New Orleans

I spent the weekend in New Orleans, which was incredibly fabulous for many reasons. In addition to it being a fun town, it also has some of the most amazing architecture and atmosphere. When you see people trying to make “shabby-chic” look cool, NOLA is their muse, and frankly, is the only place that can get away with it and look authentic. The colors are vibrant, all the textures are perfectly weathered, and the wrought iron is delicate and intricate. It is genuine, rich, and chock full of its own history.

Father Daughter Dance Invite

"Under the Sea" Invitation

For the 3rd year now, I have been asked to create the invitation to the Los Gatos High School Father Daughter Dance. Every year they have a different theme and I have a lot of fun making a little graphic for them. The info is basically the same each time, so it’s just a matter of changing the layout and making new graphics for the themes.

This year was “under the sea” so I did a little mermaid and some lil’ sea creatures dressed in bow ties.

Baby Room Mural

I had the pleasure of helping a dear friend by painting a little mural in her new baby’s room. I’ve been known to do a few murals here and there, and always love the chance to paint on walls (I feel like such a rebel!).

She is totally loving the owl trend that’s picking up steam, and so she sent me a couple samples of things she’d found online that she liked, and we went with a little tree with colorful leaves and 3 owls. Her favorite is the sleepy owl, which she immediately named Harry. The rest she’ll leave up to her kid to name when they’re old enough.

Lots of fun, and totally love that I can help my friends out with such fun projects.

Notation Napkins

I love and hate these.

I don’t go to museums nearly as often as I used to, so it’s not as often that my mind goes through the “art review” tumble. You know, that feeling like you appreciate something, but you also hate it, but want to understand it, but think it’s terribly low, all at the same time.

So, I went to see the Tim Burton exhibit down at LA County Museum of Art (which was pretty sweet), and as I was finishing the exhibit, naturally I was poured into the gift shop. That’s where I found these beauties. In the wise words of someone who recently said them, “I lost 5 minutes of my life thinking about them.” They’re just another kitschy, fun, silly trinket, that someone who either “gets” you, or can’t find anything else under $5, would get you. And I totally adore the idea that you would take something as mundane as the ubiquitous napkin, notorious for being the medium for genius, and “bind” them into a completely useless conversation piece that will get you to laugh for a minute, but in the end, just blow your nose with it.

So why did I get so stuck on them? Why is it boggling my mind still? It’s as if there’s a struggle inside that wants to hate the pop-up commercialism that they completely embody, while simultaneously adoring the complete mockery of it; as if the existence of these keenly bound cocktail napkins are making fun of their own existence. It’s almost so genius, I wish I had thought of it myself, yet if I ever *actually* acted on the idea, I would hate myself eternally. I mean, who would have the gaul to actually bind 3 napkins together, package them like they’re useful, and make some kind of presumption that these napkins are special, maybe special enough to presume that whatever you scribe upon them will be genius?  Or to assume that this packet would be so worth carrying around with you, it could in fact replace paper in that moment of genius? But that’s it- they know you won’t be using it for its intended purpose. It is pure kitsch.

It’s one of the freshest pieces of art I’ve seen in a while; something that got me seriously riled up. The obvious lesson that I’m taking from this is that art is everywhere, not just on the walls in the museum.

Around San Francisco

Last Friday I had the privilege of going on a fun bakery crawl sponsored by Scharffen Berger chocolates. I wrote all about it here on my baking blog, but while I was at it, I couldn’t help but enjoy the perfect October afternoon and evening San Fran was having, and took a few pictures of the places we went along the way.

Not sure I’m equipped for some of the night shots I took, but the colors were still pretty fabulous.

ifAnyone Landing Page

I recently worked on a project for an entrepreneur who has a few apps out there, but the most recent one is called ifAnyone. It’s a Facebook app that you can program to search through your news feed for keywords you find relevant, so that in case your stream is too much to keep up with, you won’t miss anything that you might actually be interested in. It’s a clever way to sort through the onslaught of Facebook data out there.

My charge was to help him set up a landing page that would quickly describe the program and link directly to the in-Facebook app. He asked for “friendly and professional” and after a few ideas back and forth, the final result ended up having bright cartoon elements, both with little Facebook cartoon avatars and the star blast background, while still holding up a straight-forward, easy to read layout. I had fun creating the little characters (always nice to get in a little illustration where you can). I also had fun with the mock names, which I was glad my client was on board to play around with.

I also made business cards utilizing most of the graphic elements of the landing page for a cohesive branding.

