Benjamin Jancewicz – The Adventures of a Young Savage

April 24, 2009

Interviewed

I’ve been interviewed by WhoHub.com
Below is a transcript of the interview.
What is your specialty?
Graphic Design, Illustration and Photography

Where can we view your portfolio online?
http://www.zerflin.com

What made you interested in design?
I always drew as a kid, and design definitely grew from that.

What has been your professional career path?
I started out as an Art and Computers teacher, actually. After that, I moved to a print shop, then to a non-profit’s graphics team, and then to a full-blown agency.
I started my own company in 1999, though, and have been running it since then.

Have you received any awards for your work in the field of design?
Nope, but that hasn’t really been my goal.

What is your motivation? What makes you get up in the mornings?
To be honest, not design. I get up because I like living. I definitely get raw joy out of just experiencing new things. The design is a reflection of that, and sometimes a source of that joy… but not the main source.

How would you define your design style?
Eclectic. I like mixing styles from various timeperiods… and from various cultures to come up with something new.

How do you promote and move your work?
Mainly through word of mouth. My customers have been the greatest mouthpieces for my work; and a few particularly vocal clients have actually become part of my team and now get paid to bring in new clients.

In which new areas would you like to experiment?
I am constantly experimenting by trying to break rules and seeing what happens. When I was learning screenprinting, I asked my professor what things had never been done before, and then went and tried them out.
The results were pretty cool.

Shapes, color, concept: where do you usually begin when conceiving a design?
Concept. I draw. A lot. Drawing helps loosen me up, and calms me down from whatever stresses I might have.

What are your sources for documentation and to generate ideas?
Oh, all kinds of things. I have stacks of magazines and folder and folders of images on my hard drive of just pure inspiration. I tend to keep a larger mental library, though, so I usually just let things stew and come out of that. I only look at my inspiration files when I’ve got designer’s block.

Which festivals or awards in your field do you find most interesting?
Never been to any. Not particularly interested. Any ones with free food?

What is your favourite type of customer?
The ones who say “I trust you, you’re the professional. Do what you do best”.
I live for those customers.

To a certain point, is copying justifiable?
No, I don’t think it is. I hate the use of clip art. If you like a piece of clip art, just redraw it! It might take more time, but the result will be better. If the result is worse, you need more drawing practice.
…and you can practice using the clip art as reference.
When you use something as reference, you’re putting your own spin on it. If it’s not your spin that the client is paying for, what ARE they paying for?

List some things you dislike seeing in design.
Templates. Pre-made stuff that’s applied to everything. Pick a different font. Make UP a different font. Try a different layout. Take an overused layout and work to make it so different it’s brand new. But don’t take the default settings at face value.

Do you believe the newer generations are better at designing?
Absolutely. And they should. They have a bigger pool of design to draw inspiration from.

With which type of client would you decline in working for?
Anything that hurts other people.

How do you calculate budgets for a design project?
By the hour. I estimate how long it will take to create, and then charge by the hour.

Which professionals in your field -contemporary or past- do you most admire?
I don’t know of many. I admire the way my professor David Kasparek critiqued without making you feel personally offended.

Which software applications do you most utilize in your work?
Everything Adobe makes. Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, After Effects, and Flash.

Up to what point do your designs reflect your personality?
Completely. My designs are a direct result of my personality, and often the way I’m feeling at that time.

How do you distinguish passing fads from mainstays in new trends?
By the time you realize it’s a trend, it’s on it’s way out. It’s better not to focus on such things.

If you weren’t a designer, what would you be doing?
Probably drawing, animating, or playing the piano.

At this moment, what would be your dream job or project?
My dream job? Anything where I can combine what I love with what I’m paid for.

Can you see yourself in this field twenty years from now?
Absolutely. And I hope to be.

Which design resources online do you frequently visit?
StumbleUpon, Logopond, and Advertising Age.

April 23, 2009

Nya Visits Jaju

Over Christmas 2007, we got to journey up to Connecticut to visit home. My grandfather Edward Jancewicz (Jaju) had recently taken a fall, and was in a recovery center.

He hadn’t been in high spirits, but when Nya came to visit him, he lit right up. My favourite photo is when my dad was swinging Nya in front of Jaju; every time she got really close they both burst into laughter.

Babchi (Martha Jancewicz, my grandmother) seemed so proud to hold her!

April 1, 2009

How I furnished my basement

Click on the image, then give it a minute to load. It’s worth it.

I set my camera (a Canon 20D) to the Delay setting (you know, the one you use when you want to do a family photo with you in it), and placed it on a tripod.

Then, every time I walked by it, I hit the shutter.

I saved all the images, opened them as frames Adobe ImageReady, and exported it as a gif.

Pretty cool, huh?

January 8, 2009

Arion is here

1/6/9 11:30pm
Time has become a blur. We came in at 12:30am this morning when one of the membranes broke. The water was broken by the midwife at about noon.

