I didn’t know this until a friend sent me a Youtube clip of it couple of days ago. Honestly, I just found the band on The Sixty One a few weeks ago and thought they were good. I really don’t understand why “Generator ^ First Floor” is on a Starbucks commercial; it actually pisses me off. It should be on a GE commercial. Regardless, the album is well-composed. It’s a lot of fun to listen to while walking. It’s upbeat and kind of electronic indie-pop with a banjo, harmonium, and some other cool instruments. I also really like their echoes. Think of Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, Faded Paper Figures, and Jónsi. I’d definitely choose this for a road trip.

Flag (2010) by Brooke Fraser

Brooke Fraser is pretty much a folk-pop/country artist. I got her album because I loved her part on “I Don’t Feel It Anymore” with William Fitzsimmons. I don’t think of the album as extremely unique or anything, but it’s good. She’s like an upbeat Natalie Walker with a hint of Kina Grannis. Ultimately, she’s a better version of Lady Antebellum. I could see this album being something you listen to a lot during the summer. I was kind of hoping for something more along the lines of what she’d done for The Sparrow and the Crow, but this is fine too. I think if you’re looking for something light and a little uplifting, this might be good for you.

So that was it. I don’t know that I’ll be able to do reviews like this every week. Maybe I’ll do something monthly. I’ll give two-sentence reviews for the albums I listened to that month, and then more elaborate ones for my one or two favorites. Sounds good to me.

Final Thoughts

I haven’t posted anything about my last two projects for my design class. I’ll probably post stuff on them after my final portfolio review in a couple of weeks. There are actually quite a few topics I wanted to write about, which will probably come around the same time as well. There are about two weeks left in my undergrad career, and I’m stoked.

Zohaib

Filed under: Music by zohaibzw on Wednesday, April 20, 2011
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Very small.

Zohaib

Filed under: Posts by zohaibzw on Wednesday, March 16, 2011
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“Success builds character; failure reveals it.” – David Checkett

While washing my dishes, I let my mind wander, and I came up with an idea that’s been bugging me for a while.

I’ve always had trouble with motivation in regards to school. Over the years, I’ve subconsciously known why, but I think today I properly understood it. It’s due to the idea of failure. I know this isn’t a new topic, especially when there’s a huge mural of it at W+K:

I get that grades are important to measure performance, however inaccurate they may actually be. But the school system (from what I’ve experienced) is flawed in the idea that grades are everything. Being a senior in a fairly prestigious university, most of what I see around me are students only looking to get decent grades in order to graduate. “I just want to pass,” “it’s my last semester: I’m ready to graduate,” “[insert cliché graduating senior comment about grades/classes/graduation].” And honestly, I feel the same way.

Looking over the past few years, I’ve realized how restrictive school has been on my creativity. Worrying about grades, applying to majors or sequences, taking multiple-choice and memorization tests… I’ve grown so exhausted to the point where I wonder if it was even worth it. Did I learn something? Of course I did. I learned a lot. Some I learned from the content in the courses I took, and a lot outside of the content. College is a learning experience, no doubt. In the end, it was worth it. I’m even more certain of the types of people I neither want to be, nor with whom I want to associate. I’ve learned what really matters in the end. And it’s not the size of a paycheck (not that income and sustainability aren’t important), and it sure as hell isn’t a piece of paper that tells you the field of study in which you are sufficiently “prepared” to pursue a career. My eligibility to graduate and receive my diploma is based on:

1. Receiving at least a C or above in each required course
2. The average of my courses within my major’s college
3. The average of all the courses that I have taken in order to complete my degree plan

And while systematically this is acceptable, it’s not rational. Very few classes throughout my academic career evaluated course performance based understanding of the information presented. However, looking back, as a student in lower education (high school, etc.), I regret not taking my English courses more seriously. I think that English courses are underrated. They are the few that teach students how to think rather than what to think or to memorize. I know that every course ideally teaches students to think, but it is more dependent on the teachers and curriculum, and I think more commonly English is a subject in which it’s hard not to succeed in promoting cognitive growth.

Now onto the mural, “Fail harder.” It’s surprising to see a quote, let alone an entire wall, from an enormous advertising agency like Wieden + Kennedy devoted to failure. But it’s refreshing to see, and the best part is that it was created by pushpins covering the negative space instead of the actual type itself. It’s like the folks over at A Softer World say, “Mistakes aren’t always regrets.”