Agency + Landing Page

I recently completed a project that was an animated landing page that I made using Hype. If I haven’t mentioned this program (cough, ahem, I mean App) before, now is as good a time as any. A good friend of mine designed this software to make creating HTML 5 content designer friendly. Sure, not many designers can go into the world nowadays without knowing a little code, but Hype helps not only level the playing field, but also lets designers do what they do best: Design (not code).

So HTML 5 is another medium for animating web pages in the vein of Flash, but utilizing different technologies and using inherent browser capabilities, not plug-ins to function. Yeah, I’m definitely on the band wagon for this new era of rich web content using HTML 5. It’s an exciting time to be experimenting with new technologies and tools.

So saying, I worked as a contractor for another agency (in Belgium, btw; love how small the world is these days) to create this landing page. They were hoping to use a lot of effects, probably to help show off the capabilities of HTML 5, while still maintaining as much cross browser compatibility as possible. Initial designs also utilized google web fonts, which I thought was cool we could do using Hype, but in the end, switched back to a standard web safe font, as it opened up a few more animation options. The techniques I used are opacity changes, movement along paths, rotations, and letter spacing and size changes.

Wedding Reception Invitation

My brother recently got married, but in a small ceremony in Upstate New York, so most of our California family was not able to attend. So saying, my aunt wanted to host a special dinner for the family to celebrate the happy occasion, and I offered to make the invitations. I was also happy to make their wedding webpage (just a quick splash page).

Their colors were blue and brown, and although I know they aren’t interested in things that are too decadent, I thought a nice formal invite would do well for the get together. Besides, it gives me a chance to play.

I had these lovely brown envelopes that had some bronze pearlescent qualities, and used some cream colored card stock for the cards, with a blue paper insert. I also got this sweet paper punch that was perfect for the “you are invited” part on the front of the card. For the floral pattern I scanned a special scrap booking paper that had a design I liked and traced the pattern in Illustrator and filled it in with a nice dark brown color instead of the black it came in (many thanks to my friend Heather for the scrap book paper scan technique she taught me).

I have been really into the new trend of badges, banners and ribbons, so wanted to incorporate it somehow. Therefore, I had the return and address labels wrap around the envelopes. I included a little piece of the floral pattern on those elements to tie it all together.

I also included a vellum map with parking instructions for the restaurant, and a sepia toned image from the wedding day itself.

Definitely enjoyed doing a little print work, as I’ve been spending a lot of time on web graphics lately.

Companies I like

I enjoy living in Silicon Valley for many reasons. Variety of places to eat is pretty high on the list, weather a close second, but both are quickly followed by the social climate of the area. You don’t have to look far to find an entrepreneur or tech geek. Even the business people are interested in the new companies that pop up (even if only for their IPO values). I love being in the know about what people are working on, and what is coming next. I love what technology can do, and while I keep a fair amount of skepticism in my pocket about how far is too far (sci-fi offers a lovely insight into some opinions on this matter) , I really revel in the potential that some tech offers to make this world “a better place.”

There are specifically 3 companies I’d like to call out for their efforts to make things “better,” which in my opinion, includes making things more accessible, which I feel these 3 have in common.

Inkling

Inking creates rich, interactive textbooks for the iPad. Going above and beyond just digitizing standard printed books, these buckets of knowledge are filled with links, references, animations, videos, interactive diagrams, and so much more engaging material than any poor defenseless hardbound paper version could ever hope to offer. It’s so exciting that it makes me want to go back to school just to play around with their software (not that I can’t play around with it on my own, but there’s nothing quite so informative as having to use something in the context it is designed for). The benefits seem so outstanding to make so much material accessible, all in a neat 1.33 lb package (goodbye backpacks). Of course, one could argue that this kind of technology caters to and exacerbates information overload and encourages easily distracted minds (I heard a really cool interview about this topic on NPR last night that kind of dug into that topic). I am optimistic, though, that our brains can adapt to these new inputs and will be better off for having access and the opportunities to gather all the new info.

Square

Square is a company that allows any one with a smart phone to accept credit cards. In this ever increasingly cashless community, it is a welcome opportunity for individuals and small businesses to accept payments. It is a free app, with a free accessory, that charges 2.75% on all transactions, but no additional per transaction fee. For a small business, this makes it incredibly accessible to take credit cards where otherwise the fees of renting credit card terminals and paying monthly maintenance fees were deterring, if not completely cost-ineffective. On top of that, they have rolled out a new service called Card Case  that is designed to be a virtual tab. At certain locations, once your account has been set up, all you need do is order your items and tell the cashier your name and you will be charged and sent an electronic receipt. While security is probably the first thing to jump to any critic’s tongue (and minding

that I’ve never been the victim of identity theft, I can not empathize with that frustration), I know that the company went to great lengths to dot i’s and cross t’s to set this system up securely. Like so many new technologies, they will certainly have hiccups, but will only get better the more people use them and work through issues. I for one am excited for this new cashless future they are enterprising. Also, having a small business that uses this service makes me all the more biased towards how useful it is.

