Merry Christmas Followers!

So I've been a failure of a blogger this break. Sorry friends! It's been a busy break full of family, friends, and wedding planning so my blog has been a low priority. On my to do list I've checked off a few things, but still have a lot to go such as designing my wedding invitation and choosing my art pieces for my Senior Art Show at ACU. Big stuff. Next week I will be in New Orleans visiting family and I will have limited internet access so I won't tease you with empty promises, I'm pretty sure I just won't be blogging. Ok, enough of the update, I thought I would leave you with an impromptu Christmas card I made after some silliness at our first faux-Christmas! Merry Christmas! Love Bonni and Marc!

PS - We got our engagement pictures done today (I think they will be much better than these) so be looking for those! So excited to see them.

My Thanksgiving

I thought I would post a few shots from Thanksgiving. I promise I will try really hard to keep up with blogging over my Christmas break! I apologize in advance for lack of blog posts.

Some of my favorites. I hope your holiday season is going well! Christmas is right around the corner!

Understanding Myself as a Designer

"Most to-do list creatives cannot drop everything to spend days 

lost in monk-like focus."

"Creative work is not a task to be checked off a 

next actions list. If you decide that you need to complete a particular project by the end of a block, for example, you're likely to either be frustrated 

by your lack of progress or rush out something mediocre."

"When you face a block of time dedicated to finishing a milestone, your mind avoids detours 

as they might delay your progress. When you instead focus on process, your mind is free to follow the path most important to eventually producing high-quality output."

I just read an article by Cal Newport that really makes me feel better about the way my brain works. I think one of the biggest challenges of being a graphic design student is being surrounded by so many people who work differently from you. It makes you feel really inferior when a classmate can crank out a genius piece of work in class and it takes you hours just to find the right direction. Reading this article I think will definitely help me not become frustrated as easily at my mental process of developing creative work. I suggest that you glance it over, especially if you are a "to-do list creative." Above are a few of my favorite pieces from the article.

Where Have I Been?

So like I said earlier, it's been a busy few weeks! I've been finishing up big projects, papers and studying up for final tests along with wedding planning fun like getting my dress fitted! Whew. I had another partner project in my Persuasive Graphics class and last night we were finishing up our redesign of LaLa's Lemonade. My teammate Jessica Floe (yep, same gal from Free People) was taking pictures of our misadventures last night and then she created a photo montage of awesome. It pretty much sums up the business, insanity, hard work and just exhausted apathy we've all been experiencing the last few weeks. Enjoy!

My friends are talented

Wow, busy week! Sorry for the lack of consistency lately. I want to share a way cool video recently created by one of my friends! Sandra Amstutz created this dreamy, magical video called "All The People Here." I highly suggest watching it!


All The People Here from Sandra Amstutz on Vimeo.

ACU Craft Fair

Hi friends! Yesterday was such a busy day! A lot of the time I usually spend in the evenings to blog I spent yesterday making these fun decorative poof balls to sell at the ACU Craft Fair tomorrow! I will post a picture of them a little later. For now, here is the flier I made for the fair with all of the info about the fair! If you are in Abilene, you should come! There are always a lot of really great things available for purchase!

Pictures of Christ

A couple weekends ago, the church my mom attends and the one I attend when I'm in Keller had a "Church has left the building" weekend. Life Giving weekend is what they called it. The basic idea is to have every member of the congregation sign up for a volunteer project for the weekend. They provide an extensive list of opportunities that people can sign up for. My mom had the opportunity to be a project this year! They do an excellent job of taking care of their own congregation as well, so when they went searching for families in the church to help, my mom's name popped up due to some bad erosion issues we were having along the side of our house. So bright and early Sunday morning a group of families showed up ready to serve and boy did they! They completely fixed our erosion stuff and they helped us clean up around the house as well. My mom and I talked about what a humbling experience it is to have someone come into your home and clean with you. It was a tough pill to swallow at first, but the blessings that came from that humility were outstanding. Below is a picture that embodies what we determined was the greatest blessing and the entire purpose of Life Giving Weekend. The guys from the church were working away outside when our precious neighbors popped their little heads over the fence (they do that a lot) and the men working were readily explaining what they were doing to them. Later that evening a lot of our neighbors came and talked to my mom about what went on earlier and she was able to explain to them the love of Christ that was shown to her in the form of service. That's the whole goal of this ambitious weekend and I would say that Christ definitely worked through the service provided at my mom's house to touch the lives of many others.

The Holidays Are Here!

Hello friends!

I'm back! After a totally wonderful break, I'm really having a hard time getting back into the swing of things. Enjoying the delight of friends, family, food and relaxation makes school not sound so fun at all. The woes of a college student eh? Today, I'm going to share with you a fun illustration I did for a friend's Christmas party! She came up with the concept and I just love it! It came out as a pretty fun stache.

Christmas has been on my mind all day! I hope your holiday season started off right.

Happy Thanksgiving Week!

Hello friends!

I'm going to be taking the week off in blog world! It's going to be a busy week full of family and wedding planning and turkey eating! I hope you all are blessed with rest and a great holiday!

Free People Catalog - Finished!

I got to work with two very awesome ladies on a catalog project over the past few weeks. I thought I would post what we came up with. It's not portfolio final, but I figured you guys were just itching to see it.

