friends and fashion

recently we have been talking in class about making your work relative to what you love, more than  just design what makes you tick, the thing that drives your life and makes what you create special and not something anyone else in the world can come up with. we have also discussed the simple pleasures in life and what is it that  i fall back on when i hit a creative block? i  usually find having a real deep conversation with the people in my life i respect so rewarding. i love investing in people and getting to that level of intimacy where you can just open up and talk about all the confusing stuff… not that i dont have it all figured out already i mean come on im almost 21years old! hello ive got it all together people… not really and on a totally different note i find the simple pleasure in putting on a perfect outfit for the day. i love being creative and controlling a little bit of how i portray myself to the world. i get the chance everyday to put together colors or patterns in a way most people who see me would never think to do, in a way i like to think im a little inspiration sometimes to the math people or business people on campus. woah that sounds a bit conceited but realy i love sharing the creative juices outward through my clothing. if you dont know what i mean just look here…

via the saritorialist

banners ya’ll

banners are a very prevalent thing here on the internet, i never really noticed them that much till we were assigned to go find some intersting ones… hehe yea a bit harder than you would imagine, i mean just go to any site and you will see flashy ugly crowded adds trying to get you to click, but i dont click ugly things… im a visual snob you see. here is a perfect example of a bad banner…

the images are just floating there is a glow around the text, it’s just super generic . my classmates and i decided that to make a good banner it needs to be clean and simple, not filled with blinking lights to get your attention. a good banner should clearly portray what you are trying to tempt the viewer to get to by clicking, but still have that something that makes it stand out from the rest. here are two i particularly liked the 3 similar images transitioned, which is an easy way to use movement to attract the eye.

im always attracted by abstract photography so this one really caught my eye, the contrast of the type could have been handled a bit better, but it gets my attention, is super simple and tells me exactly what it is about, both textually and visually through the image, it actually makes me say huh? so final thoughts on banners, they should not be exempt in the design world, they are just as important as any other design piece and should be delt with carefully, for such a small plane its important to treat it with care… got it, good now go make pretty stuff or i wont click it… i warned you

csss zennn garden!

there is this site called the csszengarden and basically what you do is take the html and make a super awesome origional css send it in and if it gets picked youre famous… well kinda in the design community, well a section of the design community… ok that sounds like a no big deal but it is. anywayyyyy ok so the origional plan was for us to design the website in photo shop and then write the css…. haaha no we definitly cant do that yet, but we will for sure next semester. so my origional ideas were between sequins and kittens, i know kittens wtf? i just really love cat videos right now, they are what get me through finals week. but i finished with the idea of sequins, from there i started to get really inspired by the freepeople magazine and web site and they have some totally rad cut and paste ish hand drawn with a splash of flowers feel. i was diggin it so i attempeted to make my zen garden like it. i really wanted to display my personal style through the design, kinda put an outfit together if you will. now that it is over im not a super huge fan of the final project, but at the same time i really want to work on it some more, its not that its awful its just that i want to push it farther. so her is a post of my work in progress…. watcha think ehh

please impose

For our final project in process and materials we each got assigned a printing term, and i got the glorious imposition! before you start to furrow your brow at this term i want you to know that this imposition is a great good wonderful thing. imposition is the way pages are layed out on a large piece of paper so when it gets cut and folded they are in order. kinda confusing but totally saves a headache on the printers end. so what was my imposition packet like you ask? well its green and brown and pink so there you can see it know cant you? ok well I really wanted to shine a playful light on one of the more boring parts of printing. I tried to make my t-shirt, poster, handout and keynote really feel like they are a part of the same family, same coloring same logo, but each delt with a little differently to show that they are all individual pieces. I really enjoy the way the typeface museo interacts with the illustrations of the books. I really wanted to play off the more commonly used definition of imposition, something negative and forced, and juxtapose it with the lesser know definiition of the page orientation. The presentation was a lot of fun for me to design. I really had fun playing with the different ways to give information, visually and with the written words. I think the key note is a very important part of really getting the message across, you really learn a lot about what imposition is. In the end I think I made my point clear, I made imposition something that I would invest in figuring out what it is all about.

paper plusssss

Our last and final field trip of this semester was to paper plus. Just a hop skip and jump down the road and vwala (or however you spell that magical sound), we are standing in the paper heaven. I mean rows and rows of the crisp sheets just waiting to be filled with ink and gloss and to be cut and pasted and bound and oh the possibilities ☺. Our tour guide for the day was Alex. He gave us the lowdown on what companies are super in right now, and I’m not going to name drop… but lets just say, if you’ve got some Neenah, or Domtar or Mohawk in your printer, you are on the right track. Alex talked a lot about the market right now and how its super important to really know your paper. Believe it or not the paper industry is pretty competitive so its smart to really see what options there are out there. Alex also stressed the idea of having a great relationship with your vendor, though it’s something we hear everyday its good to hear others say it too.

But back to the field trip. Paper plus is a chain store that has a really nice small business feel. You get all the perks of personal experience and the corporate benefits. Instead of jacking the prices to feed the kids, paper plus can offer great competitive prices. And they get new shipments every day from the Atlanta warehouse, so if something is out and it’s in stock, you get it the next day.

