Design Madison Talk

Thursday night I attended yet another Design Madison meeting with an excellent guest speaker.  This time we heard from Design Army-- a husband & wife design team from Washington D.C.  I found it more inspiring than any of the other speakers I've seen this year.  Perhaps it has something to do with my current job situation, but I was particularly inspired by their myriad of promotional materials. They said that when they first got started and had to go out and find clients they wanted to stand out, so they came up with several clever ways to promote themselves, like illustrated Tarot cards, screen-printed socks, accordion-style postcard packs, etc.  It got me thinking about how I can promote myself. . . maybe something besides the usual business card. Also, they talked about how they've branded themselves-- since the beginning, they've only used 3 colors (red, mint and brown) and one typeface for their self-promotion.  Their aesthetic is generally clean and modern, but they really focus on concepts.  This is especially apparent in their photographic projects, which all had a unique theme (like Willy Wonka or Alice in Wonderland).

Good News and Bad News

Well, today started of pretty rough.  We were supposed to catch a flight to Atlanta this morning, but due to the 3 inches of snow (!) they received, our flight was canceled. I still don't understand why they can't afford one or two snow plows at the largest airport in the country. Oh well, now we're flying out even earlier (5:30 am) tomorrow morning.

On the plus side, with my unexpected free time today, I was able to "finish" Josh's website.
It's obviously not totally finished-- I still have to create the Photos page and the Merch page, as well as adding an email sign-up function, but I figured it was done enough to upload.  Pretty exciting.  Of course, it will be a continual "work in progress" (Josh is already coming up with all kinds of "wish list" ideas).

Well, fingers crossed that we get out of town tomorrow. I need a vacation!

Today is the first day of the rest of my life. . .

Well, yesterday was interesting.  I woke up with a job and by 10:00 am, I was unemployed.  My boss kept assuring me it was an unfortunate "lay off", not a firing. . . Said that they just couldn't afford a graphic designer, that they need to focus less on the web site and more on the store.  I was genuinely shocked.  I know that the recession has hit everyone, especially retail businesses, but we were already running with a bare-bones staff.  I foolishly thought that I was indispensable. Oh well.  Once I got over the shock, and the feeling of rejection, a calm sort of relief set in.  Now I'm starting to realize that this is a good thing. I can finally focus on all of these little projects I've had to put on the back burner, Wanderlost, building my portfolio and trying to get freelance jobs, taking classes. . .Sure, money will be tight, but I'm so glad that I'm not a slave to the 9 to 5 anymore.

I got up way too early this morning. . .

So, what would cause me to drag myself out of bed at the crack of dawn (before dawn, actually), in a snowstorm, after going to a concert the night before and getting only 4 1/2 hours of sleep?  An AIGA meeting, of course!  One of my "New Year's Resolutions" (though I kind of hate that term) was to get more involved in the local design community. . .So I've been trying to go to every event that I hear about.  Apparently, every first Tuesday of the month, AIGA Wisconsin hosts an informal discussion at a local coffee house.  They start at 7:15, so that all the working schmucks (like me) can get to work by 9 am.  The topic today was logo design and brand identity.  The group was pretty small (I think the snow kept a lot of people away), but I was very glad I went.  Everyone else there worked for design firms, or did freelance jobs, except me.  Since I'm an "in-house" designer, working only for one brand, I had a unique perspective.

I enjoyed discussing the process that different people go through when designing a logo. We discussed the importance of interviewing the client thoroughly and trying to "get in their head."  Also, looking at the competition is very important.

We also spent a lot of time looking at "good" and "bad" logos. . .Something I admittedly haven't paid much attention to before. Like the new Tropicana logo, which received a lot of negative attention. Alternately, we all liked Melbourne, Australia's new logo, which uses this new trend of changeable logos.

Recently, a friend of mine asked me to design a logo for his new catering business, which is why I pushed myself to go to this meeting.  Also, I need to design a new logo for myself (before I get business cards printed, which needs to happen soon), and for Wanderlost.  hmm. . .a lot to think about.