Airbnb

Airbnb is a service that allows you to rent out your own home/room/space to travelers, and also allows you to stay in affordable or impossibly awesome locations all over the world. Putting hotels and hostels to shame, Airbnb is opening a whole new world of options to travelers to either meet and stay with cool locals, or just bask in the wonderful residential neighborhoods of cities that would otherwise go unnoticed. Or maybe you’d prefer to stay in a treehouse? Or on a boat? Options that you would otherwise have to know someone to have that opportunity. On the flip side, you can meet cool travelers coming to your city as you host them in your own place. Or just make some extra cash while you’re out of town anyway. You can rent out anything from an air mattress in the living room to your whole house. It is a wonderful online community of people who are eager to see new things and meet new people, and like most online services, there are ways to rate both renters and stayers so people can get a feel for what kind of person they are before accepting a reservation. Airbnb did have a snafu in July that caused the company to snap into action to step up their security measures: they doubled their support staff and are now offering insurance. I’m sure as they grow, they will continue to figure out new services and new ways to protect the community they’ve been growing since 2008.

Besides providing a form of accessibility to their customers, the other thing about these companies that stands out to me is how the few people I know who work at them are genuinely interested in the products they produce, are enthusiastic when talking about them, and really believe in what they are doing. There is little in life I find more compelling than hearing someone talk about something they are passionate about. It becomes easy to tell who is a salesman just pitching their product versus a person who is actually standing behind what they are creating. Above all else, whether a company succeeds or fails, I think having more people in the world truly interested in what they are doing is what’s making it a better place, regardless of what they’re creating.

Arch Bay Area Construction Website

Home Page, ArchBayArea.com

I have been working on a website design for a client who runs a construction business out of Los Gatos. They just needed a real simple to navigate, easily accessible site to showcase some of their work and access their contact info. Basically, in this world and this time, you just need a website if you run a business, because somebody’s going to ask to see it.

ArchBayArea.com, home page mock up, 1st draft

Originally the site design was very monotone, using the image of a blueprint that I scanned as the background and footer. The client requested I bump up the color a bit more, and gave me a few samples of sites he liked, so I played around with the idea of it being a work bench for a background and put in a variety of construction elements to frame the page. I do actually like it much more, so am glad he suggested the change.

In an ideal world, the photography they provided me would have been a slightly higher calibre, but I did try to do the best with what I got. It was interesting seeing their take on what qualified as a “good” picture. Initially they gave me a handful of  printed photos to then scan in and “enhance,” which again, I did my best. But after some review of the photos, their critiques fell more on the subject matter of the images (did it show the detail of their millwork, or the custom tile of the marble bath?) and nothing at all to do with the quality of the photo itself. For some reason this sounds like it should be a big duh, as the subject matter should be the point of the photo, but I’ve been pretty well trained to accept stylized (artistic?) images as truth, and therefore find photos that are lacking in photographic aesthetic (ie, poorly composed or lit) to distract me from their documentary purpose. These guys didn’t have that filter, and were interested solely in capturing the art of their work, not the art of documenting it. <tirade> I guess I have to say that I appreciate it when photography plays a valuable role in marketing, and is not just lowered to a basic tool of communication.</tirade>

ArchBayArea.com, portfolio page mock up, 1st draft

With these photos, I created my first portfolio page layout, but it was kind of sloppy trying to fit all the photos from each project into a series. I realized after getting to project C that this layout was going to cause problems with the trigger and target slideshow option, as you would have to scroll down to click the next image, and scroll back up to view it. It helped also that they decided to cut a number of the images from each project, making it only about 1-2 images from each, and to split their work into two camps: residential and commercial. This gave me the opportunity to create two pages of images, and instead of a trigger and target arrangement, I just created a slideshow with minimal captions and prev-next buttons. The slideshow also moves along without prompt, so you can casual view the images in an automated sequence. This made the site more compact, eliminating the need to scroll.

ArchBayArea.com, portfolio page

Other than that, I played with a few font options and layouts, but didn’t stray too far from my initial 3 page website plan. It does feel good to knock a project off your to-do list though.