Sitting in on the District 5 panel of creatives this afternoon, I picked up on a series of broad lessons provided by the panelists. Jim Darling (freelance designer and photographer), Philippa Hughes (founder of Pink Line Project), Sventlana Legetic (founder of Brightest Young Things), Valli Revindran (Creative Director, PBS and co-founder of DC Design Babes), and Jeff Wong (Creative Director at Clearspring and AddThis) all have fascinating careers, but their stories and the lessons we can draw from them are what really make them unique, and provide valuable lessons for aspiring creatives, designers, and entrepreneurs.

It’s Hard Work
All the panelists emphasized this one: this job isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s not an easy one, and you shouldn’t expect it to be. According to Philippa Hughes, she works longer hours now than she did working at a law firm, but its a different kind of work–her job now is a lot more fun. Svetlana Legetic talked about how Brightest Young Things grew out of nothing more than a generic blogspot blog (and it’s still up), but with some hard work, passion, and great connections, grew into the powerhouse DC blog that it is today. Speaking of connections, Jim Darling has used his to make freelancing a realistic endeavor, capitalizing on his connections for paying opportunities and more exposure.

Be Realistic
It’s a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling thinking that “you can do anything you put your mind to” and “nothing is more rewarding than expressing your creative passion,” but a certain dose of reality needs to be applied there, too. There’s no doubt everyone has plenty of creative potential, but finding the right balance between inspiration and reality is essential to making that sustainable. Every single one of the panelists hit on this point–you have to have a business, too, if you want to be a creative professional. Like it or not, money is a hard fact of life, and just “expressing your creative passion” won’t necessarily pay the bills.

If Something Scares You, Do It Anyway
That was the quote of the afternoon for me, spoken by Jim Darling. He hit the nail on the head, and each of the panelists agreed–breaking out of your comfort zone is the only way to really break out as a creative professional. Do those things that are scary. Go to those intimidating events. Thinking about skipping an early morning photo walk? Go to it anyway, sometimes those can be the most rewarding experiences. And well, breaking away from normal routine is kind of what DC Week is all about.

Well, sort of. I’m back, anyway.

As most of you know–if any of you are still reading this–I’ve been on a sort of unannounced hiatus since the end of March, largely due to school responsibilities and, well, lack of time. This isn’t to say that I’ve gotten less busy, necessarily, but I have resolved to make writing a bigger part of my life (again) and get back writing some regular material for my own personal blog, right here. I’ll be blogging elsewhere, as well, but I’ll post more on that soon.

You’ll notice that along with the new writing, as usual with me, comes a new design. I have no doubt I’ll be tweaking, modifying and possibly outright changing this template over the coming weeks, but for now I’m happy enough with it to kick this off and present it to the interwebs. By all means, please (please) give me feedback! I’d love to hear what complaints, issues, etc. you might have with it, particularly regarding design and usability. My goal was to place a lot of focus on the content (tada!) while still making archives, links, search, etc. very accessible. You’ll also notice all my links there in the sidebar, with their fancy social-network-color-appropriate hover and everything.

And another thing. You’ll notice I’ve built in Facebook’s new open graph API and Twitter’s @anywhere service into my blog now. This was partly an experiment just so I could learn the basics of the two new APIs, but partly because I’m excited to have them on here. So now, for example, you can hover over my Twitter handle, @alexpriest, and see a hovercard. In addition, you can “like” this post by clicking the button below (so please do!).

Anyway, that’s enough about bloggy-stuff, on to some real opinion/news/ranting soon enough. Mostly on social media and technology–with a little politics and personal life thrown in. Thanks for reading.

In case you haven’t noticed, my blog looks a little different. And this is how it’s staying (for real, this time). After much deliberation, fine-tuning, and experimenting with little bits of code I still don’t fully understand, I’ve managed to scrap together something that–I think–looks pretty decent.

My goal was for it to be simple and text-centric. I wanted lots of info, but I didn’t want it to be cluttered (like my previous iteration). I also wanted you to be able to go to my site, take one glance, and read the entirety of my latest post–there’s no need for excerpts or anything here, especially with low amount of readers I (generally) have. Of course, here’s hoping that number grows a bit!

You’ll notice the colors are simple and bright, the footer is niiiice and big (and there’s even a link to it at the top–“More Stuff”), and the about me is full and detailed. I’ve also posted links to my social media profiles on my “About Me” page, and you can see links to my Twitter and Flickr in the footer.

In the near future, I hope to spice up my header a bit with a new revamped personal logo. You may remember my logo from my previous blog, designed last summer. It’s on the right, if you need a refresher. I’m kind of sick of that one, and I want something a little simpler and a little more basic, still typographically focused, but focusing just on the fundamentals of my name “Alex Priest”, no initials, etc. I’m still brainstorming, but if you have any suggestions please let me know in the comments!