A Holiday Postcard

This is my final project for Art 223, AKA Intro to Typography.

ASSIGNMENT: Create a layout for a holiday postrcard by interpreting a poem, song or short story with a holiday or winter theme. You may only use type to accomplish this. No illustrations or photographs allowed! If you must illustrate, use letterforms to do so.

REQUIREMENTS:
-Strong conceptual interpretation of a holiday/winter poem, song or short story
-You may only use TYPE to design the layout. No illustrations or photographs!
-Needs a headline/title, subhead and a text block.
-Must be accomplished using Adobe Illustrator.

SIZE AND FORMAT:
-Single-sided, 5" x 7" postcard size
-Final printed and mounted on a 8 1/2" x 11" black matte board.

COLOR:
-Full color (CMYK)
-Whatever best communicates the concept.

Welp, here is what I came up with:




Anyone who has a decent taste in music will agree that "Baby, It's Cold Outside" (originally written by Frank Leosser) is one of the best duets and Christmas/Winter season songs of all time. :)

My goal here was to keep the mood of this postcard simple and classic, just like the tone of the song, as well as clever, just like the song's concept. I've always thought this song was so simple but so fun to listen to and just really freakin' cute. It always puts me in a good mood. So, I wanted this design to be really clean and easy to understand but with a fun little twist.

I'll let you guys find the "twist" yourself (to my surprise, not everyone sees it right away while others see it the instant they take a glance). I'll give you a hint though: Everything the woman says in this duet is on the left and everything the man sings back to her is on the right.

Hope you like it! If not, well.... you know it doesn't matter TOO much to me. Especially because I'm pretty happy with this one! :)

Designing a piece for ASS.

Welp, it's been a different type of challenge for me this time as a graphic designer. Never before have I ever had to come up with an idea for anything remotely close to ASS. Yeah, that's right. ASS. As in A+ Survival Supply.

The first round/rough drafts of the logo designs:

You are NOT a professional designer... because there is no such thing.

While messing around on Twitter, I came across a new follower who listed "professional designer" in their bio, yet again. Seeing self-proclaimed "professional" graphic designers and such is definitely not a rare occurance. People in creative industries who call themselves "professional" just always strikes a chord with me. Honestly, it upsets me. I can't blame them though; It has nothing to do with the person or designer themselves compared to the design industry and those who run it.

It's about damn time they do something about the way designers refer to themselves. It's time someone comes up with some sort of system that adequately and officially sets the crappy, the average, the great and the superior designers apart from eachother. Sure, with research and a little time, we can make a decent guess at who's better than someone else skillwise. But the point is, we shouldn't have to and neither should potential clients when seeking a new designer to hire for a job.

It seems like every other major industry has taken care of this dillema already, some of them thousands of years ago! So why hasn't the design world?? Professional American baseball players usually start working their way up in elementary school, then play in high school, college, then the minor leagues (which, by the way are further broken down into rookie ball, single a, aa, aaa) then the major league. When we go to college, we work our way up to the top and earn our degrees along the way. First we get our associates, then our bachelors, then maybe our masters or even our doctorate, depending on the field you're in of course. Whatever you end up studying, wherever you end up working, or whatever you end up just doing in your life, there's always something to work up to. Another degree, another position, another personal best.

What's so great about that isn't just having something to work towards. Obtaining a certain degree or just being able to give ourselves some kind of label based on what we've accomplished gives the rest of the world an easy way to acknowledge our achievements! The point is, it's not hard to devise systems that rank people within a certain field of work, especially when doing so has extremely obvious benefits. And when they do come up with a ranking system, no matter the field, the exact same attributes are taken into consideration: how much experience, training and education, and how much success. That's really it! The best MLB players are almost always the ones with the most experience, training and success. Same with the best doctors, the best teachers, the best managers and the best designers.

Until AIGA or someone comes up with a way to validate a designer's skill level, I think designers and clients will each face a major problem:

Designers and their clients won't always be getting what they pay for. I'm willing to bet that every designer has under-estimated the price of a project before and I'm also willing to bet that lots of designers (especially those with years of solid experience) have over-charged clients before because they knew they could just whip out an old template to get the job done. Crappy, but true! Either way, if designers had titles which they earned and could have on display, so much of this would stop happening. If I earned the title of "advanced logo designer" for instance, I would charge a certain rate that was in an advanced designer's range and the client would be assured that he or she would get what they paid for. Simple as that.