We’ve learned to shy away from failure. Failure is unacceptable. A taboo. By failure, I mean the unanticipated, undesirable result of an execution or situation by either our own standards or society’s. For some reason, we’re supposed to be perfect, or nearly. Why is that? Stephen Fry blames it on setting goals. Some blame it on the American Dream. The government. The man. Parents. Or we can even say that it’s the ego of mankind. Personally, I think it’s because as the years have passed, technology has advanced, we’ve become more efficient in our affairs, and life itself has gotten faster. The “better” we get, the higher the standards, and thus, the smaller our room for error.

Failure is good. Failure is probably one of the most valuable experiences one can have if it’s evaluated. Three things (at least), I think, failure does is

• Failure teaches you. You have so much to learn from failure. Where you went “wrong”, which decisions may have resulted in this undesirable outcome. You learn about yourself and how you’ve dealt with what has happened. It’s possible that you find out how to improve yourself in an area you never considered.

• Failure teaches others. When outsiders witness failure, they may learn something about your technique as well. They may see how to “rectify” your “mistakes”. It could even be that they don’t see it as a failure at all, but the conclusion is something they wouldn’t necessarily come to without your failure.

• Failure is humbling. You can become more open-minded because of it. Don’t expect greatness right away. Don’t expect it on the 100th attempt. Everyone has their own pace, and you have to find yours. You’re not the smartest person in the room. There’s always someone better. You’re human, remember that. Accept it. And breathe.

But what does it really mean? I’m not saying that we should necessarily seek out failure. And we definitely shouldn’t be content with it. But maybe there’s something there in our shortcomings worth gaining from our loss. The point is to take a risk once in a while. Experience life, and don’t be afraid of feeling something.

As a designer – as an artist – I’m scared of a blank page. I think many are. We’re scared of the potential failure – taking something so pure and bastardizing it. A blank page is intimidating, and we only want to lay images and words so profound. Like those of the greats before us. It’s dreaming of the potential we see in the paper. But the truth is, potential is worthless without attempts to reach it. We are so conditioned to only accept greatness that we shy away from doing what we might not be good at. If we never try our hand at something, how do we know for sure? For instance, just recently, I decided to start collages. Looking at my favorite collage artist Hollie Chastain, my work is nowhere near her caliber. It probably never will be, and I’m okay with that because I’m looking to learn from the experience. I’m not worried about being great. It’s about learning. It’s about learning who you are and what you are capable of and appreciating that.

“My imperfections and failures are as much a blessing from God as my successes and my talents, and I lay them both at his feet.” – Mahatma Gandhi

I’ll end with what I tell the high school students that I mentor and what I’ve been taught: In life, it’s important to seek to understand that which we do not know about. Being hungry for knowledge. Read as many books about what interests you and what might not catch your eye at first. Watch documentaries, TV shows. Understand the music you listen to and why you listen to it. Become cultured. Think.

“Thinking is more interesting than knowing but less interesting than looking.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Zohaib

Filed under: Inspiration, Posts, Quotes, Rants by zohaibzw on Saturday, March 12, 2011
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So I finished my newspaper design project last night. I have to say, it was an experience. I really applaud those who actually do this daily. It’s tough work arranging all these stories. Overall, I think I’m satisfied with what I came up with because it was my first one. Would I do it again? Maybe. But probably not by choice.

Zohaib

Filed under: Art & Design, J319 by zohaibzw on Friday, March 11, 2011
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“Have a variety of interests … These interests relax the mind and lessen tension on the nervous system. People with many interests live, not only longest, but happiest.” – George Matthew Allen

Thanks to Brian Hoff’s article on the tools he relied on most in 2010, I decided to check out Reeder. And so, I decided to finally get organized with my blog following and get my RSS feeds together: awesome decision.

Just started listening to Florence + The Machine out of a whim after seeing her in the January/February issue of SPIN.

Zohaib

Filed under: Inspiration, Music, Nerdy-ness, Posts, Quotes by zohaibzw on Monday, February 21, 2011
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So here’s the redesigned For Emma Forever Ago cover.

Here’s the rationale I had to write:

For the CD cover redesign, I chose to redesign Bon Iver’s For Emma Forever Ago album cover. The story behind what led Justin Vernon to write the album is integral to my rationale for the new cover. After the breakup of his band and girlfriend, he “fled” to his father’s cabin in the woods of Northwestern Wisconsin for three months of solitude. Not intending to write a record, he went to escape and gain a sense of direction. AmbleDown describes it as, “All of his personal trouble, lack of perspective, heartache, longing, love, loss and guilt that had been stock piled over the course of the past six years, was suddenly purged into the form of song” (http://www.ambledown.com/boniver_bio.html).

In a sense, I feel like the target audience for this cover was the artist himself. I wanted to design something that paid homage to the raw emotion he embedded within each track that connected with me personally.

