A Smile in the Mind

A Smile in the Mind explores witty thinking in graphic design and why it is successful. First wit depends on two things, the familiar and the play. The play is the unexpected twist; its the surprise that excites us. Done successfully witty design can:

• win time - people ponder the meaning
• invite participation - the design doesn't give all the answers
• give the pleasure of decoding - discover the answer for yourself
• provide reward - pat yourself on the back
• amuse - laugh out loud because it's clever
• get under the gaurd - now you will listen to me because I made you laugh

"For example, most signs are straightforward, like 'Fire Exit' or 'No Parking". What about a sign that delivers the information in a witty way? Suppose it says 'No Parking - Don't even think about it'?"

The "No Parking" sign example plays on two levels. Instead of a simple, straightforward message, 'Don't even think about it' implies that there is the option to not listen to the sign. Clever. 

From: A Smile in the Mind by Beryl McAlhone & David Stuart. 

Alternative Spring Break Video

Service is a huge part of everything I do. For the past four years I have taken part in Cardinal Stritch University's Alternative Spring Break Trips. Usually this means spending a week with Habitat for Humanity. This year we traveled to New Orleans and worked with Camp Restore. Each day we worked in a different area of the community and it was really exciting to be able to help out where there is still so much need even seven years after Katrina. 


I also had the honor of creating a short video to give a general idea of our experience to people who supported our trip. It was a challenge to show them both sides of the trip. One that was so emotion filled because there is still a huge amount of need for volunteers in New Orleans and the other that shows the fun we had coming together as a group. The two combined to give everyone who attended the trip an amazing set of memories from their spring break, myself included. 


Here is the link to watch the video on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keEdJB-a6kE


Let me know what you think!

Landscape Photography + Gradients

One of the first things we are taught in Graphic Design 101 is to beware of the gradients. Gradient generically laid over a background is an easy cop out. 


However I came across today and interesting series of photographs by Robert Schlaug. He stretched out the colors of the landscapes to create linear gradients in different portions of the photographs. I am attracted to the photos where the gradient begins at the horizon line, creating an abstract background such as this one:





This image is my favorite because of the color combination and even though the sky is obviously a gradient, I think it works well in the photo. The other images are worth a look as well. You can find them here:


http://blog.gessato.com/2012/03/27/landscape-photography-by-robert-schlaug/

Bouncing Baby Photography

I used to work at an early childhood center in the infant suite and took a lot of photos of the babies. So this tutorial really caught my eye:


How to Make a Photo of a Bouncing Baby


Some of the main ideas covered in creating the final photo are

• Well lit background shot to start
• Taking a lot of pictures for layering
• Getting detailed in photoshop to make it look realistic

I thought this post did a really good job at showing the result of good planning for a shoot and not cutting corners in editing. The final image of the bouncing baby makes all the time spent worth it. 

Fun T-shirt Project

Each year I design the t-shirts for Cardinal Stritch's Alternative Spring Break trip. This year we are traveling to New Orleans and working with Camp Restore. Camp Restore is focused on restoring the spirit of New Orleans as wells as physically rebuilding. Here is the t-shirt design.

Milwaukee Syndicate Designs

Over the summer I connected with Nicholas Giombi. He is a UW Madison grad with a degree in filmmaking. He has started work on some independent projects and asked me to create some business cards for him.

I drew inspiration from the film Public Enemies because he expressed interest in films during that era.

Here is the card I created:

Italy Inspirations

The best moments on this pilgrimage have been walking around just experiencing the area, not standing in front of the "tourist attractions" but instead strolling down small side streets or the vast mountain sides.

Inspirations in Italy 2

These are some more shots from Rome . . .

Inspirations in Italy

I am traveling around Italy on the Stritch Franciscan Pilgrimage. Here are some of my photos from my experience in Rome so far . . .

Snowboard Designs

Tonight I watched "The Art of Flight" featuring phenomenal snowboarder Travis Rice. The movie made me really want to go snowboarding again. I used to go a couple a year while I was in high school, just around Wisconsin. Even though the hills were not large and I wasn't amazing - I couldn't do any tricks, but I didn't fall very often either - I really enjoyed snowboarding and I do want to start doing it again. 


I also think a snowboard is a unique canvas for designers. The long shape and general understanding of snowboarding as an extreme sport open wide range of graphic possibilities. Since I could not go snowboarding immediately after watching "The Art of Flight" I found some snowboards that I think are well designed. 


Enjoy.

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/

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. 

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. 

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. 

Things I found Out Flipping Copies #2

We have pretty specific job tickets that you fill out when you want documents printed at copy center. You need to indicate how many copies, the color, weight and size of paper and if color ink or black and white. A lot of times, when people send in an email request, they forgot to write what weight of paper they want or if they need any clerical services. The majority of the time, it is easy to figure out that people want regular 20# paper and printed in color. However today I fully believe: 


Lesson #2 - It is better to ask for clarification and wait then to print 20 copies and then have to go back and staple by hand. 


There always seems to be a rush to get things finished right away. Well today I printed something that looked like it should be stapled and not comb bound like they had indicated. Long story short, I ran the job before asking for this clarification and spent the last twenty minutes of my day counting out three pages and stapling. If I had asked before running the job, I could have easily set the copier to do everything for me. 


