beta testing: personal narrative v1.0b

24 August 2008 in anthropology, branding, identity politics, personal branding
Tags: beta testing, personal branding, personal narrative

I had a email exchange — a conversation if you will — with Valeria Maltoni of ConversationAgent recently. She commented that I had “an interesting story.” (I hope I have not  breached any form of trust by revealing that assessment.) This reminded me that I had started to write my personal narrative, but had only released a v0.1b and not gone back to edit it or add in parts that I had missed. Since I am job hunting in earnest now. It seems like a good idea to visit this topic again. After the jump, my personal and professional development as narrative. I think this kind of exercise is worthwhile as a way to create structure out of seemingly divergent paths and to hone my presentation in a competitive marketplace, a way to grasp my personal brand story. Your feelings?

 

Christopher Taylor Edwards: a story of storytelling

I am Christopher Edwards a self-taught graphic designer with training in interpretive exhibition design, video and performance, anthropology and  architecture history.

Childhood and education

I spent my childhood dreaming up alternate realties — made up families and friends, theories of time travel, giant planned cities of sand or Lego, and alternate personal timelines — while reading books on architecture history, studying drawing and buildings, and devouring mysteries and brain puzzles.

In college, I began by studying architecture and then switched to anthropology and architecture history. I attempted to create my own urban studies curriculum out of an anthropological view of western culture and the history of cities and buildings, supplemented with courses in urban sociology and government. Outside of the classroom, I was exploring alternative music cultures that were reclaiming disinvested urban spaces to establish communal cultures around music, design and personal expression.

Beginning in high school and continuing through the present day, I have been losing my hearing. This has created a slow and steady increase in my observational skills as I’ve observation has become an important tool for communication as well as occupying my time when hearing is most difficult. Recently, I’ve started to study American Sign Language a visual and spatial language that makes further use of these abilities.

At every step, I have been surrounded by books. I took my interest for the written word and developed an interest in the structure of graphic presentation and the printed word. I have been involved with journalism projects since I was a child when I wrote for the junior newspaper produced by the local library in my hometown. I have worked in journalism in high school and college as well as having a hand in the art direction for other printed collateral like posters and programs for school events. 

The beginnings of a career

I self-studied design and production for many years before I returned to school to study it full time. I was disappointed with the curriculum and found my true expression in time-based art and performance. I sought to map the body, the city and experience. I explored repetition, displacement and alternative narratives while highlighting HIV statistics, vacationing, sanitation engineering, the sketchbook and the individual. All my projects were interaction-based and as such were concerned with my relationship to an audience and, in many cases, how that audience interacted with me and each other.

Since finishing school, I’ve worked in publishing and graphic design, creating print pieces, web interfaces and storyboards for web animation. I have developed a wide range of freelance clients in publishing, print design and even, at one point, video editing, using the skills I developed as an undergrad: cutting on action, developing a narrative and visual rhythm.

A return to school

Not one to stay out of the classroom, in 2006, I returned to study interpretive exhibition design and planning. I developed a concept brief for an exhibition on the internment of Japanese-Americans. I was the designer on that project and co-collaborated with an enormously talented group of fellow students who took on roles as content developers, education planners and curators. I focused my efforts on creating an interactive story that would reach the target audience of middle schoolers. I co-developed a bubble plan and the concept brief, which I personally designed.

I concluded while studying exhibition design that design, architecture and storytelling intersect in ways that had always interested me but wasn’t apparent through my other studies. I have also recognized the influence of cultural theory and anthropology on my interest in the narrative of the built environment.

Environmental influence

In addition to my intellectual development, I’ve lived in a series of communities that have a strong sense of place — a 19th century Chicago suburb, an equally pedestrian oriented city in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the inimitable San Francisco Bay Area and the quickly gentrifying District of Columbia. My previous experience observing and contributing to small commercial districts as well as political activism and historic preservation have given me useful data from which to comment on the experience of the social being — man, human, people, you and me — in time and space.

The result: an intellectual and occupational focal point

My intellectual and personal background focuses on information and experience in storytelling in time and space, in other words, the intersection of design and culture in physical spaces. Occupationally, my personal story is represented in experience design, architecture, film and design anthropology.