Logo #1: Humble beginnings

Since I’ve been cleaning up my room, I figured I should clean up my hard drives too. Most of my images and videos are now organised by month and year. It was an incredibly boring adult thing to do… yet oddly satisfying.

Through the rummage, I found abandoned essay drafts from university and working files from my internships… and chaos. Pure chaos. My files from back then were a mess. I came to the conclusion that my younger self must have enjoyed the present so much that he forgot about making things easier for his future (aka 2025 me). Like bro, c’mon, don’t make me use mum’s voice to tell you how this looks.

On God. I spent the weekend building a new file system with ChatGPT to locate my files more precisely because I couldn’t find one logo from 2018. ONE LOGO. But somewhere between the mental gymnastics, I felt like I had earned access to a buried history of my own creative pursuits.

Naturally, I went excavating, and I stopped blaming him. Because in those lost and forgotten layers, I realised why he hid his work in the first place. It was never laziness that got in the way, but a creeping self-doubt that made him shrink with every whisper:

”This isn’t good enough. It’s not how I imagined it,” is what the voices said.
”Why are other people’s work so much better?”
”I should just delete this.”

Putting myself in his headspace again, I get it. He was a student trying to find his shine in a world where the internet made everyone else’s creativity look like magic, except his. The distance he saw between who he was and what he wanted to become felt insurmountable. Goals seemed out of reach.

And yet, standing where I am now, and looking back – I’m proud of him. I wish I could time travel and tell him that the best thing he ever did for us was trying, failing, getting back up and doing it all over again.

Because that’s how we got here.

This was also when I realised that I’m beginning to embody the kind of person I needed to look up to when I was younger. For that reason, I’d like to share some of my past portfolio work below.

At some point, I hope to deep dive into it but for now, 3 key points:

1. Create your own work

One simple thing that gave me an edge in my early 20s was realising this:
You don’t need anyone’s permission to create.

Professional work isn’t the only type of proof of creativity.
It could come in the form of lyrics for a song, a montage of well-curated clips, or an arts and crafts project built with passion. In my case, it was creating digital art and finding special ways to present it on the side.

Creating your own work is a great way to express personality.
It’s how you make an impression to start conversations before credentials make an impact.

2. “You have to achieve failure”

I first heard this from Tom Platz (The Quadfather), a legendary bodybuilder in the ‘80s. He dropped this gritty piece of wisdom after making his student collapse from a brutal squat session. “You have to take it that far, nobody wants to go that far – because it’s too scary. But you wanna know something? That’s where winning is.”

It stuck with me, because I believe the same applies with creativity. Most people won’t see the extra hours, drafts or dead ends. And that’s fine, but what matters is knowing that you had taken it that far. That you tried your best regardless of the outcome.

Failure isn’t an ‘oh no, time to stop’.
It’s ‘congratulations, keep going’.
Also, it’s what you learn from it that counts.

3. You are not the voices in your head

It’s untrue. You’re not your worst critic.

Here’s the reality:
There’s always going to be someone out there who says terrible things about your work. But I’ve found that the mean voices in my head were an echo. They are a compilation of every insult or offhand comment your subconscious has ever absorbed. Our brains are like a sponge, specifically towards nasty things (it’s called negativity bias).

And if our mind is the sponge, thoughts are like water. You can release it, but sometimes, we hold onto it for longer than necessary. That’s when it starts to affect our peace and clouds our judgement.

Consider this:
If you were your best friend, would you ever speak to them that way?

Don’t be the reason for your own downfall.
Be the loudest voice for yourself, because someone will try to tear you down, sooner or later.
And it best not be you.