Sorry if I come off sounding bitchy about this at all but I seriously think that having some kind of way to fairly and consistently measure a designer's success would help everyone drastically; It would help designers get paid what they've worked hard to deserve more often than they do now. And as for clients, not only would they be more likely to get what they pay for as well, but it would be easier for them to see the difference between an average and a truly professional designer if they learn to understand what it takes to reach a certain level in design.

No amount of genius can overcome a preoccupation with detail. -Marion Levy

I'm always up for a challenge. This, however, is a challenge unlike any other I've come across as a designer. Not saying I'm not up for it, because I definitely am!! But I'm not sure where to start exactly. :) The task: Design a logo for a new company called A+ Survival Supply. "What's so challenging about that?" you ask. Well, YOU try putting the letters of the company together and see what you can come up with. Bet you it'll take at least 10 minutes of valuable time spent wasting away on Twitter, or whatever other site or project you could be spending your precious time on (or should be anyway) to come up with a logo that doesn't scream "ASS!!!" to all who see it. LOL. And no, only playing around with type and using the full company name does not count.


Anyway, here's my first concept:


Before you pick out the details, just know that this is a VERY rough draft and I have a lot of smoothin out to do, obviously. Especially in the S's. Ok, now you may comment. :D

Long Beach State Hall of Fame Poster Design- Final Draft

There is no such thing as a boring project. There are only boring executions. -Irene Etzkorn

Val!

Not sure if I told you this or not already, but remember how you wrote out all of those letters for me so that I could use them as a model/my inspiration to create my own font? Yeah, well, our project guidelines turned out to be pretty lame and I wasn't able to use them. Instead, I had to find a stupid picture of something with shapes that inspired me, and create a font that absolutely no one will ever want to use. There are people in class who are going off of pictures of high heels, chairs with odd shapes, office supplies like a freakin stapler, or paperclips, scissors....... whatever. Everyone's font looks like a cartoon instead of a clean, nicely designed typeface. Anyway. That's what happened, and I'm sorry I couldn't use it.

I just finished up my first draft (FINALLY) and still have some major edits to make, but I just thought I'd show you what I've been working on. We had to lay out our font with 4 letters per line, then include the picture our font was inspired by along with what we've named it. Hope you like it sister!!

Long Beach State Hall of Fame Design

This is my second (and last) pro bono project for Long Beach State Athletics. The final design will be printed on a 40" by 40" poster and will be showcased in the LBSU Pryamid for all spectators to see. The Olympic Medalists poster will be one of probably 4 special edition posters that I get to design; The other 3 will be something like "All-Americans" and "National Champions". The special edition posters will be mixed in with other posters that have pictures the other Hall of Famers of each year- each year gets its own poster. So, they'll all make up the new Long Beach State Hall of Fame wall!

I only used 2 athletes' pictures and copied them a bunch to get a feel for what it would look like, but once I get the concept approved, I'll edit/enhance/crop/trim the other 30 athletes' pictures and put them in the mix!

Hope you guys like it.

Ryan's birthday present is almost done!!!

On his birthday, I gave him 2 blank canvases and told him I would paint him anything he wanted. Right away, he knew he wanted this to hang in his living room:





Well, only SEVEN months later...... i suck :(.......... here it is:














I'll probably add more vibrant colors to the closest riders, but other than that, I think it's totally done!!

I just really hope he thinks it was worth the wait. :) even though he shouldn't have had to wait so freakin long.

“Simplicity is the outward sign and symbol of depth of thought.” -Lin Yutang

The Final Monogram:

black and white version:


one to two color version:

"Whenever I hear, 'It can't be done,' I know I'm close to success." -Michael Flatley

biwerv on Twitter posted a link to a short blog post that I thought was GREAT and something that's been bothering me for quite a while as a graphic designer, especially recently. Please check it out if you have literally just 2 minutes to spare (don't kid yourself, you know you do!).

http://www.eightyonedesign.co.uk/blog/2008/09/why-does-everyone-think-they-are-a-graphic-designer/

“Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all.” -Sam Ewing

Typography Project #2

ASSIGNMENT: "Create a Monogram for yourself using your initials. A Monogram is a motif made by overlapping or combining two or more letters to form one symbol. Try to express something about yourself through the monogram logo.

