alice's journal

If Tumblr sells to Yahoo, I'm going to Medium

Sun, 19 May 2013 13:17:28 -0400

It’s a better platform anyway for the type of long-form blogging that I prefer. I’ve found myself composing long emails and posts in very sparse and clean Medium post interface and then porting them over when I’m finished.

I’ve used Tumblr since high school (that is a long time!) and have tolerated what I personally see as a list of increasingly annoying attempts to monetize - least of which include advertisements flooding my carefully curated dash. I just spent about an hour on Medium this morning and am totally blown away by the quality and breadth of posts there - it strikes me as a cross between Tumblr in terms of interestingness and Svbtle in terms of post quality.

Having one of those “how did I end up here, again?” moments.

Wed, 08 May 2013 13:36:39 -0400

Having one of those “how did I end up here, again?” moments.

Taken by RG. Creative detox.

Mon, 06 May 2013 01:13:30 -0400

Taken by RG. Creative detox.

"10 more minutes"

Fri, 03 May 2013 23:47:00 -0400

i love it!

Fri, 03 May 2013 16:29:29 -0400

The theme of this week has definitely been amazing design talks, which I normally find boring but found exceptionally inspirational this week. Great hearing from Ash, Alexa, Elle, Adam, and Edward Tufte.

Tonight's talk at Designer Fund

Wed, 01 May 2013 01:20:15 -0400

Amazing amazing AMAZING talk from Elle Luna tonight at Designer Fund’s beautiful new space. I’m grateful that I stayed for it; I was literally about to walk out the door because the event was running over, etc. before Darian (another designer at Dropbox) convinced me to stay. 20 or so really talented designers in the room, and it felt like a really, really safe place.

Here are my takeaways of points that she made that were especially meaningful to me:

- Ask yourself not “what can I do” but “what must I do?”

- Two things that will tear down your passions and are a constant, daily threat. One, distractions. The ever present coffee date series, the dancing monkey treats (being published, etc). Two, the “what will they think?”

- Once you are not afraid, you tend to have a lot of fun. And crushing anxiety, at first.

- It’s like when you look back at your life sometimes you can envision a crimson thread running through past events and experiences that have helped shape who you were. For me, personally, as a child I always loved creating things. I loved thinking about product experiences (“logistics,” I’d say), but didn’t know that there was an actual job that mapped to that. A lot of these passions are hidden in our childhood, she said. I so agree.

"And on the slope he say old Samuel against the sky, his white hair shining with starlight."

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:21:43 -0400

“And on the slope he say old Samuel against the sky, his white hair shining with starlight.”

instant improvement

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:13:47 -0400

when I have a crappy day I just remember that at least I’m not still in college, more specifically at least I’m not a sophomore at Wharton, and curl up on the couch to read East of Eden. day instantly brightened, somewhat.

What is beauty? Glamour and more.

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 23:46:00 -0400

I never explicitly wrote about this here, but this month (May issue*) I was featured in Glamour Magazine as one of their top 10 college women in 2013. They flew us out to NYC twice, first for an awesome photoshoot (I literally checked in to my hotel, did my shoot, and flew home) and second for an awards ceremony / speaker series.

It was a really incredible, once-in-a-lifetime experience. The most important thing that the whole experience taught me was a little something about beauty, and how I define myself by it. I thank Glamour so much for this, and our incredible editor, Katie, for everything.

Each of us was interviewed by L’Oreal, the event sponsor, for a small video that they’re putting together about Top 10, and one of the questions they asked was: “What does beauty mean to you?”

This question has special significance to me because, ironically, when I first found out that was going to be featured in a beauty / fashion magazine I immediately felt very self-conscious of the way I looked. I dieted pretty hardcore for the two months leading up to the shoot, and dropped about 15 pounds in that super short period of time (granted, a lot of that was extra weight I had gained in college). I nervously practiced smiling in the mirror, to my camera, etc. the week before because I suddenly felt very self conscious about the way that my teeth looked (I’d just gotten all four wisdom teeth out two months earlier). I was really nervous before the feature came out because I feared that they would pick a shot in which I “looked stupid.”