At the very end of the trip we all got to bombard their paper sample books and I think everyone came home with enough paper to feel that all our fingers got a little chapped… wait that was just me? Oh ok well each page was different and beautiful and some where soft and others were textured and each book just got me more and more excited to actually print something on a sheet that’s the brightest white that reflects wavelengths in a way that it stands out from every other plain ole white sheet. So enough on that tangent, paper plus is awesome Alex is awesome paper is awesome… yea being a graphic designer is just awesome. Thank you so much paper plus, trust me I will be back!

web in the wild logo completion

here it is the final logo for my website. for those who don t know im my web media class we are to design a site for a web conference called… WEB IN THE WILD!!! yaa woo hoo w’s are so fun to design a logo with… not they suck. but we all did the best we could. all in all im pretty ok with mine. i went for a natural feel, you know earthy chattanooga, seasons leaves… you getting the picture. well the web conference is going to be held in chattanooga so i tried to bring some tennessee in with my color scheme. the typeface is an altered version of jack fancy regular. i chose the word venture as my tag line because i wanted my design to express the idea of adventuring in the wild, but in a very exciting not a ohh lets not get lost in the wild of the web out there. i think the design will appeal to all the web and designers out there its pretty clean and simple. it works well in black and white and small scale which are definite musts for a logo. but what do you think? love it? hate it? i still wanna know

lately

my last project for type 2 was to design a logo and poster and postcard and splash page for a website of a museum of collections. this museum was to feature a collection of my own and since i have about 30 pair of sunglasses i chose them. im pretty happy with the final layout of everything, ive been pretty simplistic lately black and white and one color… magenta!

poster

postcard front and back

splash page

Last day with guest teachers :(

so as this blog title states, last thursday was our final guest teacher experience. it was a great day, we really just discussed all we learned the past few class and got to ask a bunch of questions about the professional life style. i was super inspired by this last class because it was really putting what we know in the perspective of the real world and i got a glimpse of how prepared i am/should be. emphasis on should… but i came out with some great nuggets of advise, wanna hear them? yes you do! ok great here goes…

personality counts when looking for a job

if you know front end developing you can get a job anywhere (this one scratches at my nyc nerve really badly)

maintaining good networks and relationships are really important

a quick response to any message or project shows you care, showing you care maintains a good relationship, and we just learned that …. relationships are really important

and my favorite running theme of this little section of classes… GIVE A SHIT

all of these seem really simple but so true, and i know leslie has told us this stuff a million times and is like duhh guys i say it everyday, but sometimes you need to hear it one more time to really sink in. so i hope to take all these new tips and try to be aware of them at all time, work on my online presence and be preparing myself for my real world in the design world, is it on the web? probably. print? probably. new york city? please oh please. final thought is that im not so scared of the web, these guys and girl (you go bekka) made the ins and outs of web approachable and really im excited! it’s gonna be a rough transition but im super stoked so lets rev up that web media engine and start a new phase in design

thank you thank you thank you great people at tubatomic and medium for coming in, im am soooo appreciative to the time yall spent with us, you really provided us with some great insight we would never get on our own. now there werent tears shed but i know everyone had such a great experience with the guest teachers and their homework assignments that we were very sad to watch them walk out the fac. please walk back in soon!

Williams Visual Solutions

After a great adventure into the behind the scenes of web design, the class all got to go on a tour of Williams visual solutions. It’s a printing company right off the highway and It’s big. What started out as small business in one building, has expanded to five or six big buildings. Our tour guide bubba has been around the printing business his whole life. The company was actually started by his great grandfather. It was really awesome to see and hear how a family business has grown from just a small layout and printing shop, to a full service, one stop for all your printing needs, any paper, and size, and mailing, labeling, designing, packaging, printing… well you get the picture Williams visual solutions does it all! With all this work to be done, its crazy to believe that they are just down the street. After our very informative tour we were whisked away to a lovely lunch followed by a power point and discussion. We talked about where Williams visual solutions is going and how important it is to utilize all the avenues of marketing there is available, which right now is the web. Seeing and hearing a real print company stress the importance the web is furthered my excitement to figure out where I want to put myself in regards to my future! It was a fun and inspiring tour, we really got to see how print and web can work and function in harmony. Print doesn’t have to move over for the web, i just need to figure out how to manipulate them to where whatever output I come up with will be stronger because of the unique integration and opportunities this provides. Thanks so much to Williams Visual Solutions, you inspired me and fed me I can ask for nothing more!

html css learning learning learning

Our third day with guest teachers was definitely one of my favorites. We talked about back and front-end engineering. Oh you know it’s no big deal just the complexxxxxx coding behind making a web site. The whole idea of html and css is a bit overwhelming to me but totally intriguing. I never really thought of myself as a coder but, these past few weeks I have been thinking about the future of web and looking at a bunch of websites that I love and how I could make some improvements. Fashion magazine websites for example are super complex and busy and there is just too much going on. Also I love where a lot of fashion designer sites are going, a lot of integration of video fashion and design. I could totally get on that train! But back to the point of this post, which is web media and our guest teachers, yes that’s it! We got to really get hands on in this class and we played with some coding and personalizing a simple web site, just to see how things worked. I like the idea of having one piece (a website) and being able to change it anytime, and if you mess up, its no big deal. But, along with the ultimate freedom, comes the ultimate possibility to mess up. It seems to be a real challenge to be able to utilize all the web has to offer in a very elegant way.  We only have one guest teacher session left and im really excited to jump into the rest of the web media class. Though it may not be the end all be all of what my future holds, it has a definite possibility of a major career path.