REQUIREMENTS:
-Must use two or more letters interacting with one another to create a unique Monogram for yourself.
-Preliminary roughs will be done by hand using tracing paper and a black marker or black pencil.
-Final monogram will be created in Adobe Illustrator and printed out. 2 Printouts: Black and White version and a One to Two color version.

GOALS:
-To take what you learned about letterforms and their interactions and apply it to creating a successful mark; in our case, a personal Monogram.
-To continue to explore the interactions of positive and negative shapes and unique interations into using Adobe Illustrator.

Alright guys, let me know what you think of what I've got so far! And in case you don't know already, my initials are S.E.H. The only one that has all 3 letters is the one with the cursive font. Most likely, I won't be going with that one, but I love the flow and beauty of certain cursive fonts and had to try one out. My idea was to create that one so that it would be symmetrical- so if you flip it upside-down it still reads SEH. I like the concept, but not really into the elegant design if it's going to be a monogram for me, that's also supposed to express a little about who I am. And most of you know that elegance and flowery curves and what not aren't exactly my style.... :) So take a look and let me know which one you like best. I think I have my pick already though, but I'm definitely curious as to what you think!

click one to enlarge it:

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it. -Frank Zappa

At the first Women's Volleyball home game I went to this year (Thanks Ryan for letting me drag you out there!!, I caught up with Wayne, a really nice guy who's in charge of student-athlete development. I agreed to helping out LBSU and mostly, the athletic department by doing some promotional work for them, some projects paid and some pro bono. I figured, if they have an enormous audience and their mailing list alone reaches out to over 33,000 people, it definitely wouldn't hurt to keep my creative juices flowin' throughout the semester- if I have free time from school work and studying. And Wayne said I would always have the freedom to pass on a project if I was already busy.

So, the first project is done. I think. It's a handbill that will promote the upcoming basketball season for both the men's and women's teams. I had 2/3 of each side of the handbill to design as a coupon, designed by someone else, was to be attached on the bottom. I was given professional photos of the star players, which I simplified by cutting out all of the details of the gym and the court, leaving just their profiles and a clean, more dominant image of them as players. I've never really seen them play, but I think they look pretty dang good pictured like that. For side 2, athletics wanted to list as many of their home games as would fit, so I managed to get all of them on there. I hope people don't think it's too cluttered....

It was a busy week in the athletic offices and I haven't gotten the final FINAL approval, but here's what the end result will most likely be (or be a lot like):




This thing took me a LOT longer than I expected it to, like just about every other project I work on, but I'm pretty excited to see it printed and sent out to so many people. Ryan asked me if I thought doing this kind of work would really be worth it to me and I said definitely yes for a couple reasons. True, not many people ever take a thorough look at the design of something printed, and I'm willing to bet 99% of those people don't know what all it takes to design and develop something usually. I'm aware of this. But for me, an idea or a thought that's created is art in some form or another, and my art is my work. So as long as I'm working, I'm getting better at the thing I've happily let become my job. And most importantly for the business side of it, the longer I work at my job, the more I have to show for it-especially in my portfolio for anyone to see since it's on the web. So that's basically what it comes down to. Yeah, I truly hope more people show up for some basketball games this year because they felt inspired to by my designs. But what's more (and more selfish of me as a graphic designer, I realize), I hope that the people who see my work who also DO look at something and understand what all goes into it, ie other designers, marketing professionals, other digital or fine artists, recruiters, etc..... I hope they see a job well done. That's all it ever comes down to for me, really.

I hope for that now, but my goal is to become developed and skilled and talented enough to expect that from these types of people.

“You can do a good ad without good typography, but you can’t do a great ad without good typography.” -Herb Lubalin

I'd say about 80% of the people I've told I'm taking a typography class this Fall have asked me, "What's typography?" And when I tell them that in a nutshell, it's the study of lettering and how language is presented, they either give me a fake "Ohhh, I get it" or a "Hmmm..." even though they're still confused. It's kind of funny to me that that happens, but at the same time, it really makes me wish I could explain how beautiful typography can be and how essential it is to good design.

