"Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each New Year find you a better man." – Benjamin Franklin
This new year we are resetting our selves and going back to one. With our group reflection the team and I agreed last year we kinda worked like a shot gun blast. We scattered and accepted projects coming from all different angles. Now this is good to be busy and keep staying working, but the downside of this way of working is that we are not picking and choosing the right projects to move us forward. We"re acting like a kid in a candy store and fascinated by it all. This video is attributed to us being constantly reminded about positioning us with the right projects. This year is CS mature year.
"We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day." ~ Edith Lovejoy Pierce
2011 has been such a successful year as far as brand awareness. Being able to work on awesome projects and grow together as a team is great.
We started the year off by re-crafting Creative Session as an industrial design lifestyle driven collective rather than a clothing company. Anh and I felt as if we have gotten too involved with apparel that we lost track of our fascination of product design and the website was going in a direction of a clothing company rather than an industrial design collective. In a sense I think we both have been grappling internally about the identity of Creative Session and what we want people to perceive us as. We both graduated as industrial designers and wanted to use Creative Session as a company that emphasizes on working with other designers to make cool projects. The results will be our SESSION- hence the Creative Session.
As the year progressed Keith, Anh and I worked on many different projects all the while bounced ideas off each other. The projects were anything from Album Covers, Music Videos, Graphics, Animations, Photography, Industrial Design to Logos and much more. At this point we realized the true creative session was between everyone in the CREW!! we've been having our own Creative Session this whole time.
2011 definitely brought us all together even more. We now work closely and the dynamics of the crew has become easier to define, we can work faster, more efficient and our roles have dictated when and where we're needed for any given project.
Anh and I do not stress about the types of projects we work on anymore but we're excited about the projects we all are able to make happen!
SPECIAL THANKS | they contributed to our growth big or small.Paul Vu, Siphavy Hem, , Steven Tran, Noel Andrade, Ryan Huy Nguyen
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We ended our year with the "Homeward Bound" Collection. The collection is about designing shirts that is iconic to the state we all have lived in. We threw a release party to sell sweaters and shirts we made. Here are photos from our photo booth.
Last year I spent some time painting koi's and whales tangled in oceanic waves the color of green grassy fields, the paintings now hang at home and have had many compliments throughout the year. I paint as a way to relax and in no way a pro at it. Brea had found this video and thought about me, thanks for sharing.
The amount of dedication, detail and time involved for this is overwhelmingly impressive!
Being an industrial designer I like to celebrate the products I buy by not covering it up with fancy protective cases.
At work I spend so much time articulating geometry in hopes of creating a sexy, pleasing, awesome design so why cover it up! With my Iphone I never got around to protecting the sucker cause I really like the thinness and the choices of material apple chose for the design.
A few months back I dropped my phone while exiting my car, most of us can relate to this cause I foolishly left my phone on my lap while driving, forgetting it was still on my lap as I left my car I was quickly found out the hard way why everyone's paranoid about protecting there phone. Luckily it made a tiny, tiny crack on the glass on the lower right side of my phone. Over time I guess the tiny crack gain momentum and shattered. This is the result... :(
Now that I have a reason for a replacement housing! I decided skip the white or black case since everyone have those! Lets play with something interesting. My initial thought was I really like the translucent iPhones that have been floating around the tech blogs.
Doing a bit more research the transparent case turned out to be quite fragile and easily comes apart. Doing more research I found china has iPhone housing in tons of colors. Chrome, matte even metallic you name it. I settled with RED. check it out.
Spent the evening over at Keith's studio AKA Baker Son's spot printing new and old Creative Session gear. Here are a few of sweaters and T's i'll be having with me in Portland when I come home for the holiday. Hit me up on facebook or like our fan page for updates on how you can get a hold of yours.
https://www.facebook.com/CREATIVEsession
I'm really excited to update everyone about his progress. He decided to start slow by producing embroidered t-shirts and sweaters. This will help him and his business partner Anh to start promoting brand identity in Portland. I'm excited for the future for these guys.
A Few months back I received a phone call from Drew Amado of Distinguished Anarchy based in Portland Oregon. Drew has been meaning to jump start a sophisticated gentlemen's brand in Portland Oregon, He feels there are no labels catering to strictly classy men and wanted to start a cut and sew brand up there. Being Portland born I love to connect with entrepreneurial creatives from Portland. We talked for about an hour exchanging ideas about his brand and ideas for logos. About 4 pages of doodles and sketches and a week later- A tough decision but we settled on this logo you see here:
For their four-track Audiobook EP, San Francisco’s Jealous Guys linked up exclusively with producer Jeremy “Zodiac” Rose (The Weeknd’s “What You Need”). Rose’s production keeps up the synth-gloomy Toronto sound of late, with some twists. Standout track “Walkin Around” opens with a long stretch of Billy Corgan covering the Otis Redding-penned Bee Gees song “To Love Somebody,” but halfway through flips into something like a future dance-aware Cannibal Ox beat. Jealous Guys’ Ayinde and BizYCasa sound smarter and more paranoid with every release and they shine across Audiobook. Both have a knack for turn-of-the-century underground rap tropes (god, aliens and urban decay), captured in cynical lines like, I walked down the alley, seen Virgin Mary pee/ Took the DNA, tried to make another we. Plus: rad cover art by Vanguard Bots, which modifies Bosch’s 15th century painting The Garden of Earthly Delights with floating pyramids, Adam and Eve turned black and Jesus decapitated.
