Supporting Forrst

Recently I became a @Forrst supporter. To be honest, when I signed up in advanced for it I wasn’t even thinking about the awesome features that it came with. I wanted to support a community that had greatly helped me. I’ve been with Forrst since it started and I can remember Kyle sending out the invitations personally. It was really cool then and now it has gotten even better. Forrst has helped me with becoming a better designer, my career and job opportunities. Thinking back to a year ago, Forrst is what made me want to continue in design. When I became apart of the Forrst community it really changed my mindset. I felt comfortable posting work that may have not been great and I was getting constructive criticism back.

Generally I feel that if something or someone blesses me or helps me in any way, I want to give back. Considering how much Forrst has helped me, I feel that sacrificing a few coffees a year is worth it. Without all of these great design communities around on the internet, I feel that a lot of us would be jobless. Or, at least not have as many clients as we would like.

There are people in the design community that are like diamonds in the rough, if you find one, hold onto them!
(My little piece of design community advice).

I am not telling you to go and be a Forrst supporter. Nor am I saying that everyone should. People are lead to do different things within their lives and we all take certain paths. But, if Forrst has helped you personally, financially or career wise I would strongly encourage you to be a supporter.

These are just my simple reasons for joining and helping a community. But for me, I felt like it was the right thing to do.

What’s in your World?

If you follow me on Twitter, you will have seen a number of tweets about my ‘Imaginary World’. As much as it sounds crazy and it probably is, I have one, well several. But it’s more than just imaginary, I would rather say they are dreams of mine. Okay fine, I do have a world I see in my head that’s pretty awesome looking, but that’s not the point of this blog post. 

What I really want to focus on are your dreams. No, not the kind you have when you sleep, but dreams for your life. What you want to be, where  you want to go. Remember as a child you would play imaginary games with your friends and go places that you dreamed of going?  A child plays and makes up things so that his/her brain grows. Well, tell me why should that ever stop?

Someone without vision, without goals, without a dream, is living in a black and white world. There are walls to their world and only boundaries to set them back. Someone cannot grow if they are constantly set in a place of boundaries. That’s why having an imagination is so important, because it allows the imaginer to dream. 

“Dreams are just a distant reality.” 

You’re probably thinking: “Hillary, you are sounding crazy.” Maybe I do, but it’s far better to sound crazy than to have no passion and no dreams. 

Fact: People are more likely to accomplish their dreams when they write them down on a piece of paper.

Physically write them down, in your journal, anything and keep that paper. Then make a goal to check them off your list. I do this every year and as I get older my dreams may change and some I realized I have already accomplished. 

Dreaming and Design 
How does this all tie into design? Easy, you imagine something in your head before you see it. When you sketch, you first make it up in your mind the draw it out. Think of what would happen if you couldn’t imagine. Your creativity would be stagnate minimal in its purpose. 

Before you can learn to dream up a design, you have to first learn to dream in every aspect of your life. I think so many of us get stuck or unhappy in our lives is because we forgot to dream. Or something in our lives stunted our ability to believe in ourselves.  Trust me, I have been in some extremely tough waters in my life. I felt like I would never get out, but I held onto a hope and believed I would reach the Light. 

“Your dreams are at your fingertips, what will you do?”. 

My encouragement  to you today, is to dream in your life again. Make big dreams for designs and development projects. I wouldn’t be where I am today without the dreams I have dreamed in my life and the people that have encouraged me.  Dream big in your creative and personal life. You never know where dreams may take you and remember, people get old, they don’t grow up.  

So…