Well guys, here is a small collection of some of my favorite clips of typography in motion. The first of them explains what typography is, just a bit outside that nutshell. I hope that by watching them (or even 1) you get a better understanding of typography and what I'll be learning all about in a couple weeks when classes start up again! I'm really excited.









pulp fiction in typography (so of course.... WARNING: EXPLICIT CONTENT)


and a great site with some more static examples:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/05/12/sexy-bold-and-experimental-typography/

You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created. -Al Einstein

Good point, Al. I agree more and more with that each day I work and try to get better at what I'm doing now.

Today is the day my goal of finishing my website will be achieved!!!! At least to the point where it's completely functional and has no page left with "coming soon" anywhere on it, anyway. Here's the result of a design idea I distracted myself with a few weeks ago:

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. -Thomas Edison

Here's a really crappy verson of what I've been working on. Crappy because the quality just isn't good. I thought about enhancing it before posting here, but decided it's probably better that I don't for 2 reasons. The first being that I want it to look a million times better on my actual site anyway, so maybe this will give you guys something to look forward to... haha. and 2- I'm guessing there will be some issues with the file size on here if I make it any bigger than it already is. So, I hope you guys like it so far. There are just a few bugs I need to work out, but so far, I'm really happy with it!

"When you're young, the silliest notions seem the greatest achievements." -Pearl Bailey

Alright, here's what I've been up to this week!!

For Wah-Tah!:


-The header for the website I'm building for the whole company:

and the newest T-shirt design:

-The latest edition of shelf talkers for Scott Harvey Wines (the rest of the ones I've done in the past are at http://www.scottharveywines.com/html/trade.htm and they're all of the "hand made shelf talkers" and some of the others that aren't linked up as hand made. basically, all of their shelf talkers that have trader joe's style illustrations):

Annnnnnd my last thoughts for the day:

I think Pearl Bailey has a good point and I think she brings up another one that a lot of us overlook sometimes: It's never REQUIRED of us by anyone that we must be young to feel accomplished through something we might consider to be silly. It's only required by ourselves... by those of us who can't feel good about accomplishing something so small. I say, if you want to do such a thing, all you have to do is pick up a box of crayons, doodle around for a bit like you did when you were "young" and feel good about it. Because yeah, I just did all that for part of a job, but you know what? It felt good and I feel accomplished!!

I know that was pretty random, but you all know I'm a big believer in doing things that would prove such a quote totally wrong!! I'm glad I am too because I'm pretty sure it's stuff like that that keeps you young. Maybe that goes back to making her quote right actually...

Nothing will work unless you do. -Maya Angelou

Welp, I made it. I finished this semester. I can honestly say that it was probably my busiest AND most successful semester at Long Beach yet, and for a few reasons. The reason I say it was both of those is because it was the first time I accomplished more in the past few months than I have in my previous semesters. I'm sure that if a lot of other people who know me actually read this, especially my teammates, they would totally disagree. But here's why it's true: Before the semester began, I changed my plans (and probably some of Ryan's plans) and my life around for possibly the next 2 years so that I could do something this Spring that would be completely me, and just something that I've been wanting to do my whole life basically. I changed my major so I would finally be able to take some art classes, post-poned graduation by doing just that, figured out what my goals would be for these next 2 years so that I could pay for school and other crap since my scholarship ended, and totally had the best time (scholastically) doing 2 things that came from all of that: I came back to my artistic roots and I started my own graphic design business with a great client who I'll have a lasting job with! I know that to a lot of people, that might not be too big of a deal because to them, it's not the most difficult thing in the world (and they're right on this one) to just take some art classes and pay about $80 to start a business. Well listen up punks- it was for me so I'm proud about it! I'm not looking for a huge pat on the back for saying all of this, but I do want to sit back for a sec and be happy about all I've accomplished over the past 4 months because for one, this isn't something I do very much and all and 2, it took a lot of compromising to get there for me. I won't get into it any more than that because I think all the people who are close to me understand what I'm talking about already and if not, I'd rather talk to them instead of write about it here.

