Everything started with a term that I had never heard: “Gap Year."
Jill Allemang decided to drive a blog called notabackpacker.com, with the aim to take a Gap Year 30 years late and without stopping work. She would develop activities that she still wanted to do and share them on the blog. For that, we needed a good plan, good organization and an image on the blog that explained this all.
* I realized the fun part had just started.
We needed an image that reflected the whole blog; so, during our conversations, the words became a draft and the draft became an image. I drew a clock because time was present in all of our discussions. I added “career,” “finance” and “age” as our key words because, as Jill said, these were the reasons to take a gap year now.
For me, everything in life has a reason. In this image, I created a reason for every small detail. I chose 6:45 – sunrise in Zürich during the winter. From this choice came new words on the clock arrows: “opportunity” and “decision.” I think that each sunrise means the opportunity of a new day, opportunity to do better, and the opportunity to make decisions about how to take opportunities, when and if it makes us happy.
We also talked about the idea of turning back time and added the backwards arrow in underscore because time doesn’t return, but the desire remains. From this same desire, we added an arrow in the opposite direction that represents the future.
As my Grandfather says, “stopping is dying.” I added the play button because, to live, we need to move, to feel, and to be humans – for that no pause button exists.
Combining technology and our minds to improve the Life Watch visual, we gained essential help from our designer, Elizabeth Hitchman, who embraced the project with the same passion as us. With small steps together, we created perfect harmony because, with Elizabeth, the Life Watch became our beautiful design, a real image with a purpose.
When I look at this image, I say to myself – I only have time to try, time to go forward and, most important, to be happy.
* Warmly invited as a guest blogger, Patricia Vila Nova brings high levels of creative energy to every project she engages in.