They’re slowly decreasing the epidural. She had stayed off of it until about 8pm (about 15 hours!), when the pain became too much to bear. I’m so proud of her.

We both slept for a while after they gave her the epidural, and now I’m wide awake.
Arion is certainly taking his time, but we’re content not to rush him. His heart rate has been steady, a pulsing whoomp whoomp whoomp through the speakers of the monitoring machine.

Outside, a huge storm has raged for almost 24 hours… Rain pelting the window in whooshing gusts.
We’re all praying for you, little man.

1/7/9 6:45pm
Tamika and Arion are asleep, finally.

Shortly after I got done writing, Margaret, the midwife, called me over to help hold Tamika.
I have been extremely impressed with their practice. They have included me in every way possible during the pregnancy. There’s nothing worse than feeling completely helpless while the person whom you love the most in the world goes through the worst pain of her life.

Margaret purposefully used me in every way she could, moving Tamika around, calming her down, and helping keep things organized & plugged in.

I help hold Tamika and counted as she pushed. It was pretty rough. Arion wasn’t turning correctly. But finally, after a whole hour, his head appeared. The cord was wrapped around his neck!

Thankfully, Margaret had warned Tamika that she might tell her to stop pushing at certain points, and she did so now.
With a quick move, Margaret deftly unwrapped the cord, and in the same motion, easily slipped him out.
All this with him upside down, and without any tearing (which means no painful recovery for Tamika, which we had to go through with Nya).
And, all this after 24 hours of very very patient care.
Margaret never left us. She stayed the whole time, and never pushed Tamika in a direction that wasn’t helpful.
At 12:30am, January 7th, at 7lbs. 6oz., 20 inches long, Arion Joseph Iyutin Jancewicz was born.

He is bright eyed, like his sister, and incredibly calm and composed. He fusses only when he’s hungry, and is just relaxed the rest of the time.
I am so proud of Tamika. I am so happy with my family.

About his name.
Arion (pronounced like Orion, but with an A) is named both after the constellation and a Greek poet and musician who was captured by pirates and rescued by dolphins.
I’ve always liked Orion, Tamika loves dolphins, and we wanted his name to begin with the letter A after Tamika’s mom Angel. Nya shares my mom’s initial, Norma Jean.
Joseph comes from the Bible story. Almost all the men in my family (me, my father, my great grandfather) have the middle name Joseph, which stems from my great-great grandfather (Jozef Jancewicz).
Iyutin is a Naskapi name, which means Wind. It’s pronounced “E-you-tin”.

I’m off to bed. 🙂

Thanks for all your prayers…

December 27, 2008

Catskill Cottage Seed Interview

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I’ve been interviewed by the Catskill Cottage Seed. This is from their about page:

As our family micro-farms a small patch of Earth tucked away in the southwestern folds of the Catskill Mountains, we express our journey toward the undiscovered Self in word and image. While we have spent the majority of our adult lives in major cities and suburbia, our relocation to this rural community three years ago has had a tremendous impact on our creativity and quality of life.

Their blog is a multi-faceted exploration that is very enlightening to read. I stumbled across their site with my Naskapi Google Alert, and found an article about the Inner Man, or as the Naskapi call him, the Mista-peo. The author, who avidly studies Carl Jung, quoted a portion of Jung & Franz’s Man and His Symbols.
Having very nearly minored in philosophy (with an interest in counterculture movements) in college, I admired Jung’s work, but always took issue with his and other authors lack of depth when it came to the analysis of various tribes, including the Naskapi.

I responded to the post clarifying a few of Jung’s points. I was surprised to get an email from one of the blog’s authors, Richard Reeve. He was quite apologetic, and asked me if I would be willing to expand on my points and be interviewed by him. I found a level of respect rarely found on the internet, and consented to the interview.

You can read the whole interview here. I’d encourage you to check on their site. I’ve subscribed, and I’ve found their observations quite insightful.

May 16, 2008

Into the Wild

Just finished watching Into the Wild with Tamika and Talisha.

I don’t think I’ve ever more completely understood a character in a film more than I understood Christopher McCandless. The essence of the story is that he completely snaps all ties with society and adventures out on his own; ending up surviving off the land in an abandoned Alaskan transit bus.

The movie states that he’s essentially running from the violence, anger and abject materialism in his parents home.

And as I sat watching the movie; I couldn’t help but be struck with the thought that I could have been him.

If you know me well enough, you’d probably get the same feeling after watching the film.

Of course, I don’t know what Christopher was really like, or even if the film follows the non-fiction book written about him with any degree of similitude. But the film’s character…

Another thought I was stuck by was how grateful I am for my parents, and how they’re nothing like his parents. I truly couldn’t ask for a more supportive family; and the more people I meet in the States, the more I see how lucky I truly am. If it were not for them; I would probably be following Christopher’s fate.

I love you, Mom & Dad.

Has anyone else seen this movie? I’d love to hear what you thought.