Response

I'm thrilled that Meredith is finally finished. It has been an exhausting semester, and as much as I enjoyed being part of the Renovate Style design, it was definitely time for things to end. I had fun listening to all of the presentations, and I'm glad the Meredith folks could fly in. It's always great to get feedback on your work too. I appreciated what they had to say about the redesign. Sometimes you can't be sure if they will understand, but I'm glad they were open to new ideas. After all, they won't be using them! I was a little taken aback when someone mentioned slapping ideas on the page. I think it summed up what we're fighting against. Perhaps people don't realize that we are young designers, but we do think things through. Although I'm absolutely sick of the phrase, we do practice content-driven design, and you can rest assured that things are carefully placed with consideration. Anyway, that's enough for now.

Critique

I'm completely fried! I haven't done much thoughtful design work this week. Just mainly sorting out the crop marks and sizing of my mini-portfolio and helping my Design 1 class with their final projects. TA-ing the design class has been an interesting experience. It was humbling to think about how to teach programs that are second nature to me. I had forgotten how much time I spent learning the pen tool. It has been great to see the students have fun with the projects. I'm not sure if they really are having fun, but they do a good job of pretending. Being a pseudo-teacher has made me appreciate the job that my own teachers/professors/mentors have. It's a big responsibility! I'm not quite sure I'm cut out for it. I like giving critiques, but when it comes down to grading, I have a difficult time. I just want to give everyone A's.

And to celebrate things ending, I bought another Murakami novel—South of the Border West of the Sun—which has turned out to be one of his more realistic books (since most of them have elements of magical realism). Chip Kidd! designed the hardcovers, and John Gall designed the beautiful series of paperbacks. Here are some mash-ups of Kidd's hardcover designs (on the left) and Gall's (on the right).



Oh right, and applying for loads of jobs. Hooray. I've also started looking into a few grad school programs. I would really like to go back to school for an MA after a year or so. I've got to save some pennies first.

Well, I thought I'd just put up a few things I've worked on over the past few weeks that you might not have seen. Check my website for more! I've put loads of work up there.

You can't miss: I'm on ffffound

Ffffound is my favorite blog. It's the best place to find all kinds of new work, designers and inspiration. So imagine my surprise when I ffffound my own work up there!

In other news, Made by Many has designed Oola Moola, a blog for its client, Hearst Digital. It's fun, quirky and all about living well on a budget. Julia Wojcicka is the project's designer, and she said that one of the best parts about the project was that there was hardly any brief. Wow! That's refreshing to hear—there are clients who trust their designers and who are open to new ideas. Julia does a great job of combining found and digital elements to create something interactive but still very crafty and tangible. Lots of colors, layers, kind of girly but in a good way. I love her idea board, too:

Friday Cute Pup!

Kodes, photo by Tom Loughlin

Friday Dance Track!

Dance Wiv Me.

Check me out, yo!

photo by Tom Loughlin

In case you haven't visited recently, I wanted to let everyone know that I've added a bunch of new work to my website. Check it out!