I hope you enjoy our catalog. There are a few things we need to tweak, but we will get to that in portfolio class next semester! While you're here you should check out my partners' websites: Jessica Floe and Con He. They are both super talented as well. It was a pleasure working with you girls! Also shout out to our awesome models. We so appreciate you girls working with us! Our catalog is so much more beautiful because of you!

Reuters Best of the Year

I stumbled over a slideshow of what Reuters deemed the best photos of the year. You can find it here. It was such a humbling experience to click through these photos and read what each photographer had written about their experience as they shot these photos. I encourage you to take the time and do the same. We often forget how blessed we are. As a young American, I am extremely wealthy and carefree. To click through these pictures and be reminded of all that is going on throughout the world really helped me forget my complaints really fast. There are both beautiful and very graphic photos throughout this series. I was going to leave you with a few images, but it won't let me upload right now. So, please click through them, which was your favorite? How are you blessed?

Letterpress Obession

Have you figured out that my newest obsession is letterpressed anything? Here are some handmade business cards made by Sophie Gallo from her home office. I'm just drooling over her equipment, it's all the things I want for my future life as a designer. She letterpressed the front of her cards then screen printed and Gocco Printed the back. Pretty nifty stuff.

Here is a video of her using her letterpress:


I found this here.

How Low Can Your Logo

I stumbled over one of the silliest contests I've ever seen today. It's called How Low Can Your Logo, and the basic idea is to make the worst logo for this fake company. I took a look around the gallery of submissions and it just makes me chuckle because I'm sure I could show a few to some people I know and they would think that they were great. If you're bored and needing some entertainment, you should check out the submissions. I think these will be keeping me occupied until December 8th.

Width Tool

So I was doing a good job for a while about not lusting over CS5, and then I saw this.



omg. i love illustrator cs5 from Jessica Hische on Vimeo.
Drools...

TGIF

After a long week of lots of ups and lots of downs, this Friends of Type post really hits the spot.

Glow in the Dark!

Did you know that there is a such thing as glow in the dark ink? Well, I guess I should have known, but here is an awesomely creative use of the quirky stuff by Dolce Press.

I found this here.

Beautiful Things

Here are a few things that I have tagged as "beautiful" in my RSS feed lately:

1, 2, 3, 4

Hand Drawn Type

Today while looking for some project inspiration, I stumbled over the work of Kristofer Delaney. He is a designer/illustrator and on his portfolio he has a whole section for his hand drawn type. This is an ability that I have recently been envying in my own work and practicing on sticky notes when I'm bored. Enough talk, let's look at some of his stuff!

This last one is my favorite. All the detail is just great and communicates the message so well! Have a happy Monday readers!

Let's Talk Color: 1st Edition

I love this color combination by artist Blake Suárez. It's bright and happy, but not over the top. What a fun take on a lion as well. I also love that it's Bruno Mars. I mean really who doesn't love his songs?

I found this here.

A Room Full of Texture

I stumbled over these fun illustrations of textured colorful rooms by Ann Toebbe. They are just fun and so detailed. Enjoy!

I found this here.

Color Me Katie

I haven't done a must follow in a while. I want to introduce you to the blog that got me addicted to blogging. Here's the story behind how I found it. Sophomore year of college, I came back to my dorm to find one of my roommates on the living area floor with lots of poster board eyeballs sprawled all around her. She wanted to stick these crazy eyes on inanimate objects and see how people would react. I thought she was nuts, and then she showed me Katie Sokoler. Katie is a street artist and photographer in New York. She does fun, colorful projects and if you need to smile a stop to her site is a must.

Here are a few of my favorite things that she does:

Fun DIY's:

Insider Improv Everywhere stuff:

And she has the most awesome cat ever: 

Free People Catalog Shoot Preview

Ok, not for the real Free People Catalog! My next project in my Information Graphics Class is a catalog design and my group chose Free People! We did a photo shoot for our images today, and I decided to give you a sneak peek of one of mine. Be looking for some finals to come! Sorry about the late post today! What a whirlwind Monday!

Thanks goes out to two of my amazing residents Leigh and Elle! You girls are life savers.

How to Make a Pie!

I recently finished a fun (but a bit tedious) How To project in one of my classes! It was fun to explore a simpler and solely computer based style of illustration. Learning what worked and what didn't was a challenge, but I feel like it came out pretty good! Have a look, let me know what you think! Do you see something that you love or even hate? I would love to hear some feedback from my readers.

Here is the full poster, it's full size is 18" x 24" If you click on it you can see the full size with more detail:

 Here are a few detail photos:

 

If you try out the recipe, let me know how it comes out!

Monica!

My beautiful little sister turned 17 today! I decided to dedicate a post to her. She's a wonderful, goofy, talented, fun, hilarious, and oh did I mention BEAUTIFUL young lady! I love having her in my family. Happy birthday sistaaa!

Jessica Hische

Thanks to Friends of Type, I think I found one of my favorite designers! Jessica Hische does beautiful design, illustration and typography. I just clicked and clicked through her site and want to click more but I feel that I should probably do some of my own design homework (eek)! Anyways, here are a few of my favorite things that I just pulled from her site.

 I just love the detail in this piece:

 The colors in this sticker set are basically awesome:

If I could get my aunt's hair salon logo to look this awesome, life would be good:

Here is a beautifully detailed typeface she designed:

And here is a very pretty holiday themed poster, I'm excited for Christmas already: