My 365 Project - Custom Designing Numbers Everyday for 365 Days, The Journey So Far.
My personal reason for starting a 365 project was for personal development and to build confidence within myself and my designs. I wanted to be able to manage my time and organise my life while juggling a number of projects ready for my final year of University. I always strived to be one of those career driven people who would be able to balance a number of projects and still have some sort of personal life. Another personal aim of mine was to develop my ability further, comparing and contrasting the numbers from the beginning and follow my challenging journey, developing new skills and experimenting with new techniques to the final 365 number. I also aimed to push myself into a project that from the offset I knew was going to be an enormous commitment and challenge but ultimately the reward would reflect my commitment to design and perseverance.
At the beginning of the 365 project I had many fears about the project due to my incredible fear of failure. What if I'm unable to complete the whole 365 days? Everyone will see my failure due to the posts being on social media. Am I really good enough just to put myself out there like that? What if every number isn't good enough? Normally I'm an incredibly positive person and generally I only see the positives in every situation, but I found myself making myself fail before I'd even started. Then I began thinking, will I ever get better with this attitude? Will I ever push myself out of my comfort zone? Will I ever get the confidence to post publicly about my designs? Will this hinder my confidence for the future? What could I gain? Ultimately, the positives outweighed the negatives and I just threw myself in at the deep end and just got on with it.
The social media number collection so far.
Some larger versions of the number that have been created on the journey
At number 252, further than I ever thought I'd get when I first began thinking of undertaking a 365 project, I've proven my fears wrong and just got on with what needed to be done, worrying about what people may think or if its good enough really won't resolve the situation at all. I was never going to improve with a negative, fearful attitude, the only thing stopping me was myself. Along the journey I feel my confidence has shot up, I'm now more comfortable using social media as a platform to show creativity and I'm now excited to share my number and express my opinion. I feel I've learnt the importance of balancing projects and setting a deadline each day has helped not only with organising everyday but thinking forward because failure is not an option. I've had the freedom to explore and experiments with different illustrative techniques, different drawing medias and software experiments.
So… just 113 days, 113 numbers 113 mini deadlines to go.. :)
