eye candy for you

so, i've been pretty sick for a couple of weeks. very sick for a few days. it's messed with my make something every day goal, which is fine, because i do prioritize rest and self-care and don't want to pressure myself. i've done some doodles and some projects and it's been fun. but since i don't have a lot to show (you don't want to see my ugly doodles, promise!) i wanted to take the opportunity to share a couple of rad graphic treats i've been enjoying lately.

rodney and i were at the pub several weeks ago (which is connected to our favorite bookstore, Kalapuya Books) and i spotted this treasure in the window display. i had to have it! rodney scrawled a note on the back of a bar ticket for hal and betsey (they own the bookstore) imploring them to hold it for him, which, of course, they did. Three bucks and it was mine!

i love this style of kid-book illustration. i love that it is typeset in futura (my favorite typeface right now). and i love that it is pop-up (and that someone lovingly replaced the king's head by scrawling him a new face on the backside of a lunar calendar). the whole thing is awesome.

a while back i shared a link on facebook for this interesting hanging nest seat things. they're designed by DEDON, i believe they call them the restnest or something like that. i just thought they were so awesome. i signed up for their mailing list and promptly forgot all about them.

a couple days ago this amazing catalog arrived. over 300 pages, full color, beautiful heavy-weight matte paper. it's gorgeous. when i am wealthy enough to furnish my outdoor living spaces with their completely rad products, i will be a very happy girl.

i am grateful for:

movies

juice

design

cotton

palladio herbal cosmetics

a taste of the week's creations:

line drawings of art objects. doing these was great. i didn't get wound up with expectations, i just drew. and colored. i have a box of tiles i picked up at bring a couple of years ago and i cut out the drawings and pasted them to the tiles. i like to make coasters with them, modge-podging my images and then coating them with a layer of envirotex (which is a truely awesome product. i also use it for my bottle cap art).

jubal being a monkey in the bathroom. it was a long and busy day and the best i could do was make a memory photograph. i love this photograph because jubal is being jubal and i didn't stop to clean my bathroom counter off before i shot it. it reminds me of an arthur book.

the long road. i'm dealing with a lot of *stuff* right now and i took this photograph as way to honor what's going on. to acknowledge the reality of my life and the extent of my path. it's just a street in a neighborhood but it's my street, in my neighborhood, in my life. and there is beauty in the sky, and in the still-bare tree limbs against it. there is hope and potential, and there is a foundation.

i am grateful for:

art

packaging

my friend martin

sleep

netflix

made today: my logo

i (heart) inDesign

today i worked on formatting dad's book (find out more here) in inDesign, my most favored of the adobe creative suite programs. i don't get to design the interior of the book, dad ordered some kind of package from lulu to do that, but it still needed to be formatted before it was sent to lulu. i spent a nice chunk of time changing spacebar tabs into real tabs and putting in page breaks for the chapter ends, and a few other things, including some awesome "find and change" tasks that saved me, literally, hours, were i to have to do it myself (especially changing the double space after a period to the book-friendly single space after a period). dad's book is almost ready to send to the printer!

i am grateful for:

opportunity

kindness

pleasure

calm

joy

exhale...and...!

it's been a long week. most of you will not be surprised to learn that it is actually very hard to make something every single day. most of you will not be surprised, if you know me at all, to learn that i have really elasticized the definition of "make something".

last sunday: i made time for myself. i NEEDED to get out of the house. i went to the movies. this may not sound like much but i don't actually get much time to myself and it was worth it. i saw black swan and it was very effective, though i'm not sure i can say that i liked it. it did give me quite the stomach ache for some time after it was over. like i said: effective. tales of madness get to me because of all the actual madness in my life. the acting was very good, and the direction, and the filming. still, i'm not sure how i feel about it. no matter my ambivalent feelings--the time to myself was SO AWESOME. it might even be nice to make time for myself one thing i make every single week. especially if it involves movies.

monday: chicken soup with star pasta and cannellini beans. part of the sunday time to myself involved verbally shoving a chicken at rodney and telling him to figure out how to roast it on my way out the door. he did an excellent job and we made the soup together. it was yummy.

tuesday: i made tiny brochures for my design class. yeah, i know, more homework as making something, but these, at least, were tiny mock brochures. made by hand. so cute. sorry, i neglected to photograph those.

wednesday: vesta needed to speak at a school board meeting for a presentation that her school was doing, so i brought yarn. i thought i would make some fingerless glove/arm-warmer thingies. so far i just have rectangles that i pull out and restart, but it was nice to bust out the needles and yarn all the same. vesta was awesome, by the way.

thursday: i had a horrible migraine. i asked rodney to make dinner and popped 2 excedrin migraines and laid very still in bed until they kicked in. then i was starving and ate a bunch of his yummy stir fry and made tiny boxes out of mini cereal boxes and other packaging i've been saving, while i watched some addictive trivia game show involving a million dollars and then bones. i love the rare chance to sit and watch mindless t.v. with the girls and especially love that i was DOING SOMETHING the whole time! these mini cereal boxes were very hard to fold against the grain and i don't think i'll be doing this again. the mini boxes work awesomely with recycled cards, though. i feel obliged to put in a disclaimer here--this is NOT normal fare at our house. i specifically got the mini cereals to make artist books out of, but the boxes were getting that hoardy feeling, so i will just get more if ever i am actually ready to do the artist books. it's its ARE very good, though. and i do eat those an a regular once-in-a-while basis. and they make for a cool box because they say "IT's it!" in big beautiful green type, which is nice for putting little gifts in.