A lot of it was fear over what my family and friends would respectively say. My family because Asian culture is generally more direct (rude is what we would consider it by American values) about these things - “oh you look a little fat,” or like “wow you have so many pimples.” It’s what makes talking to my relatives and family friends really difficult sometimes - despite knowing that that kind of directness is just part of the culture and not necessarily a reflection of someone else’s true assessment of my character (ie. the thing that counts), it’s just really hard to adjust your frame of reference when you’re constantly being told you got fatter. And let’s face it, I was even nervous about what some of my friends - love them - would say. We just live in a really superficial society and it’s hard to decouple your identity from your appearance sometimes, particularly as a female.

It all worked out in the end - I love the shots they picked and even more so that they incorporated a small tidbit about how I played Pokemon as a kid. I do not think I look stupid in either shot and got to meet some of the most fabulous, talented, and beautiful young women who I’m so proud now to call friends.

During each visit to NYC, I spent an hour getting my hair curled (“lightly distressed”), face made up, and nails done. I don’t know if people treated me differently because I looked way more glamorous than I normally am and I still don’t know if people in my life think of me differently because I was featured in this wonderful magazine but what I do know is that it took an hour of time and a ton of makeup to get to that point. To go from “ordinary” to “beautiful.”

And that’s kind of bullshit because anyone can look “beautiful.” With the right tools and precision, it’s really not that hard. My makeup artist gave me beauty tips that I still take with me today, but I don’t think that the fact that I have highlights in my hair or fuller eyebrows should dictate the way that other people perceive me. I mean it is, undoubtedly, given that we judge others so heavily on appearances. But the hardest part of getting into that magazine wasn’t the beauty part (clearly, it just took a couple of hours and squeezing into some awesome outfits to achieve that). The hardest part was the unfolding of our stories. The hardest part was finding determination and being brave and going for it. The beauty part was easy. It’s achievable, if you really want it. Spend a couple extra minutes blow-drying your hair the right way or contouring your cheekbones. But the other stuff - the stuff we call life - is so much harder.

So ultimately I basically learned that the physical stuff can be fun and all but isn’t that important and even if you care about that stuff you can really easily manipulate your appearance and whatever. The more important stuff comes from your drive, your motivation, and your will.

That is to say (tl;dr), this entire experience first made me feel really incredibly vulnerable, and then turned around and strengthened my resolve and confidence in myself. Sadface and then yay.

This was a super long post but it makes up for my lack of substantiveness from Feb - April.

*Yeah, the May issue was released in April.

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

Love

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 19:30:00 -0400

I love this quote so much: “we accept the love we think we deserve.”

Sometimes you can’t control the exact circumstances in your life especially if you’re only beginning financial independence - we might be forced accept that slightly leaky sublet as our first apartment out of school or subsist on subpar, inexpensive junk food during college to get by - but love is something that you can choose.

On a related note, being a fairly unattached female in an overwhelmingly male-dominated industry has been an interesting experience, to say the least.

Edit: Love sucks sometimes.

Rode home on the back of my coworker’s Vespa tonight. I...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 02:55:12 -0400

Rode home on the back of my coworker’s Vespa tonight. I need to get one of those (not really though).

Origins: Women in Design

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 21:02:00 -0400

I always love it when I’m able to sneak some type work into design projects. I’m very excited because I just placed a letterpress order for our thank you cards for the event and they are gonna look sick!

But you should come to this - we’re celebrating women in design and hearing from two designers (Ash Huang of Pinterest and Alexa of Foodspotting) and their origin stories in how they first got into design in the first place. I feel like each of us has a zany, random, crazy, cool, inspiring story especially as designers - there’s no “software design” or “tech comms design” major out there like there is for CS students, and so we often end up in this field in some interesting way. Whether as a college dropout who just loved art growing up or as a semi-jaded business student looking for an outlet, we all have such fascinating origins.

