Axel Valdez
Design Engineer
Notes on stuff I'm thinking about. For short-form posts, visit the stream.
Apr 26, 2020
After six and a half weeks in lockdown, I’m not anxious anymore. I don’t crave going out, and video calls have replaced face-to-face meetings very well: they no longer feel fake. I don’t perceive the screen anymore, but the person on the other side.
Habits are changing. I can’t go out to the supermarket when I’m bored (yes, I do that, or used to, anyways) or call a friend to meet at the neighborhood bar, but I took on Animal Crossing New Horizons, and as a distraction it’s a lifesaver. I’m making more music, I’m drawing more, and I play with my kids a lot more than before the pandemic.
May 14, 2018
A tale of good intentions and either ingenuity or plain ignorance.
When we moved into the house where my family and I live, it occurred to me that it would be super cool and educational to have a solar system model in the ceiling of my kid’s room.
And it would be a lot cooler —I thought— if the distances between the planets’ orbits and their size were proportional to their real-life counterparts, the light bulb in the center of the ceiling being the sun. I got really excited.
With all the excitement still in me, I got in front of my computer to calculate said distances. That’s when it hit me: I knew nothing about the solar system size.
Oct 08, 2017
I constantly find myself looking for free PSD mockups to present work, usually for small things like stickers, mugs, or posters. Today I couldn’t find a decent one for a set of stickers, and instead of buying a premium one, I decided to scratch my own itch, make my own and share it with you.
Jun 27, 2017
Before photography was invented, people could only see that in front of their eyes. To experience the rest of the world, people had to physically travel, or, if they couldn’t afford it, to use other’s interpretation of remote places via narrative or painting.
That’s why the invention of photography was so huge for the human race. It removed a limit that most people didn’t even thought was there, and it opened the possibility of exploring the physical world beyond our reach.
Today we don’t believe anymore that everything important was already invented, but we have an attitude of cynicism to every new thing that comes along. In 2017 we even have cars that drive themselves, and we aren’t excited at all.
These are two (now) very basic inventions that occurred during my lifetime and changed me forever.