What’s this? Finally a breakdown of my PechaKucha presentation and only one month after it occurred? Why Sam, you are on the ball, I tip my hat to you…

I wanted to post about this much sooner, of course, but the news that it hadn’t gotten recorded dampened my enthusiasm some. It’s of no matter now, but it did upset me a bit at the time. Read on to hear a little more about the presentation and some of the “reviews”!

“Hey, I know I don’t know you but I just wanted to say that I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time, maybe ever. Great presentation! “
– Random Stranger during intermission

The reviews are in! ‘Failing Upwards or How to Succeed as a Creative Freelancer Without Really Trying’ enjoyed by all. The theatre was packed and the audience laughed in all the appropriate moments. I was somewhat nervous about being in the same set as Ace Burpee, but well, I think I actually got more laughs than him, which is amazing. And he did give me a double high five before he left at the intermission. So now I know I’ve joined the upper echelon of the arts community in Winnipeg…

“All the ladies in the bathroom at beer break agreed, Sam had the most charisma!”
– Sara Maximus

So what is PechaKucha? Well, it’s a night where a group of individuals do 6 minute, twenty second presentations (20 slides at 20 seconds each) on a variety of topics. Most of the subject matter is creative, as it is put on by the Manitoba Chapter of the Graphic Designers of Canada. I really busted my ass to get this presentation just right, as admittedly, I feel many PK presentations are lackluster, either due to lack of preparation or unfamiliarity with the format. I’ve been to a few of these events, so I knew that you really have to keep on top of the timer (20 seconds per slide, and woe be the speaker who goes over time) and let your slides speak for themselves.

“It was f*cking brilliant! I know that everyone I talked to agreed with me! It will live on in memory, we’ll talk it up, it will take on vast mythical proportions. Can’t happen with a video”
- Ian McCausland

In all honesty, I really wish I had a video of it, as I feel like those 6 minutes were my shining moment, and I’m not sure when I’ll have the chance to address a large audience like that again. I’ve included a pdf with all the slides and the basic speech here. I made some changes on the stage, but for those who weren’t there, check it out, you’ll get the drift of what I presented.

“@samposnick amazing presentation tonight @pechakucha, you were hilarous ! Loved every second of it.”
- @adesign_girl

Despite my disappointment at not being captured on stage for posterity, I would probably still do this again, if asked. Hell, I almost felt like a real “professional” up there, and I can’t really discount that. I also got interviewed by CBC for the Scene section of their site, which was very cool.

I attended the PechaKucha event last night and wanted to take a moment to commend you on your presentation. You obviously put a lot of effort into your materials and your delivery was great. I am sure you have heard nothing but wonderful and sincere comments about the great job you did and I wanted to add mine as well.

Thanks for the putting the pants on and entertaining us:)

- John (via email)

While I claim this post is here for those who didn’t attend PechaKucha that night, it is actually mostly for me. I don’t want to forget that I put myself out there and did something special that people really enjoyed. It will keep me warm on those cold, self-doubting nights.

Earlier last week I was alerted to the fact that Chapters has been selling a bunch of paper products with some of my iStockphoto illustrations on them. How novel! How… noteworthy (pun intended). So, of course I had to venture down to the local Polo Park Chapters to check them out.

It looks like there’s still more to come, given that part of the display isn’t filled yet and a few more licenses were purchased on the same day for retail use, so I’m hoping to see a design with my typewriter or bicycle on it. They’ve paired them with some products that have similar (but not my) illustrations and they’re looking good. Some of the colour/cropping choices aren’t what I would’ve done, but it’s great to see my stuff available to a broader market! Now if only it had my name on it…

Please ignore the poor quality of my sneaky iPhone photos and enjoy!

Oh, and if you wanted to purchase them, or see some of the other designs up close, they’ve made them available on the Chapters/Indigo website.

RUNNING GOALS

So most of my goals this year are running related. I think it’s easier for me to post these since they’re a bit more quantifiable than other life goals.

1. Run more consistently
Trying to build up my base mileage to a bare minimum of 20 miles per week, preferring to be closer to 30 miles per week. I was at around 25mpw before the half marathon last year, but that was short-lived. Currently I tend to do about 60 miles a month, which isn’t really enough to show improvement.

2. Run 1000 miles this year
This is simple enough and relates to the previous goal. If I can make the previous goal, then this one pretty much comes with the package.

3. Run FASTER
I’m already working on this one by mixing in some tempo, interval and 5k pace workouts. I’ve already chopped about 0.5mph off my pace time and I’m hoping to get to an average 6.5mph speed by the end of the year. Which leads me to…

4. Run a less-sucky half marathon
Yeah, I already ran one. And I enjoyed it. But man, I find my time so embarrassing that I’m hesitant to even talk about it with people. There were a number of reasons, most of them probably based on the fact that this was my first race. So this year, whether it’s the Manitoba Half or an alternate one, I want to get a better time. Even if I decide not to race, I plan to at least run the distance at a much faster pace.

LIFE GOALS

1. Have more fun
I feel like this is a constant goal for me. I always have a good time when I go out, but lately things have been holding me back. I let other people’s moods affect me too much, which in turn affect my social priorities. Me staying home and being miserable won’t make the other person feel any worse or have any sympathy for me (obviously), so why make myself upset? Life is so short, wasting my time sitting around sulking when I could be having fun is stupid.

