Yashvi Italiya's Blog

WELCOME BACK TO A NEW TOPIC RELATED TO OUR STATE OF MIND. TODAY’S TOPIC IS VERY INTERESTING. SO WITHOUT MAKING YOU WAIT MORE, LET US DIVE RIGHT INTO OUR MINDS. Have you ever got lost in the maze of thoughts?have you ever jumped from one important topic to other unnecessary thoughts?have you ever faced overthinking? […]

Have you been a home to anxiety for a long time and haven't came to terms with it? Worry no longer. I am here with a guide to make anxiety your friend. If not a best one, than at least a good one.

When we have a conflict with ourselves, we don't tend to leave ourselves, do we? We don't abandon ourselves. We do curse, but we don't break ties with ourselves. We try to solve it until we solve it. So why do this with our partner? Why create chaos out of something that requires a few moments of calmness? Fights happen. They always will. It depends on us whether we want to let it overpower our love for the other person or not.

As per my niche, I am trying to bring forward the everyday things that are said wrong or assumed wrong by people about mental illness. You must be thinking that these assumptions do not make a huge difference. But trust me, they do. If not to you, then to the victim, it does. When you say something about the disorder to the victim, you must think before speaking. They are already in bad condition, and your words can trigger some disturbing emotions in them. You will rescue from the situation in a while, but they will have to carry the burden for a reasonable amount of time.

Body shaming is so common because people have mistaken it for a fashion trend. Newsflash- body-shamers are going to be next in trend. Oops. There are a lot of people who still live in an illusion that telling someone about the change in their weight is an excellent way to greet people. Much to their dismay, it is not. When they comment on body size, all they are proving is that they care for your (physical) well-being. Caring for mental well-being? We don't do that here.

This is about how to be a helping hand to your depressed (actual, not assumed) friends or family in the right way. We all want to help them when we come to know about their well-being. But is that help beneficial for them? We need to help them systematically by considering what kind of help they need.

You may have come across a lot of people using the term 'depression' very often. Everyone uses this term in their sentences like they are talking about their pets. It is confused with temporary sadness or grief so frequently that the actual meaning of depression gets lost in the labyrinth.

Earlier this week, Michael Bierut, Sonia Williams, and I spent an hour on the phone together. Michael is an influential graphic designer based in New York, Sonia is a high school student in Paintsville, Kentucky, and I’m a designer at Automattic, living outside of Boston.

Sonia came prepared with a great set of questions. She prompted Michael to tell us about his career, and to take us through some of his favorite projects. We talked about designing this website. Michael described how he came to use a photo of the earth to represent home: he’d aimed to show the most universal representation of a home. We all live drastically different lives, in drastically different houses, but this gigantic, fragile planet is our shared home.

At the end of the call, Sonia went to her next class. I got to work on WordPress.com and Longreads, and Michael turned his attention to his work at Pentagram.

Michael, Sonia, and I are all different ages, at different stages of our careers, and in different parts of the country, but we took time out of our days to share stories and work together. Our conversations felt natural, and we learned a lot from each other. I was struck by just how powerful — yet seemingly normal — an experience this project was.

When I was Sonia’s age, I attended a fantastic high school: The Buffalo Academy of Visual and Performing Arts. I was an art major there, which meant that I had two periods of art every day, in addition to my normal coursework. I took extensive classes in painting, sculpture, pottery,  photography, art history, and more. I loved art, and I knew I wanted to involve it in my future somehow, but I didn’t know any specifics beyond that.

At some point during my senior year, one of our teachers arranged to have a graphic designer visit her classroom. He showed us an ad campaign for a local art museum that he’d worked on. It involved billboards, printed material, and a website. I remember being really interested in his presentation, and speaking to him for a few minutes afterwards. Until that point, I don’t think I had a great idea of what exactly graphic design was. I knew a bit about designing individual things — an ad in a magazine, a single website, etc. — but that was my first real exposure to the idea of (and challenges around) designing an identity that spans across many single applications.

A few months later, I took my art portfolio to a college portfolio review day in Syracuse, New York. I applied to a number of colleges, and ended up in Brooklyn, studying graphic design at Pratt Institute. In my design history class, we learned about Michael Bierut.

I’ve been working in the field for over a decade now. I’ve worked on branding, ad campaigns, websites, t-shirts, and more. I currently do all this while working from home. High school me didn’t know this sort of job existed until I met that graphic designer.

When John Maeda invited me to take part in this project, I thought back to the time I met that designer in high school, and recognized the impact it had on my future. Sharing what we do with the next generation is a key responsibility of all of us. Just as I’ve learned from Michael Bierut’s work throughout my career, it’s my hope that Sonia and her classmates come away from this experience with a better understanding of art and design themselves.

Thanks to John Maeda for organizing, thanks to Michael Bierut for your artwork, insight, and perspective, and thank you to Sonia for all the preparation and effort you put into this project.