GAUGE presents: John Coy

My classmates and I attended the "GAUGE presents:  John Coy" speaker event on May 12, 2011.  I wasn't sure what time the event was supposed to start because the syllabus stated 7:00 pm, while the Facebook event stated 7:30 pm.  I decided to go at 7 pm, just in case.  When I arrived at the music hall, there were only a handful of people waiting in the lobby.  The GAUGE president was there, and she told me that the event would start actually start at 7:30 pm.  With about 30 minutes to burn, I decided to head to Juice It Up to get a smoothie.  I had a coupon that expired that day, so what better way to spend that extra time than buying a yummy smoothie and getting a sweet discount on it?  It was about 7:15 by the time I headed back to the music hall with my 24 oz. Congo Lime smoothie, and the lobby was getting full.  Thinking the event would start at 7:30, I frantically drank my smoothie outside the music hall since we weren't allowed to bring food and drinks into the lobby.  It was so darn cold outside!  And genius me forgot to bring a jacket.  So there I was, standing outside the music hall in a short-sleeved shirt, trying to finish a smoothie as quickly as possible.  I was really surprised that I didn't end up getting brain freeze.  I did finish drinking my smoothie by 7:30, so after I threw it in the trash, I walked into the lobby, assuming that the event was about to start.  Unfortunately, this was not the case.  Due to "technical difficulties," the event did not start until 8:00 pm.  Man!  I should've drank my smoothie slower!  What a waste!  I didn't even get to enjoy it that much because I thought the event would start at 7:30 and I wouldn't be able to bring my smoothie into the music hall!  Okay enough about my smoothie dilemma - I'll move on to the actual event now...

There were still some technical difficulties once the event began, so Mr. Coy first took some questions from the audience.  After those technical difficulties were fixed (by none other than Professor Moss), Mr. Coy was able to show his slideshow to us during his presentation, which was a relief because I tend to pay better attention when pictures are involved.  Mr. Coy has quite an interesting background; he was the first president of AIGA LA, and he was the recipient of some kind of design award in 2010 (I didn't get down the name of it).  Mr. Coy has a rather impressive resume as well.  He has done projects for a wide variety of clients, including the Getty Museum, the UCLA College of Fine Arts, UCLA's Graduate School of Architecture, various Los Angeles festivals and concert halls, and South Coast Plaza.  Mr. Coy also designed the logo for Washington Mutual, which I thought was really cool because it's such a well-known logo.  I had no idea that Mr. Coy was the one who designed it.

Mr. Coy's advice for design students is "to keep tuning in to what feels good, what's really interesting for you to do."  Like Professor Moss told us at the beginning of the quarter, it's important for us to find a passion for something because we'll find it much easier to enjoy doing it.  Art is my passion, and I always find it exciting to work on assignments and projects for my art classes.  Mr. Coy also told us to "pour your heart and soul into your work, care about what you do and show it."  He told us that if we ever got into a so-called "designer funk," we should "get away from it and always come back."