2014 — A year in review
As a younger designer, I loved putting an inspiring but somewhat funny tagline in the footer of my portfolio. The last one to stand (and it’s still there on my outdated portfolio) goes like this:
2008 is huge! Live the dream.
How interesting is it to look back and realize that dreaming big really does wonders. I’m once again in this magic moment. The year of 2014 was truly exceptional (for the lack of a better term). Let me try to put at least some of the things that happened in writing so I can look back and just smile away.
Five
The most influential thing that happened in 2014 was definitely joining Five. After running an agency for the past 5+ years, I’ve decided to help Five in their mission of building a stronger NYC presence. They do amazing work with talented people (almost a 100 of us!), and there is an clear-as-day place to grow. I’m proud in being on the forefront of this goal, alongside my new partners, and friends — Viktor & Luka.
Design First
Design First is a new Meetup group that I started in New York. Our first meetup was supported with speakers from companies like Huge, Zurb, Betaworks, InVision and academia like Parsons School of Design. 100+ attendees listened about #prototyping through different lenses and approaches to this steaming subject. Join us on the next one, I’d love to meet!
Talking and traveling
Conferences, workshops, talks, juries. I've visited numerous cities and some amazing conferences — SxSW / Austin, Interaction ‘14 / Amsterdam, Resonate / Belgrade, UX Scotland / Edinburgh, UX Camp Europe / Berlin, Croatian Design Biennale / Zagreb, UI19 / Boston + a bunch of meet-ups in New York (everything from IxDA NY to Harlem Tech conference). Looking forward in improving the attendee to speaker ratio in this year.
Taking part in these conferences (and many more things) would not have been possible without the help of my right hand, Mario. Thanks for steering the ship when I was unable to.
Writing
Writing was a long overdue task on my end. It was one of the few New Year’s resolutions I’ve made, but that I’ve also kept (writing once a month). Writing has proved such a powerful tool that the plan for this year is to push the monthly tempo to a more frequent one. Last year I’ve managed to understand the importance of writing as an essential skill and basically fell in love with it. This year I planning on improving the craft. Thanks to my only editor, Marko.
Two things I’ve realized regarding writing:
- I write one minute of reading material in circa one hour
- Leave enough time for writing. Cutting down the time for meticulous editing will have a huge effect on the article quality.
Medium is a focused platform that makes my articles, after a year, still look and read great. Thank you for that. I might move to a more personal context, but will definitely continue using Medium for a certain portion of posts.
Here are the public stats for my articles (purely reading numbers on Medium): Opens — Read ratio — Recommendations — Notes
- Foraging for Creativity: 1.1K / 40% / 15 / Turned into a talk
- Communication is Key: 267 / 62% / 13
- The South by User Experience: 852 / 41% / 11
- Designing design tools: 11K / 45% / 271 / A first success!
- The Hotel Room UX: 7.8K / 55% / 72 / An idea for a book was born
- Design is the Experience: 17K / 54% / 332 / Most shared article
- Smart First, Phones Later: 7.7K / 37% / 95 / Turned into a talk
- Be Right Back, See You in Five Minutes: 992 / 77% / 8
- The State of Croatian Interaction Design: 426 / 68% / 4
- Make your NYC commute easier with this trick: 838 / 68% / 4
- Traveling Backwards: 667 / 61% / 9
- Design checklist for IxD students: 2K / 62% / 38
IxDA
In November of 2013, I’ve met the IxDA European coordinator, Birgit (I happily call her my friend now) who motivated me into opening a local chapter in Croatia. IxDA is an abbreviation for Interaction Design Associations, a global network of more than 70,000 practicing professionals. We have chapters in most major cities, with the Zagreb chapter starting officially with the first event on Feb 25. There were five more meetups after that, and I’m happy to say that IxDA Croatia gathered Croatia’s brightest. Thank you to Vlado, who joined in as a Co-leader. The two of us have big plans for 2015.
SxSW
Visiting SxSW was on my bucket list for a while now. Retelling the story to designers and friends of a city that get’s invaded by a quarter of a million people. In just a week. The Interaction part is just a fraction. There is so much talks, workshop, panels, concerts, stars, sponsors, parties, houses and barbecue ribs — one does not know where to look. Definitely a life experience I would recommend to anyone. At least once.
Personal
Everything I do and have written here willy-nilly influences the lives of people around me, most notably my life partner, Matea. We’ve undergone an interesting year of changes, fun moments and unplanned separation time due to my travels.
I want to capture some of the emotion I had this year: I’m proud of her in winning the contest for the visual identity of the foundation Croatian House, exhibiting at the Istanbul Design Biennale, winning the Zagreb Youth salon for the best young author and I’ll never forget our experience in exhibiting Ljulja, a site-specific light installation.
Her set design made the Mrvica cover, a local but oh so relevant food lifestyle magazine. You should definitely check that out.
2015
First images of 2015. By the look of them, the sky is the limit — and that’s exactly how I feel at this moment in time. A lot of plans for this year are already set, and I invite you in sharing the experience.
2015 is huge! Live the dream.
This is also the year where I changed apartments, changed cities, attended a gospel, listened to Darkside, Future Islands, Chet Faker, Ben Frost, Devendra, spoke at GA, ate a pancake-cake in Central Park, visited Squarespace HQ, tried kite surfing, hiked and jogged a bit, met Milton Glaser, ate more sushi than ever before, juried a design exhibition with Armin Vit and Jan Boelen, climbed a stone wall, rebranded a company, shared tasting menus in Croatia’s top three restaurants, planted a garden, helped to create a new Design program, saw inspiring art exhibitions, designed for the Apple Watch, got a boat driving license, learned a few new tools…
This entry is part 12/12 of my New Year’s resolution project. Thank you for all of the support. Click here to read all entries or follow me on Twitter & Instagram (T is for work, I is for pleasure).
