Monday, October 31, 2011

Pinterest

I was recently introduced to Pinterest by my roommate and it's really addicting. It reminds me a lot of twitter in content and what it achieves. Basically you are pinning pictures of things that you like on different boards. You can organize your boards into to different subject making it easier to sort through your content. I currently have: 


>> Creative Decorating: 
board featuring crafts and products that I think are interesting and would like to try
>> Architecture Design: 
board with builings and architectural elements that I like
>> Food for Thought: 
board showing Design and Photography books or magazines that I have read and enjoyed
>> Design Inspiration: 
Board with a variety of designs that catch my eye


You can repin items you like off other users boards and follow people much like twitter. I also like that you can add a "Pin it"to your bookmark bar and create pin out of images you find browsing the web. I still have a lot to explore in Pinterest but I am really excited about starting one. This is a really design that I just pinned this morning.






Check it out: http://pinterest.com/farmercathy/

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Copy Center - Quick Design Jobs

These are postcards that I designed while working in copy center. While they are not portfolio pieces, I think it was valuable and fun to create this little series. I was given the text (in all caps) and the gradient (the gradient was not my choice) background color and told to "spice them up a little bit." 


So I had fun laying out the text and finding little vectors to make the postcards more interesting, and here are the results. 









Monday, October 10, 2011

Things I found Out Flipping Copies #3

Lesson #3


>> I can have my cake and eat it too.


Last Monday was one of the busiest days in copy center in a long time. Over half the staff was out on the past Thursday and Friday due to sickness and holidays. I came in at 8 am only to be overwhelmed with projects that people had wanted completed by the past Friday. Luckily for me, one of the staff's birthdays was that day and they had a huge cake. I spent the entire morning catching up on the emails and eating cake whenever I got up to switch paper or put a project on a shelf. 


I was trying to decide if it would have been better to work straight through all the emails and then eat the cake once I was finished. Realistically, having that delicious desert next to me all morning did not take up a lot of extra time and it kept my stress level way lower. 


Point being: Life is about balance. When things get really stressful, it is even more important to have cake, meaning to take time for yourself to do the fun things in life. 


My cake is beach volleyball. I spend a lot of time at the beach and some would argue that I could get more work done if I cut that out of my schedule. However, having that fun time keeps me relaxed and a much happier person, so I stand by my decision. As long as there is a balance, life is good. 





Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Why I stare at Twitter all day

I have become addicted to Twitter. It is always open in a tab on my laptop and I am constantly viewing the "4 new tweets." I am not so much addicted to tweeting myself, but following others' tweets. I love checking out the links posted by aiga_wi or design related. It is so easy to just click a link and skim different articles full of useful information.


Just this morning, well literally two minutes ago, I followed this link tweeted by CreativeReview: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/taste-buds/


It reminded me of part of my visual studies project last year, when I distilled cattails scans into similar firework designs.



So get on twitter, even if you are not into tweeting because you never know what someone else will tweet.