Aaron Johnson
Aaron Johnson is good friend I know from New York. I met him on a long time ago, when he made a comment on a photo I took, and I subsequently discovered his oh-so-funny Flickr stream.
The thing about Aaron’s posts is that they are special — his photos come with exceptionally good writing. Writing that I find myself yelling at the screen with “what?!” and “Can you really say that?!” all the time. I loved his image-text pairing so much that he became one of the very first people that I decided to meet up with in person.
Most people use social media as a way to extend or continue friendships with people that they know in real life. I have always used social media as a means to discover interesting people, and to eventually meet them in person.
Writers are often the best friends for designers. They see the world with a similarly creative mind, are observant, and often have interesting things to say. While designers express ideas visually, writer express ideas with words.
We’re basically philosophically similar — we both observe and get inspired by the world around us, but since we’re not doing the same type of output, we serve as each other’s inspirations, instead of being at odds with each other, which could happen for two designers — when you do something similar, you could be the best of friends or the worst enemies.
If you’re a designer, you’d know what I mean. It’s a bit hard to explain this interesting dynamic between a designer and a copywriter until you meet that match that feels just right.
I have had many wonderful memories in New York. If you look at the photos we took together, you’d know that he’s just as crazy as I am — potentially more so. He’s destined to become an instant BFF. My only regret is that I have never been very good at expressing my feelings, and I don’t think that I have ever told him how much he had meant to me.
Now it’s unlikely that we would ever see each other again. I don’t have any plans to visit New York for a while, and it’s unlikely that he will be visiting Hong Kong at any time. I do hope that one day we will be able to hang out again.
