Dec
30th

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Dec
26th

Yesterday was Christmas Day and also TwentyFourCarat.net’s 6 year anniversary! I started this blog when I was in my senior year in high school— although I had another blog prior this this, from my freshman year till then, but unless you want to read about my whiny, annoying and rebellious teenage years that were worse than the first entries of this blog, let’s bury that forever.

TwentyFourCarat.net has been a record of all the good times in my last year of high school, graduating with all my girlfriends— the “Asian Girls”, as we were cliquishly named in high school (who are still my best friends), sleepless nights all throughout art school till my final portfolio show that landed my first and very exciting career-starting job a couple weeks later, my transition into a lazy to healthy lifestyle and everything in between. Six years later, so many things have changed and I’ve grown and learned so much in all aspects of my life— I feel like I’m at another significant milestone in my life because huge things are going to be happening in 2012 and I can’t wait! I will share it with you all when time is right.

2011 has been an intense whirlwind— an exciting, new high-profile project at work that we are just wrapping up and will be shipping in March, intense night schooling, re-learning how to “study,” miles and miles of training for the Ride to Conquer Cancer, so much intense fitness it wasn’t even funny, lots of freelance projects with new and old clients, months and months of sleepness nights (well 5am nights) and most recently: starting a new design partnership with one of my best and most talented friends:

Our website doesn’t have much up at the moment but we have so many ideas, just not enough time to do them all! We also have some pretty exciting projects and contracts lined up for the new year that we are just itching to start after all these holiday festivities. Everything, including our logo, website and first launch project were cooked up 3 weeks before launch, and we don’t think the polish level of the posters are up-to-par yet but on top of the everything we had to do and went through, I think it’s amazing. The last 3 weeks were the craziest, most intense and wanting-to-die-because-I-was-so-tired-everyday weeks of my life. I still have no idea how we did it but I would happily do it all over again with my Kimchi.

The new year is coming up and I still have a bunch of freelance projects I want to finish and still be able to live my life and do other fun things like snowboarding and girls’ nights, so I probably won’t be posting until 2012.

I know I haven’t been posting entries regularly like I use to and keep saying I will but I’m especially thankful to my group of loyal readers who are still reading, commenting and supporting me, no matter how sparse the entries… since the beginning. Some bloggers like to say they only blog for themselves but if I knew that no one reads my blog, I would not blog at all.

I wish you all a happy and healthy new year!!

I love you all. xoxo.

Dec
22nd

cut liquid calories.

Say no to:

• Pop
• Shakes & Smoothies
• Fruity Juices
• Alcohol

Okay in moderation:

• Black Coffee
• Tea
• Red Wine

Drink LOTS of:

• Water

Dec
20th

Senior Visual Designer at R/GA, Founder & Art Director of SkilledConcept LLC

Ray is an amazing and disciplined designer from New York whom I’ve been following on the blog scene since high school. I’ve watched him build his portfolio, blog and design all throughout design school and finally landing his first job after graduation. What’s amazing is that his work or art he has directed had been on our mood boards while we are conceptualizing the look and feel of a new product, since we both work on sports-related products. What a small world!

What motivates you?

My parents pretty much set the tone of how I live my life.  It was a simple philosophy in life to just work for whatever you want in life.

Mcdonald’s

When I was 14-15 and brave enough to ask a girl out for the first time, I asked my parents if I could borrow some money to take her out.  My dad told me if I was old enough to date I was old enough to work. Didn’t really know how to respond to that but I wasn’t even allowed to take the easy way to getting a job. He refused to drive me to the mall or anywhere pretty much. So decided to take that 20 minute walk to the closest Mcdonald’s and there I learned the meaning of a dollar. I worked there for 2-3 years at pretty much minimum wage which was $5.15/hr at the time. I worked after school and closed. I woke up at 5am every saturday to open. You would think I would hate my job but actually I didn’t. I took pride of my job even though I was just the guy flipping burgers I loved it and learned to be good at it. Soon I was training and giving directions and pretty much managing my own small team. FYI we were voted as one of the cleanest and fastest Mcdonald’s in the Tri-state area. But that first job pretty much put building block of my foundation. In the end that girl became my girlfriend and is still one of my closest friends.

Failure

In my junior year of high school I sat with my parents crying because my guidance counselor just told my mom that I’ll never make it in New York and that no college would accept me because I was pretty much a failure. If you need to ask the answer is I was just never a good test taker. I usually blanked out during test and that pretty much determined how smart you were. It was hard to hear that, especially from your guidance counselor. I tried my best and actually ended up recovering my grades a little bit and got accepted in a vocational school for the rest of my high school year. When high school was over I applied to Fashion Institute of Technology. It wasn’t enough, I got rejected. My guidance counselor warned me and suggested I go to community college instead. That rejection though sparked something in my mind. Reading that over and over and having my counselor’s words go through my mind, just made me feel low. I had to change it. From there I pushed my academics in community college to another level I ended up acing all my classes as well as pushed my designs. I applied again. Accepted… Not only accepted they reviewed my portfolio and said I would do better in accelerated classes because of level of my portfolio.

Talent

People seem to think I got to where I am with pure talent and luck.

He’s born talented He was just lucky he got the job there

I don’t believe in talent. I believe in passion. I believe people are talented because people enjoy what they’re doing. I believe the people that are passionate will put the extra work. I was never talented I just love what I do. As a designer I spend countless hours refining my skills and learning every aspect of design. I did personal projects, I learned programs, I learned hand skills, I wanted to learn everything. My curiosity drove me to learn, and my love of what I did pushed me to put the hours in.  That pushed me to build up to where I am. I leave you with a Will Smith’s Key to Success:

Key to Life #1 – Running: When you’re running and that voice in your head that starts saying to you, “slow down, your ankles are hurting” tries to get you to stop, that’s when you keep on running and breakthrough.When you learn to defeat that person inside that tries to get you to stop, you can defeat anything that stands in front of you. Anything that’s blocking your way toward your true purpose, destination and goal.

Key to Life #2 – Reading millions and billions of people that have lived before us have solved the same problems that you’re experiencing today. And they wrote down what they learned and discovered in books. Those books are available to all of us, to tap into and gain that accelerated knowledge and use it to our advantage.Any problem we may face – can be found in a book somewhere along with the solution to that problem.

Portfolio: SkilledConcept.com
Blog: RaySison.com
Dribble: skilledconcept
Twitter: @skilledconcept

Dec
18th

Love these girlies & secret santa & my new Magic Bullet! ♥