Basically, I have huge plans now for this summer now that I've got Huddy Design going.
-At the moment, I'm finishing up my first published website, http://www.hudsonshuffleboards.com/ for my brother. I launched it 2 days ago and have gotten some cool feedback already so that's good. There are a ton of small things I wan to fix and add to it, but for now, it's what Will Hudson, President of Hudson Shuffleboards, wanted.
-I'm also working on some more t-shirt designs for Wah-Tah!, an awesome company I've been working with since it started a few months ago. I've talked about it to a bunch of you guys, but I haven't told anyone really what exactly it is. I'll make a separate post right after this one that tells you all about it. If you have 2 minutes, take the time to read it all because although Wah-Tah! has somewhat of a cheesy presence to it, which is exactly what Seth (the guy who started it) wants it to be, he also wants it to become a hugely powerful and positive concept, which everyone including myself sees its potential in becoming just that. So read on, kids. "Tap the Power Within... Wah-Tah!"
-Scott Harvey Wines has some new wines coming out soon, and I'll be doing more shelftalkers for those throughout this week. I also worked on a new wine label that will be coming out soon for them... it's part of their superhero-themed collection of InZINerator wines, which is very tasty by the way. So I'm excited to see that come out. I hope it's a huge hit.
-Although each of these jobs have helped me build up my business a little more, the biggest plans I've made for this summer are to get my website finished and polished within about a month and a half. I could probably do it before then, but the thing is, I want to grow a really really strong understanding of Flash- one of the most sought after jobs in the design business right now. If I can become somewhat of a master of Flash and object oriented programming (OOP), i'll be golden! There's this huge graphic design convention called Siggraph that happens once a year, and a TON of great companies are there doing their own promotions, and demonstartions and most importantly for me, recruiting. If I can show up as an experienced and knowlegable Flash Designer, I garauntee I'll be hooked up with a sweet job in no time, especially since I'm a female. It sounds weird/sexist/ i don't care what it sounds like actually, because females working in graphic design tend to be totally valued these days since most people working in the fields are males. and females have a totally different perspective on, well, basically everything- on what the designs of the characters, settings, layouts, story lines, etc. in video games, in movies with special effects, in music videos, in websites.. females are totally sought after for those jobs because males obviously dominate it right now. I mean honestly- you don't go to see LOTR or Ironman or some gaming convention without feeling overwhelmed by the nerdiness of all the boys/grown men who think they're boys that day in their favorite superhero t-shirt or better yet their favorite characters costume!! I've totally gone off on a tangent.............

This summer, I'm making it all happen:
-Wah-Tah! will have a sweet website up and running with more t-shirt designs than customers will be able to handle when looking for their favorite style.
-Will's site will be done soon with all the details, so he can start selling a whole boat-load (haaa, literally though) of shuffleboards. then to celebrate, we'd dance and sing, "do the shuffle! do do do dodo do do do do.....do the shuffle!" (sorry, had to throw the corny line that's been in my head a lot lately while working on his site!)
*****-www.HuddyDesign.com finished and responsible for landing me my first big job- hopefully as an art director at a company in OC and not LA.

Last thought for the day- I realize more and more that the creative process, paired with the inevitable process of problem solving (and especially debugging, in terms of Flash and web design work), can literally make you go crazy sometimes.. but what is so important in what I've been doing and what I will do the rest of my career is the choice I make each time a client has a new idea or job for me, or each time I'm creating what I envision. All it really takes is the choice to finish what a client sees in their mind or what I've started instead of giving in to whatever it is that's making me crazy.. the program I'm using, the blank sheet of paper, my over-worked imagination... all of these things and more. That's really all it is- it's just making that choice, sometimes a lot more often than other times, to figure the crap out!! I know for a fact now, after only 1 semester of Intro to Computer Art and Foundation 2-dimensional, that making that one single choice is what categorized just about every single student into those who got an A and those who got a B and so on.

What's great about this realization is that it applies to basically any aspect of your life that you want to deal with honestly. If you want to make an honest assessment of your life and what you want to accomplish anytime in the future, all you have to do is ask yourself if it's worth it to you or not to choose getting through all the issues that will or have already come up within them. For me, I'll have to decide a bunch of times this summer during my training if it's worth it to me to fight off feeling out of shape or tired in order to win my next race. That's what I mean by being honest- it's taking the time out to realize you have a choice instead of playing it off like the choice has already been made for you.

This summer I plan on doing all of these things, finishing in the top of my division- whether it's in designing or in Triathlon and just in life in general- all while being honest throughout all the hours I'll be putting into each job or race. I should say job AND race, actually.