"You should sell these!!" is what I often hear regarding these made-for-friends projects. But being a business student, there is so much involved with starting a business, building the capital to run a business, finding the time to be able to run the business, marketing the concept, etc. I don't think I'm amped enough to start a magnet-making business. Maybe later it can be a viable idea, but right now I'm not ready to take it live.



On a side note, the "Play-With-Your Friends Dolls" were initially "Play-With-Yourself" Dolls—aptly named so because I made each doll for the person it represented. However, due to the highly suggestive (yet amusing) title, I am forced to reconsider and settle with "Play-With-Your-Friends," which can be more readily marketed to PG audiences without concern. I say PG instead of G because I include a set of beer bottles with the dolls, so I want to warn all parents out there that despite the innocent appearance of the figures, the target audience is college-level students, not kids.

Labels: Business, Illustration, Web

Koa Ridge was the second website I was asked to contribute some website sketches for while interning at Wall-to-Wall. I still felt shaky working on web design (after the Zoombis project) and the timeline required working at a pace faster than I was used to. With encouragement from the other designers and a refresher from Scott on core web typography, I was able to complete the Koa Ridge sketch in the nick of time.

All in all, I think Koa Ridge and Zoombis were really important exercises to force me to improve my web design skills, which are not taught at UH but are essential to commercial graphic design. Additionally, those projects re-sparked my interest in web (used to do it in High School) and inspired me to create this brand new portfolio website.

Labels: Web

When asked to contribute website sketches for Zoombis, I was initially overwhelmed. I hadn't touched web design in more than half a year, and felt a little nervous about the project. My very first draft was very "corporate looking" and boring, and when I reworked it, it still seemed a little bland. The best piece of advice EVER came from Bernard when he said, "Design it like you don't have to build it!" So I thought about it, and to free myself from the difficulties I was having with Photoshop tools, I decided to build my third attempt (above) in Illustrator, where I was more comfortable with the tools and could "sketch" something more quickly without the tools of the program constraining my vision. In the end, my concept probably isn't the most functional, but it was fun to rework, and I'm happy about how much it transformed from the initial sketch.

Labels: Web

Today marks the official start of the website build! While I don't want to show all the ugly mistakes and frustrating broken HTML pages, I can show a few sketches from the early stages of the website:

Early sketch for the index page to test out the color scheme:



Sketch fleshed out. (Later modified because the panels don't serve a function:



Testing out colors for the logo:



New menu for each portfolio section to differentiate this menu from the text-only blog menu:



Goals accomplished with website redesign:
1}Use as many real photographs of work as
2}Incorporate hand-drawn typography
3}Establish a color scheme other than red and black
4}Create and maintain a blog
5}Hand-code CSS/XHTML
6}Include a balance of design and illustration work
7}Be utilitarian, eliminate extras if they serve no purpose

Benchmarks (timeline based on my free time since I have school and work during the day):
Feb 10: Website design begins
Feb 17: Website construction begins
March 16: Work is photographed
Apr 4: Web galleries completed
Apr 13: Entire portfolio section complete
Apr 13: Written content & older blog posts completed
TBA: "Core Competencies" complete, final pieces made
TBA: Official website launch

Labels: Web