Branding my processHugo Pilate

this book is a record of my efforts to brand my process as of now

qui in a series of words I started des-cribing what I thought my work, my aspirations and my values might be

moi the first part of the brainstorming involved fleshing out the ideas that just stuck on my mind trying to get rid of them, here is a summary of that first phase

pas for the second half, I went over the previous one and wrote down which words I felt I hadn’t (fully?) addressed and gave myself «a row» to explore each of them

toi refinement of the visual develop-ment through cross-pollination, or confronting and merging ideas

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hugo

hugo

hugo h

fluid, overlooked, observe, organic, progression

mais refinement of the visual develop-ment through cross-pollination, or confronting and merging ideas

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Unfolding, opening, mapping, unwrapping,

my work is what i choose to give, choose to see, choose to hear, choose to feel. It’s «this» world the one you (since you managed to land on this text) and I share. I have given up on trying to be impartial. I love to observe and pay attention to details many disregard. However that distorts my world. These details because a bigger part of my day. They stretch time and space in my head and take up more space than they night have been granted by the brain next door.

Today i learnt how to sew. Or at least made the most significant progress yet since i have entered that world. The assignment was to sew OVER an existing seam i had previously created. i was able to sow (almost perfectly would be a euphemism) well enough to land on the previous seam several times.

Each time i did it correctly i could tell because i could hear the slight scratching of the needle grazing the existing seam. That sound made me smile. I stopped and took a photo.

I smiled for a couple of reasons.

One, that sound validated my work.Two, the fact that i heard that sound was due to my concentration, the intimate relation i had built over the couple hours of sewing that day with, the fabric, the thread, the pedal under my foot, the stool i was sitting on, the foot of the machine, the machine, the buzzing of the machine, the stretchy

fabric i was working with, the yellow ochre of that fabric, with sewing in general, with fear of i felt until the last millisecond before i could hear that sound and the millisecond right after i heard it.Three, because when i finished, i looked up and described to a person sewing next to me the sound i just described to you and the laughed nodding.

That meant we had shared a common world and got far enough into it to appreciate something as subtle and meaningless for who i was five hours earlier.

However I don’t always have someone to follow or to follow me; and some times, when i can’t share that exci-tement with someone next to me, whether i’m alone or in a group i start talking, telling a delirious tale that deep down alludes to my feeling. I need to externalize things. Things that i see, that i hear, that i feel.

Many teachers have said i was trans-parent, that they could see from my posture and facial expression whether i was confident, content, proud, you pick, or if i thought my project was worthless.

Again i externalize things.

Is that being transparent though? or just very opaque? so much so that after a while i’ve gotten used to exag-gerating how i feel inside so i could

share the strength of what i feel with my surroundings?

For that reason i like to dig, but i dig in the direction i want for the reason (or lack of reason?) that i want.

I go back to when i was 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 (the LEGO streak came to a halt there). When i used to spend hours shuffling through pieces and bricks and heads as much to find the piece as to just hear the sound of the LEGOs crashing against each other, and their feel under my hand, thinking of all sorts of things. Auto-pilot. Howe-ver i always hoped to find someone to share this joy with, not building LEGOs, shuffling LEGOs, swimming LEGOs, singing LEGOs. But since there wasn’t anyone, i’d run out and «externalize» my excitement and the joy i had just experienced through my creation.

Storytelling. I almost always exter-nalized my thoughts feelings through stories. Yet i still haven’t found a way to fully implement or perhaps trans-late that excitement in my WORK. WORK being SCHOOL - WORK, my best creations are with friends, when those moments happen, when that joy decides to show itself in my gut because i heard the needle caress the thread.

When i dance, tell a story, or try to craft a story into an object or an expe-rience, i choose to externalize me.

moi

after writing about my work, my process became more clear but also required a revision of the first marks

I tried in this series of doodles to understand what facinated me about the triangle or at least the two converging lines that make an angle

mais

the other day on my moped (most of my thinking happens as I commute from one place to another on my valliant little moped) eights, sunglasses, bowties, infinity signs, eyes, triangles started building on top of each other, with each other, merging, transforming

here are some of the results, this form language grew from the «idea» fluid structures; fluidity became siliness and structure dicipline

disciplined-siliness

ai

first trial at explaining my intentions as a designer in one sentence

je

structure=grid?

le first draft of a possible outcome:

externalized disciplined silliness

it’s really surprising for me how I can just sit or «set up» for work and, two hours later feel as if I was waking up from a nap. I feel a little buzzed, a little happy, a little drunk?

I just came back from a few months of studying abroad which I may probably write about later once I feel more comfortable with this exercise.

And I remember how before every step out of my routine seemed a night-mare, a free ticket to doom-nity. Now things are just as scary but something is helping me walk forward. So I do. I accept challenges that come up here and there, life is a lot more exiting. I wish I could still share it like I used to with certain people but that’s another subject.

Often I have the feeling that doing things just for myself is not enough and useless, that I have to have at least a few people it will impact, inspire, amuse, and because of that I think I haven’t been genuinely fair to myself.

Until now I have strived on grati-fication, and being reassured by others rather than my own work and confidence which had left me very vulnerable. If anything what I brought back from France was a small dose of conviction, conviction that a few people who are not friends, nor family believed more than once that my work had something interesting to it. I realized people were willing to listen

without me having to wrestle for their attention. It is a matter of finding the right time and opportunity as always but it is possible. Since then I have gained a little more confidence in myself my intentions. Intentions is a very important word in my head in my work, many people, myself included are full of good intentions. Mine pre-cisely however have seldom been cor-rectly communicated (poor use of time or preparation) or have even the light of day. That urge I now feel inside to bite the world, to show, express «me» rather than what I thought I needed to show in order to obtain attention is very interesting.

droit

d’être in the end I decided not to choose a series of words but a prefix «in-» which to me seemed to be a large enough umbrella to encompass the various facets of my work

the mark would then be able to take the place of the prefix

[in] quire

of all the words, one stuck with me: incision

each time I brought it up there was a cringe on my interlocutor’s face: «Really Hugo? It sounds a bit cold, medical, unerving...»

yes it does. I like to think of my process as a probing one, based on trial and error which in itself is often uncomfortable, scary even, I wanted to reference it in my «branding»

moi

study of possible systems of marks which represent «my» process of externalization through disciplined siliness

moi

I got tired of «faking» the incision, though the visual idea led me to becoming aware of the notion of «incision», I decided to put it into action and play with various types of cuts and tesselations of cuts ente-ring, exiting, re-inventing the square

these cuts were beautiful and the lighting subtle. but how to replicate that?

pourquoi

the cuts are revealed by the angle of the shadows

I decided to create a series of squares that I cut in various ways and experimented with

the subtleties of the resulting shadows were so interesting that I decided to keep the photo and find a way to make it part of the mark so as to keep the detailing of the shadow. To me the shadow of the texture and of the cut became more important than having a system

pas

Qui? Moi, pas toi, mais moi.

Mais ai-je le droit d’être moi?

Pourquoi pas?

Who? Me, not you, but me.

But do I have the right to be me?

Why not?

This mark represents both what I value in my work and my work as a process.

«Indent the world» is about constantly offsetting the status quo to make room for new ideas, as to remain in a perpetual inertia of growth as individuals and communities.

I want to indent the world.

indent the world