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. . .