I'm a blogging fool

Ok, I'm hooked on blogs.  I may even go so far as to say that I'm a blog-a-holic.  There I said it.  Mostly it's the cruising other people's blogs that I love.  I find one amazing blog with a beautiful layout, beautiful photos (that's what usually hooks me), interested stories. . . then I look at their list of favorite blogs, I select one, then another and pretty soon 2 hours have gone by.  This could become a problem, since I'm usually at work when I'm doing this, but I find them very inspiring.  My favorite kinds of blogs are about fashion, photography or art.  I've even created my own (secondary) blog. . .dedicated to vintage clothing.  I mentioned before that I collect vintage clothing and I've recently started selling it on Etsy, where I've been selling hand-made things off and on for a couple years.  So the new blog, Wanderlost Clothing, was created mainly to promote the Etsy shop.  I figured if I could get people following me, or get on the "favorite blogs" list of other similar bloggers, it would bring in extra traffic to my shop.  So far I have one follower.  And it's not even someone I know.  I'm a little nervous about sharing this blog because of the slightly embarrassing "modeling" shots of me (Hey, someone's got to show off the clothes!).  I also employed my boyfriend to model the men's clothing (and play fashion photographer occasionally).  Well, I hope it catches on. . .Here are some of my favorite blogs with similar subject matter:
Sally Jane Vintage
Jen Loves Kev
The Cherry Blossom Girl
Vintage is the New Black

A little bit about myself. . .

I am 27 years old. I grew up in Georgia, but moved to Madison 4 years ago. I work full-time as a graphic designer/ photographer for a clothing boutique called Twigs. Basically, I run their website-- www. shoptwigs.com. I feel like a phony sometimes because I only took 2 semesters of graphic design and one web design class, so sometimes I get lost when I have to dive into html or css. That is why I'm taking this class. Also, I have started a couple sites that I would like to finish. I live with my boyfriend, Josh. He's a very talented musician (I'm not just saying that, he really is. . . ). Here's his current website: www.joshharty.com. It's pretty lame. I started building him a new site months ago, then let it fall by the wayside. . . I vow to finish it before this class is over. I make things. Mainly screenprinted things, and jewelry. I also collect vintage clothing. In my intro web design class a year ago, I created this site: www.wanderlostclothing.com. It's also pretty lame. I vow to re-design it before this class is over. . .and I'm going to add vintage clothes to it. I also vow to create a portfolio site for myself. I'd like to start taking on freelance jobs (the paying kind), but I need a good looking site to display my work on. Hmm. . . this is going to be a busy couple months.

Website Re-design

So, I've decided on a website to re-design. . . Red Rose Vintage. It's a vintage store located in Indianapolis, and they also sell on-line. Since I am an avid collector of vintage clothing, and hope to someday create my own on-line vintage store, I thought this would be a great exercise. As you can see, this poor site is hopelessly ugly. A bit confusing too. A shame too, because they seem to have some nice stuff, but everything from the photography to the layout to the text is bad, bad, bad. In my research, I did come across a few "good" vintage sites (and lots of other almost-as-bad ones). Here they are:
Mod Cloth Vintage
Tangerine Boutique
Adore Vintage *This one's my favorite!

Response to "How Not to Display Your Artwork on the Web"

Whoaa. . . the writer of this article, Mr. Parker, seems to have a bit of a chip on his shoulder. I guess looking at enough badly-designed sites will do this to someone. I get where he's coming from. . .there are a lot of people (artists included) who do not really understand web design, and yet have web sites. But that's why people like Mr. Parker an I have jobs. . .

Design Madison Meeting

So, last night I attended the Design Madison meeting which included a talk given by Font Bureau Designer, Cyrus Highsmith. I was skeptical that an hour long discussion on type could be interesting, but knowing that type is a design weak-spot of mine, I hoped it would be educational. It was. I didn't exactly have an epiphany about how to use type better, but I did learn about the process of creating a typeface. . . something previously foreign to me. I found it especially interesting to hear how Cyrus does all of his drawing in black and white, and how when designing a type he concentrates on the white space more than the black.

Mental note: look up W.A. Dwiggins (artist), Lovecraft (novelist), Paul Klee's "The Thinking Eye", Ben Shahn.

Welcome to My Blog!

Well, here it is- my own little space to write whatever comes to my mind. . .
I think I'd like this blog to reflect who I am as a designer, but more importantly
I'd like to use it to explore aspects of the design world that I'm interested in. I'd
like to include posts about cool websites that I visit, design ideas that I have,
artists and designers that I admire, etc.
stay tuned. . .