2. Stop over-thinking everything
A big contributor to my unhappiness is the massive analysis I seem to HAVE to do for every event, every word, every action. I feel I’m able to shrug off some things, but I really spend way too much time worrying about people’s emotions and feelings. I’m not vowing to be insensitive, just vowing to spend less time thinking about other people’s motivations.

WORK GOALS

1. Draw more
Just want to submit a bit more to iStockphoto and work on more custom illustration projects (though some of that is up to chance).

2. Just get things done
I put stuff off mostly because I worry about doing the best possible job on things. I think the key is to, as Nike so eloquently put it, “Just Do It”. I have enough talent that I’m probably not going to disappoint people even if I don’t feel it’s my best work. And most clients would probably rather have their stuff done faster anyway.

3. Improve my web skills
This is kind of a given. Despite my reluctance to do them, I still continue to get web design jobs, so I might as well have an easier time doing them.

4. Be more responsive to emails/requests
Whenever I have a new client contact me, I almost always seem to sit on it for a few days. Why? Do I have some kind of problem with making money?

I feel like I may be forgetting some goals, so I may update this post or add a new one somewhere along the line. Honestly, 2010 really sucked the butt as far as personal achievement or growth goes, so let’s hope 2011 works out better! What are your 2011 goals? Feel free to post them in the comments!

Just a quick post to promote a logo/graphic design I did for my cousin’s upstart cupcake catering business- Cupcake Love. Loving the kawaii style, it was a fun little project to work on.

Aside from my cousin’s upcoming nuptials, I have a much more exciting wedding to attend later in the year (sorry Jill and Ian!) in the land of “Why does craps have to be so damn complicated?”.

After finally visiting Vegas last year (and LOVING IT), I was delighted to design and illustrate the wedding invite above (front and back) for two of my good friends. The front side is a card-style caricature I created of the both of them fused together and the witty text was composed by them. So happy to do it, and can’t wait for the wedding!

I’ve been wanting to make and sell my own illustration-based products for some time but it seems that all the online companies and people that do it offer either poor quality products or take too much of a cut for it to be profitable to me.  And I know that screen printing can be done with fairly minimal supplies, but I’m not really interested in the mess and sourcing of materials.

Enter the Yudu. A screen printing machine that does prints up to 11×14″ in size, which is definitely a decent starting point for a newbie like me. It prints on fabric, paper, wood with no problem at all (or so it seems). The website makes it look like it’s aimed at younger people but all the reviews I’ve seen for the machine have been from adults, so I think it’s a fairly professional piece of machinery. I think this might be a good starting out point for me and I could finally start that Etsy shop that I’ve had an account for forever. I’ve really been wanting to do a line of prints and home goods and people have suggested it to me as well, so I know there would be some interest out there for the products.

The only issue is that the machine is puh-ricey, it goes for around $400 at Michaels. I suppose one could use those coupons from the flyers, and I did see it on sale for only $300 a few weeks back (actually it is on sale this week, according to their flyer). I’d go out and get it, but due to my the appendix bursting and the complications that came with it, I’m only just recovering on the money front right now.

So I guess I’ll just have to have this blog post hinting about what a great Christmas gift this would make. *nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more, say no more *

Oh, and do yourself a favour and watch the product video on the link above, it’s hilariously bad.

Just blogging here to advertise my participation in the Week of Hope with Hope Is In the Cards. From September 1st to the 7th, my partner- Cardstore- will allow anyone to personalize and send out a free card from the HOPE collection (including my design above) to anyone else worldwide. This includes postage! It’s a great way to show some love and encouragement to a friend or partner, so my “hope” is that you’ll all participate!

Feel free to personalize the card’s inside and back with your own photos and sentiments. Then just go through the motions and enter the promo code SENDHOPE at the final checkout point. Easy as pie!

Tell someone that they’re Number One! >

After some consideration, I decided to change my username on iStockphoto to samposnick instead of the previous sposnick. Given that when I initially signed up for iStockphoto, it was as a buyer, so I really didn’t give my member name much consideration at the time. I thought that using samposnick would be more in line with my business and domain name, etc.

So, in case you are linking or bookmarking my portfolio directly, please change your links to:
www.istockphoto.com/samposnick

Carry on then and see you on iStockphoto. Lord knows I update my portfolio there more often than I update this blog.

Just found out about this via Steph via Thoughtful Day’s blog.  Nice to see some of my work applied with snarky writing, and I mean that seriously. I get told sometimes that my work is very sweet, but the sarcastic sentiments at Popptags are more my cup of tea (or glass of wine, if you will). Popptags are funky little tags you can attach to that bottle of wine you give people you don’t really know well enough to buy a birthday gift, or it would also be good for dinner party gifts (yeah, I go to a lot of those alright).  Haven’t seen any of these locally yet, but it appears you can order some online at their official site.

I think my favourite is one that doesn’t feature one of my illustrations, just because for me the sentiment is so apt: “The wine store guy said this was good.”.  I can’t even count the number of times I’ve bought a wine gift for someone using that reasoning…

(Photo above poached from Design*Sponge, thank you! If I had my own photo, I’d use it!)

Was perusing through Design*Sponge’s great coverage of some of the artists at the National Stationery Show in New York when I spotted this card from Twig & Fig featuring my Pigeons illustration. They produced this beautiful card by doing a foil print on wood. 

Suzie McKig was kind enough to get in touch with me and offered to send me some samples, to which I say YES!  Apparently they have also done cards with my microphone, cassette tape, and headphones illustrations as well, which I would love to see. It’s always great to see my iStockphoto work getting out there and applied to products in such an excellent way.