With this mind, I decided to design a cover that was as stark as the music he created. I wanted an image of the snowy woods that’s described in the title track “For Emma.” I started by getting a stock paper texture from Lost & Taken. I felt that a blue and gray color scheme would work best. I made the paper texture monochromatic and adjusted the levels until I found an appealing value. Then, I selected a stock image of the woods from stock.xchng. I wanted to reduce as much color as possible to make the woods a silhouette rather than a full-color image. I set the channel mixer to monochrome and adjusted the levels to darken the mid tones and eliminate as much black as I could. Adding a dark blue screen layer over this gave me a dark blue silhouette that I then added this to the layer above my blue texture using multiply to subtract the white from the scenery. I used a typeface called Tillium (light for artist name and bold for album title). I decided on this sans serif because of its refined angular look that contrasts well with the grungy feel of the imagery. And now, I am at the final product. I feel that the monochromatic background works well with the overall mood of the cover and the album.

As this is one of my favorite albums, I am pleased with what I came up with as a cover redesign.

Tools: Photoshop CS5

Zohaib

Filed under: Art & Design, J319, Posts, Process & Sketches by zohaibzw on Saturday, February 19, 2011
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Here’s a sneak peak at the album cover I’m redesigning for my graphic design class.

It’s cropped, not shrunk. I’m not sure if the current design will even be finalized; we’ll see.

Zohaib

Filed under: Art & Design, J319, Posts by zohaibzw on Tuesday, February 15, 2011 | Social tagging: Art & Design > J319
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So I’ve been trying to find a good, simple task-management application for a while. I’m picky. I’ve been using Things for a while, but I didn’t like the fact that I couldn’t sync it to a server, and the notes area for each task was way too small. I like to have idea lists in the same program – I won’t go into detail. Just know that I want things the way I want them, end of story.

I came across wunderlist by chance. I was reading a Design Shack article and I fell in love with the interface right away – I think it was the wood background. Anyway, I was messing around with it, figuring out how I wanted it to be sorted, etc. I ran into a HUGE problem. Though the note area for tasks was much bigger, the default font was Comic Sans MS. Deal-breaker. End of the line. Good-bye. Ostracized. GTFO.

Luckily, I’m an inquisitive person. When I first really started using Mac OS X, I was a Hackintosh user. I learned a lot more about the OS than I would have otherwise. One thing I learned back then was that .app files are packages. So I decided to rifle through the content and viola: Cascading Style Sheets! Honestly, it’s like striking gold. I decided I wanted to change all the fonts to the Museo Slab and Museo Sans family. After messing around with the code, it turned into something I find pleasant.

I just hope that the application becomes more robust and that the developers capitalize the “W” in wunderlist. That’s really annoying.

And yes, my desktop background is from Desktopography.

Zohaib

Filed under: Nerdy-ness, Posts by zohaibzw on Wednesday, February 9, 2011 | Social tagging: Nerdy-ness
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A new year. A new direction. A new identity system. How apropos.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve realized how little I’ve done for myself in regard to design (and art). I’ve been very passive, mostly just following a lot of design rather than creating. I think it’s mainly due to working at National Instruments. I mean that in a positive way though. I definitely did a lot of design working there, but I was there primarily to learn. And honestly, I did. But there’s always so much more.

It’s my last semester as an undergraduate, and this semester I’m enrolled in my very first (and definitely not my last) graphic design course. My instructor decided to begin with typography, and I fell in love the first day. The class is great.

Our first project, appropriately enough, was to create an identity system for ourselves: logo, résumé, business card, and letterhead. I’ve been meaning to incorporate Arabic/Urdu into my logo for quite some time now, so I ran with that. So I worked on it for a good 12 hours on the mark. Evolving from a more dynamic style of the Kufic script to a more geometric style. I wanted to use my first and last initial, but it seemed a little to simple, to the point of being bland. I decided I wanted to add my middle initial as well. After all the work, I finished up all the pieces and turned them in. That night around 2:30am (so technically, the next morning), I realized that I forgot the dot above my middle initial in the mark. Where it was supposed to be a “Z” sounding character, it was a “T” sounding character. It’s such a devastating feeling, realizing that all your effort and finding out you left out an integral part of your work. Luckily, it only took me roughly 30 minutes to fix, but still.

The evolution of my logo (excluding many of the revisions).
 





Hopefully, I’ll keep this blog up to date.

I love Amsterdam Acoustics:

Zohaib

Filed under: Art & Design, J319, Music, Posts, Process & Sketches by zohaibzw on Monday, February 7, 2011
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