Request an invite here: https://www.dropbox.com/origins

We’re serving food and drinks in our beauuutiful cafe and it’s going to be totally rad. Sign-ups are already filling up so put down your invite information (and if you want, reach out to me at myfirstname[at]thecompanyiworkat.com :)).

NYC in March.

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 00:30:32 -0400

NYC in March.

art, man

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 21:25:11 -0400

I think I’d be pretty lost without art. This was a great weekend for art.

"the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams"

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:29:16 -0400

“the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams”

- eleanor roosevelt (thanks, lean in!)

I love this quote so much.

go.

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 03:03:40 -0400

there are choices of love and choices of fear.

make the choices of love.

I feel like I’ve reached a crazy point in my life where there are too few hours in the day to do everything that I really want to. It’s pretty weird - just a few months ago I was somewhat stagnated in school, unsure of how to improve but knowing that I had to somehow; now I feel like if I could just have a few extra hours to myself on my tablet everyday I could really grow in a cool direction with hand-drawn lettering, for example, and I know exactly what I would do.

This is pretty much how I felt when I interned at foursquare. Excited to wake up and go to work because I’m learning so much, every day. Right now when I’m sitting at home I feel as though my brain has literally been physically wrung out or something at all of the creative explorations that it’s been put through in the last 12 hours.

we toured pixar on Monday (yeah, full-day design offsite!) and it was pretty amazing. I love spending time around people who totally love what they’re doing. seems like the only people I’ve hung out with in the last couple weeks fall into that category - talented, obsessive, happy people who are madly in love with their fields of choice. it makes me happy in response. I love it.

till next time. GO GO GO GO GO :)

having one of those so super inspired by work nights today was a great art day. got unblocked on...

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 01:54:04 -0400

having one of those so super inspired by work nights

today was a great art day. got unblocked on something I’ve been creatively blocked on for about three weeks. can’t wait to share it with everyone (though it’s not anywhere near close to something I’d want to share out yet :))

Taking numbers

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 07:35:00 -0400

“Just find a freaking way around it. When I was starting out I would sometimes get beat out by other actresses and now when I look around - she’s gone! She’s quit! So it’s really all about… it’s all about -

You mean like endurance?

Yeah, endurance! Be the last woman standing. That’s what it’s all about. Take numbers, follow up, and be the last woman standing.”

Piper Perabo

—

There are only two types of hard choices. The choice of love, and the choice of fear. Always choose love.

This entire experience has been amazing. I can classify it into two parts: first, we’ve been made up a couple of times, this last time by L’Oreal makeup professionals (and accordingly, our sponsor’s products :)). All of that - hair, nails, makeup, eye and lip emphasis, etc. - is about your external beauty, right, but there was and is something so empowering about looking in the mirror and seeing a transformed, confident person. I’ve never felt so beautiful. We all have our insecurities, and often many of them are physical, so it was just so incredible to feel step in front of the camera this time (as opposed to being behind it) and be fully confident.

The second component is the more important one - I really believe that you are the company you keep, and spending time with these other girls and hearing from the most amazing people like Rachel Haot*, is spiritually invigorating. There is seriously no doubt in my mind that come failure and future successes, we’ll all be the last women standing in our respective fields, as Piper puts it. And when I get home, I’m going to frame my email from EIC Cindi Leive. :)

*Whose work has greatly influenced the NYC developer scene which I both appreciate as a designer and someone who used to work on the foursquare API

PTFO

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 00:13:49 -0400

It’s like 6 PM PST and I’m about to PTFO.

Amazing day. Been a great couple of weeks. Good work, great company. Feel like tons of inspiration has been heaped upon me everyday, stuff that motivates me to create!

More more more later.

<3!

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 01:42:13 -0400

<3!