As you know, CS crew members come from different regions in the United States. We're all proud of where we were born and raised and have tons of good things to say about our town. With that, we'd like to introduce to the world our "Homeward Bound" collection. First will be "OREGON"; this is where Anh and I were born and hope to be able to set up some sort of shop back in Portland, Oregon one day.
Check it out
The night before Thanksgiving was one to remember! Our talented buddies, A-1 and Davin Gruesome rocked a show at the Independent with K.Flay and Le Vice. We've been pretty consistent with attendance so this show was definitely out of the question! It's my first time shooting photos in the dark without flash, so excuse the quality! More diverse shots next time!
Check out his new mixtape, satisfaction guaranteed! :)
Sidestory:November marks the time of year we all start traveling for the holidays. Whether it's homeward bound or vacationing in exquisite locations, our final destinations are something we all look forward to. For Thanksgiving 2011, I had been anticipating a much needed break from the San Francisco grind and was looking forward to a bit of relaxation back home with family and friends in Portland, Oregon.I planned to do nothing... (could this be true..? obviously not)
I blame it on finding joy in working hard; is this insane? I'm not sure. It could be that I'm doing what I love, therefore loving what I'm doing.
I made time this Thanksgiving to connect and shoot a featured interview with long time friends; Marquis McNeil, Isaih Marcell, Olu Majekobaje, Tyler (Halfa) Monk, as well as two new dudes, Aaron Dickson and Timothy Greenidge, who makes up the company Mynority, based in Portland, Oregon.
This is the final interview video; be sure to read about them after the jump:
Featured Story:
Mynority is about Art, Music and Fashion - These guys are a prime example of principles we live by here at CS. We do not just like to talk about things; we become proactive and make shit happen - whether the results are good or bad, the journey brings plenty of lessons learned. Like Malcom Gladwell said, "To be a genius, you must put in 10,000 hours of practice," - theses guys are going to continue to grind, and in due time they're going to ahead of the crowd because they started something, while most are only talking about it.
Marquis of Mynority explained he started the brand back in college while being inspired by individuality. To design clothing he loved with like-minded folks. The brand is about art making and designing apparel that has an exclusive appeal; not one piece is similar to the other, because each piece is hand crafted individually.
While interviewing the whole team, I picked up on details that you usually don't get to see as an outsider looking in. Unfortunately, I had to keep the interviews short (only 3 minutes long), so I had to trim it a little to keep the interview video precise. Here are some quotes that I found to be rich and fruitful from the cast of Mynority;
"My personal fashion is very eclectic; I don't want to fall into one single genre so what I bring to Mynority is that same kind of confidence." - Olu Majekobaje
"As you know we say FAM alot. What's dope is we are a FAM. Our company entails fashion, art, and music- which spell out FAM" - Isaih marcell
"Mynority paints a lifestyle, with my music that's what I want to do, paint an image, make music that is driven by creativity" - Tyler Halfa Monk
"When I think about the start of Mynority man, I think about... Number 1: we are all FAM, we're all cool hanging out together, who else would you want to eat with....." - Tim Greenidge
Mynority is continuing to expand - One expansion is music, with Isaih and Tyler focusing on building a strong musical branch for Mynority member Tyler Monk, known by rap name Halfa . He has released a mixtape called Intermission, you can download it here:
Listen and download Intermission ASAP
Also check out the latest video by Halfa titled Who Knew
Our good friend up north Marquis McNeil and the whole MynORity crew have been silent but deadly. We knew were working hard at putting something amazing together and not sharing. The guys just published their latest creation, the "PDXrainforest" here a description :
Welcome to PDXRainforest! PDXRainforest is an online blogspot where creative minds come to cover the culture of Portland, OR. Through in-depth articles and innovative picture capturing, PDXrainforest covers everything from Art to fashion, music to lifestyle. Geared to the new renaissance of Portland “hipsters”, our blogspot gives an alternative way to look and capture the new lifestyle the beautiful “City of Roses” has created from its original roots....... read more here PDXRainforest
C.S has been following these guys progress for a long time and each and everytime they release/drop something. It makes you only want to work harder to reach their level of dedication. Keep it up guys.
So we haven't really put much effort into focusing on Creative Session swagger. Most of the apparel we make are purely small runs of free swag-give-aways to promote CS identity as artist & designers. If you've been following our design journey you'll notice we mainly put more effort into physical / feasible product designs being that we are Industrial designers. We feel it's time to put more attention into an apparel line.
With interest and demand of a few print pieces we've put out, we're setting up shop. Keith will now be wearing even more hats here at the CS lab. He'll be the main driver for all the apparel that's coming from us. Anh and I will improvise while still be mainly industrial designing.
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Last night we had team bonding and screen printing time. Decided take a break and refocused our attention away from our current projects and knocked out all these sweaters and long sleeve shirts. Winter is coming and I know most people would appreciate a comfortable lazy sweater.
Here are some photos from last night. We should be setting up a shop page soon.
All photos taken by our good friend Paul Vu : Check out his Blog and Website
So awhile back Keith one of CS's member branched out to look for a fashion design job. He wanted to leave a copy of his resume to the employer but not leave sheets of paper. We designed this thumb drive for him to save his portfolio and resume behind, this left a lasting impression to Gap Co. --
I been quite busy with life and regular work that I haven't had a chance to update the design. Here is the final and it's being shipped to Crown Molding tomorrow to be analyze for manufacturing. This is very exciting for us @ CS.