I feel like this happens so often in life. We rush to get something finished before we have the adequate information to complete the job well. In the long run it ends up taking more time. 


It's also an opportunity to educate people. Many people who send things into copy center do not realize the different options they have, and therefore aren't really clear on what they want. When I email them, it is a chance to help them increase their knowledge of how to get a better product. 


We have touched on this topic a lot in design as well. It is is important for designers to be able to help the client articulate what they really want when they say, "Make it look nice."

Greenwood Experience

Way back in May, a friend asked me to create a logo for this service trip he was helping to set up. It was a camp put on for kids in Greenwood, Mississippi. He had two requests for the logo/wordmark:


>Make the writing look like kid drawn
>Say Greenwood in green and wooden looking text. 


I created this logo quick for him one night. I thought it was going to be just a nice little side project. 

 

At another event later in May, my friend was presenting the service trip and I decided to get more involved. I traveled down to Greenwood, Mississippi from June 11th through the 19th and we held camp for 70 kids ranging in age from 4 to 13. It was a lot of work but a ton of fun. The photographer in me went on the trip with the goal of documenting our experience and bringing it back to share with other people in future promotional materials that I could design. However, we were so busy with the kids, that I didn't even take my camera out of the case. It was great experience though and I will try to make time to attend next year. 

I still took the opportunity to design the promotional materials for next years camp. So far I have created a brochure and photo collage -- thank God, other people on the trip took photos. 

 

For the brochure, I went with the idea that you collect photos and quotes when you go to camp. I used clips and torn paper in my design. I like the way it turned out and think it looks really clean. The novelty blue pastel font is just enough to reference a kids camp without overdoing it. 

For the collage, I really wanted to avoid a full page of photos-yearbook like product. I decided to make it look like a bulletin memory board. The photos are tacked in with little push pins and it relates to the brochure with the little torn paper notes. 

I really love designing for projects, especially service projects, that I am involved in. I think it means more to me because I really understand the cause and am not just an outsider looking in. It is important to me to be involved in the causes that I create designs for. 

Things I Found Out Flipping Copies #1

I currently work at the Cardinal Stritch Copy Center. It may not be a job directly on the path to a graphic design career but there are a lot of things I can take away from my experience. 


Lesson #1 - It's okay to give yourself some breathing room. 


In copy center, it seems like people drop off print jobs at 1:00 p.m. and want them printed by 1:01 p.m. All day people ask, "When can you have this done by?" The majority of the time I am able finish printing some ones job in a quite short time frame, but I usually say, "I can have it done by the end of the day." Giving myself the extra time allows me some wiggle room in case the printer jams or just decides to stop working in general (both of which happens more frequently than one would predict). 


Overall, it is much better to tell someone that you can have the work done in four hours and actually complete it in two, than to estimate one hour and actually take an hour and a half to finish. 

How I stand out in the herd

In doing my research for my personal brand, I found other people and agencies with a similar idea. Farming is a great image to associate with because not only is it about hard work but it brings up ideas of cultivating, growth and fresh beginnings. All of these qualities are great in a design. 


Here are two of the Design Studios that also use the farm idea: 


Farm Fresh Design Studio: http://www.farmfreshdesign.ca/

I think the "moove" and running cow is taking the farm idea a little too literal. However, I do like their copy. They focus on the word fresh. Fresh marketing ideas for today's needs is there slogan. It is also really cool that the studio is on a small farm. That is the type of environment that I would want to work in. 

Design Farm: http://www.designfarm.com/

Design Farm focus more on growth with how they present themselves. I think the plant in the logo shows growth well. 

After a summer away doing some deep personal analysis -- and by that I mean playing a lot of beach volleyball -- school has once again started. But I don't want this post to be one of those "Going back to school, so now I am going to start blogging again. It's going to be a great year" ones; I want this post to be the start of a new blog focused on me as a designer not a student fulfilling a class requirement. 


I have changed a lot since I started this blog and some updates were long overdue:


New Title - Design Randomness? I don't know why I kept that title for so long. Design isn't random. Honestly, I think that title came from not knowing what I wanted to do with this blog and actually, not really knowing what I wanted to do with my design in general. Well, three years down the road and I am confident in who I am. Hence the new title: Farmer and Designer. It is a spin off of my nickname Farmer Cathy, because my friends thought it was funny that a small town, farm girl ended up in Milwaukee working on computers. It is funny, but it is also what makes me different. I have a more informal, service oriented approach to design and really strong work ethic that I attribute to my background of growing up on a farm. In contrast, I really enjoy being in milwaukee -- t's city to me. My town only had four hundred people in it -- and love the digital creativity in doing graphic design and photography. 


Background - Linen paper texture from my business card. I like the linen paper because its soft. It relates to how I want to present myself. I don't feel the need to put on a suit to impress people. I want to understand where people are coming from so I can create better designs to fit their needs. To me design is a service. 


I like the new look and it will keep developing. I think it is a much better fit for who I am and where I want to go with my designs. 

One more Muybridge

Leapfrog in action: