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.
Filed under Interests
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.
Filed under New Piece
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.
Filed under New Piece
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.
Filed under New Piece
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.
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 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 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.
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.
Filed under New Piece
Last weekend, I took a little trip to LA, and on the way back to the Bay Area, I took my time stopping at some of my old haunts, and took a few pictures for posterity. The real treat was stopping over in Solvang, the cute little Danish town in the heartof the Santa Ynez Valley. I used to travel here when I was a kid, and remember loving the feeling of being immersed in this almost Disney-like fantasy world in the middle of basically nowhere. I don’t know what the windmill per capita ratio is, but I think it’s pretty high.
Aside from the cute fake thatched roofed houses, abundance of Danish pastries, and oodles of tourists, I also happened to notice all the beautify wood carved signage around town. There were many unique, hand crafted pieces that were very bright and bold that did a fantastic job of catching my attention, as signs are meant to do. Typographically, I think they’re lovely.
Filed under Interests
I entered a very competitive field.
Finding a new job is difficult for anyone, especially when the economy’s still suffering, but I can only talk about my own experience as a designer, and I have to say, it’s really difficult to get your foot in the door anywhere. One pretty serious mistake I made after graduating college was leaving my network behind.
So how does one move along without word of mouth or referrals? Well, you have to really impress someone, I think. So, I was browsing through a few job descriptions online, and this one for Airbnb really stood out to me. It was one of those descriptions that really excited my interest and felt like it was made for me. So I went into cover letter mode, and was going into great lengths to describe how and what I would do for their company when I just sort of said to myself, “do it, don’t say it.” I am a visual designer, after all. I think it’s more appropriate to show them what you can do, versus make them take your word for it. Of course, it’s terribly impractical to put this many hours of effort into what is essentially a job application, but when you think it’s the perfect job, and at an amazing company, I think it warrants the extra effort.
So for a little background, Airbnb is a VC backed start-up that has made a business of turning every day people into vacation home/room renters. Basically, if you have a spare room, you can make a little extra cash by renting it out to tourists and travlers. On the flip side, you as a traveler get the chance to stay with cool, local people, making your travels that much more engaging. I love the idea, and happen to love traveling, so it seems like a perfect arrangement for me.
As for their design, it is really exceptional. Their website is clean, simple, straightforward, and fun. Their mobile UI is so easy to use, and the graphics they’ve made to highlight special deals or places of interested are visually rich and engaging, and often verge on punning, which is delightful.
Pulling from my own love for vintage/retro graphics, and the company’s status as a travel company, I decided to create a resume that emulated the look and feel of 1960′s travel documents. Overall summary of items in resume package: Passport, Boarding Pass, Luggage Tag, and Safety Guidelines Card.
To start, I decided my own personal logo wasn’t going to evoke the right feeling for the piece, so created a logo for the project that I felt captivated the look of a mid 20th Century travel company. Of the many logos I referenced, the elements I liked and took for my own were those that were bold, monochromatic, usinga modern-looking font accompanied by a script, and somehow incorporated a wing-like graphic. My color scheme is my own, using a dark warm red and a light mossy green, which I thought worked well for the period piece I was creating (what, you think I should have gone with avocado, brown and orange instead? Don’t forget the goal is to suggest I have good taste).
First piece, the Passport, was the perfect vehicle for laying down my previous work experience, suggesting all the places I’ve worked previously are analogous to the places I’ve traveled to. It took a few google searches to find reference material for what passports in the 1960′s looked like. I finalized a version that had the US seal as a watermark on the interior pages, along with an archaic security pattern printed in the background. I also took a a new “passport-like” photo and edited it to look aged (the paper, of course, not my face). Remember how to bind the single signature book took a few times, but I think I finally got it. Making the rubber stamp graphics was definitely a challenge. Using a font and trying to adjust filters and brushes in photoshop was looking really photoshopped, so I instead hand typed out all the images, inked (and smudged) them, scanned them in, and edited a little more from there.
Next came the boarding pass. As they are more like evidence of where you will be traveling, I liked the idea of making it my objective statement, stating the “desired destination” as the position at their company, and the to and from fields being “from my current position to Airbnb”.
The luggage tag, which fits into the “travel documents” folder along with the boarding pass is actually a link to my portfolio website. I mean, my previous work is kind of like baggage, though with a more positive connotation.
Finally, the Safety Guidelines Card is probably the most adventurous of the bunch. Mimicking the safety cards you never actually bother to read when flying, my “guidelines” highlight my skills and interests in the same illustrative style as an old fashioned card. I think it most effectively describes me visually, in ways a typical cover letter never could.
The only thing I think that is missing from the total package is the air sickness bag. I’m sure you can imagine why I felt including that would send the wrong message. Now fingers crossed that they give me a call!
Filed under New Piece
I have lots of things on my mind all the time. I enjoy tweeting once in a while to get them off my chest, but sometimes 140 characters doesn’t cut it.
I spend my days working as a graphic designer, and spend my evenings being one too, along with a few other hobbies. I realized I didn’t have a great venue to talk about my work and get feedback like I used to back in college, so figured a blog was a good place to get back in the habit.
My auxiliary excuse for starting this blog is to practice focusing. As a writer, I tend to get side-tracked easily, digressing aimlessly as my stream of conscious wanders. In many ways, this parallels my own life, as I have spent all 26 of the 27 years of it trying a little bit of everything, soaking up the wonders that “variety is the spice of life” can offer. And it’s been fun. I enjoy the fact I can draw and paint in a wide variety of mediums, bind a book, knit a scarf, race a triathlon, sew a dress, bake and decorate cupcakes, design a logo, make dinner for hordes of people, start a business, play the cello (ok, well, I’m stretching it to say that I can actually play it), and etc. But as I get older and wiser, I’m noticing the trade-off in this lifestyle is that my peers are settling down into their careers with an almost hyper-focussed intensity on being really good at the thing they do, while I’m still splitting my time and focus between my many interests.
The reality is, I’m not likely to give up all my interests, but I am trying to cut down. This year has been the year of web design and cupcakes. I started a baking business in 2009, and could probably have jumped off and really committed to it 100%, maybe even opening my own bakery, but the thought of not doing design any more didn’t appeal to me. I really enjoy designing logos, branding, websites, posters, you name it. I’m in love with visual design and can’t see myself dropping it, even for my love of cupcakes.
But, since I already have a blog dedicated to baking, I will refrain from committing too many characters to it here. Instead, I will happily entertain you with news, related posts, projects, and whatever else catches my fancy that I find worth sharing. Keep in mind, I’m practicing focussing, so if you see something pop up that seems completely out of place, just try and remember that it all makes sense to me, somehow, and I will do my best to explain it as I go.
Filed under About Me