friday: i realize this is really stretching it. but, oh well. what i made on friday was a mii. yes. we got our wii on friday because, well, because wiis are rad and we all deserve one. i've wanted a nintendo since i was 11 or so. it looks pretty good and quite a bit like me, i think. (i don't know why, but the orientation refuses to stay changed when i flip it right-side up).

saturday: more homework as making something. in addition to making these brochure comps for mercy corp i also did some (read: hours) of dreamweaver homework. unfortunately we are still at the stage where we just do what we're told and don't actually design (read: what i spent hours on is too ugly to show you). dad took the kids up to portland for my aunt's surprise birthday party and rodney and i stayed home and did homework all day until we left for town to have an early date night. we saw True Grit and it was wonderful. i recommend it.

and finally, this sunday. today we all went to town and played mini golf at some weird "family fun center" type place that was straight outta roseanne, called putters. rodney gets the hook-up over at LCC for free tickets to these strange places we normally wouldn't go to. it was interesting, if over-stimulating. AND, i got a hole-in-one! tonight i made an adobe illustrator "sketch" of an idea i had a few years ago. this is by no means the final design, because originally i wanted it to look very much screen-printed or hand-stamped, which, of course, this doesn't. but it was still fun to play with the idea in illustrator and just mess around. my plan is to do a series--lemons on pink, limes on brown, oranges on blue...and later perhaps a tomato, squash, etc. theme.

have a great week!

i am grateful for:

dad taking the kids all day

rex goliath (best cheap wine EVER)

that i forgot monday was a holiday and now i remember so it's totally extra

sore muscles

good food

a justified justification

i had a very long day.

rodney was sick and did absolutely nothing all day.

when i got home from school i tidied and split wood and lit the stove and ate lunch and then i got to work on my design homework. which i distinctly remember tom saying was "easy" and i think also "nothing". so i will not say how many hours i spent on it. but i will say that other than picking up jubal, fetching dinner from :::shudder::: a fast food establishment, and helping the girls with homework as little as i could get away with, i, uh, didn't really do anything else. and it's really late now. so. (and by "didn't do anything else" i don't mean vegging around not doing anything. i mean i was working. the whole effing time.)

the assignment was to make 3 different typographical posters using the same grid and elements, and 3 muhammad ali documentary posters using the same grid, images, and text. somehow i did not grok that each poster had to have all 3 images. so i did not make the posters each with all 3 images. then i found out my mistake. and i had to make 2 of them over again. (by poster #3 i'd started wondering and put all 3 in, so i didn't have to re-do that one.)

now, looking at my grid system ones, i really wish i had pushed more and made them more dynamic. ah well. there's always next time. really, there always is.

so. for today, homework counts as making something. technically 2 of the posters weren't even for homework, since i DIDN'T DO THEM RIGHT.

in case you were wondering, this is an awesome time to quit smoking. really. yes, i am being sarcastic.

today i am grateful for:

jubal falling asleep fairly quickly after we read books so i could get back to work

patience, which i, shockingly, have

sleep, which i will finally get very soon

good books

good headphones (listening to music while working vastly improves the flow)

for the application portfolio

one of our portfolio pieces for the application to the second year was the problem of designing a missing cat poster that is well-designed, creative, effective, and informative. it was more challenging than it might first sound, because incorporating creativity into what needs to be fairly mundane, while still communicating effectively can be tricky. i haven't printed a proof of this yet, but i'm hoping when i do it will not reveal that my choice of typeface equals poor legibility. this poster is 11 x 17. critiques welcome. encouraged, even. (FYI my cat is NOT really missing, but he is gorgeously photogenic, and will soon be famous, i'm sure.)

eat local!

homework for my digital imaging class. critiques welcome. ignore the artifacting (that's the sort of blurry look around the text, etc.) i cannot figure out how to upload stuff without getting that. the colors are flat. (click on image to see full-sized).

project three for my digital design tools class. click on the images to see them full-sized.

homework=post this on flickr and a blog. done.

an unimaginative ad for orbitz....the posting of which constitutes a portion of my digital design tools homework.

let's get graphic

rodney brought home the LCC course catalog from his testing and advisor meeting day and i devoured the graphic design program. art, art, art classes! design, design, design classes! electives of MORE art and design classes...drool drool.
i'm bitterly jealous and already sick of the several times a day report about this or that planned out class schedule and this or that bemoaned math class, etc. etc. and all i hear (besides all that) is maybe you can go next year. or the year after that. yeah yeah.
why does my stuff always get put off til the last? yes, i know it's more practical this way. i know all the logic stuff. but that doesn't change it being yet another occasion of my dreams, wishes, standards....etc...coming dead last.
i'm happy for rodney--my jealousy takes nothing from that. he's wanted this for a long time, too. and he's settled on what he wants to study and is excited. it's wonderful for him, and for all of us. it's very exciting to think of the comfort and stability offered by a degree-job. it won't wreck his body and will use his mind. he's studying to be a water conservation technician, which is awesome and necessary. so kudos to all that stuff. i know it and appreciate it...
but this is my blog and i can whine if i want to!
so picture me stomping my feet and wailing "I WANNA GO TO GRAPHIC DESIGN SCHOOL! I WANNA MAC AND A BIG PALETTE OF OVERLY EXPENSIVE MARKERS! I WANNA STUDY EVERY KIND OF PRINTING IMAGINABLE !" STOMP stomp.
okay, i guess that's enough.
maybe next year.