Vote for me! (Not for my ads)

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So as I wrote last time, the campaign advertisements that I saw while in the Boston area for work screamed at me. They screamed a lot of things actually, but the loudest cries were “Help! I need a better campaign manager!” “Guess what side I’m on!” & “Orange just SCREAMS U.S. Government!”

Granted, not all of the signs in the area made me question the candidate’s seriousness in running for office (take Mr. D’Arcangelo’s blue ditty in the background) but a good majority of them made me question whether or not the United States flag had suddenly changed from it’s lovable red, white and blue to some strange combination of lilac, black and orange. I even started to question what the Massachusetts state flag looked like. Maybe the state decided to pay homage to the pilgrims, indians and turkeys of the first Thanksgiving and adopted such colors into their flag.

There IS yellow, but aside from that, blue and white are pretty standard colors.

I just can’t fathom how someone that is of right mind to run for mayor (you know, the person that runs an entire town. Possibly up to a few thousand people. Some might say their lives are pretty dependent on the way they performs their job and the decisions that they make) would think that a sign like this would engage me enough to go down on Super Tuesday and check off the little box next to their name.

If I was a NY Knicks fan this would be a completely different story. Or if I was totally into chowin’ down on a bowl of Tony the Tiger’s Frosted Flakes every morning. Or maybe even if I was color blind. He or she does have some decent typography working on this sign, so maybe being color blind would help convince me of this sign. I’m also the type of person that likes to know the name of the person running for office. Is this Mr. or Mrs. Christenson? Do I know this member of the family? Have they done something to tick me off in the past so badly that they can’t put their identity on their sign?

With that thought, I have to give a little bit of credit to the next candidate, “Mister” Spadafora.

I’m sorry, what? Are you in the process of changing your name to something that cannot be tied to your criminal past? Get a crazy DUI back in college and want us to still believe you’re awesome enough to be our councillor-at-large (does anyone know what a “councillor-at-large” is, even? There has to be a more official name than this, right?)? Although I will give “Craig” some credit, I did spot another sign for his campaign which did not include the character-building quotation marks, and another color blind candidate included the title councillor-at-large on their sign.

Just incase that’s not enough for ya! Here’s one more!

Gladys does look best when she wears maroon and lilac, but when she wears 4 different colors it all just gets jumbled together. And Gladys, what did they teach you in school about outlined text?

If I lived in the area and had to vote on a candidate purely based off of the campaign ads that I saw, I think I would have to go with dear Barbara Murphy.

Aside from being a little tight in some spots, Mrs. Murphy has managed to not only clearly state her identity and the position she is running for, but she’s also done with while maintaing a color palette that represents the great state of Massachusetts! And if I can read the unofficial election results that I found online correctly, she did in fact win, which kind of makes me happy inside.

Trip to Boston!

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Well, just outside of Boston, really.

For two weeks I freelanced at an integrated marketing agency outside of Boston and it was a great experience both in and out of the office. I’ve never worked at a company that focuses so heavily on marketing, so it was great to see what goes on behind the scenes there. I think the most interesting thing that I learned was that marketing agencies are starting to really utilize social media outlets for customers and engage consumers through various means of social media (from making daily Facebook posts about a companies daily giveaways to creating fun interactive wall posts for consumers to engage with and show how they feel about products).

While up there during week 1 I got to drive around a lot on my way into work and had a half day to myself to explore the area. One of the weirdest things that I saw up there as a graphic designer were the election signs posted in what seemed to be every front yard. Sure, it’s election season for local offices, what’s the big deal about election signs? Well, in the next few days I’m planning on unveiling some of these signs (in no particular order) that I’ve taken pictures of in hopes that you can understand what I feel. A picture is worth a thousand words, right? Well these pictures certainly are, so I’ll let you take a look at them and just for fun, throw in some words of my own to describe them. Please note that i do not support any of these candidates, let alone know who they are. My blog posts do not support them in any way, they are merely sharing the devastation and confusion that I felt upon seeing them.

Stay tuned!

Website updates

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If you’ve gotten to this blog by going through my website you may have noticed that I’ve put up some new projects under PRINT, WEB & IDENTITY. These works were done while freelancing at ASSA ABLOY and are only a few of the many projects that I’ve had the opportunity to work on. I’ll let the pieces speak for themselves, so go check them out!

I’m also slowly in the process of making a new website. I’ve got it made in photoshop, but the fear of having to code everything all over again is really slowing me down. I have some big ideas and I’m probably going to need some help as far as the more intricate coding goes. I might even try to play around with java! Part of me kind of wishes that flash was the “it” thing, but the other part is glad it’s not. Maybe I’ll start poking around with some code after I finish writing this… Maybe…

Reading.

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It’s what you’re doing now, right now, this very second. It might just be what I’m doing, too. Especially since one of my favorite stores, Borders, has closed their doors after nearly 40 years in business. Throughout college I would always enjoy going off by myself to Borders and browsing the aisles and stopping to read the back of a book, and if it seemed interesting enough, a few random pages inside. At my local Borders I would love to sit against the wall between the emergency exit and the tall shelf that held the comedic writings of David Sedaris  (I used his book When You Are Engulfed in Flames for a project in an early design class). I would often find myself in the art section, where I would find a collection of new design books to browse through (to see if they were worth my college student petty cash, it was either read or eat, and I did sometimes get hungry) and somehow I would manage to drag them to my spot on the wall where the cold outside air crept under the poorly insulated door.

I knew I would miss the quiet times at Borders so I used it as justification for buying a large stack of books after they announced their demise. The gift cards that I had been hoarding over the years helped a bit with the damage my wallet received.

And this is only part of it. I went to Borders about 4 times during their store closing sale, the last of which was 3 days before their doors closed for good. I’m currently slowly making my way through the book Freelance Design in Practice by Cathy Fishel (can you find it in the picture?). I can be a really fast reader, but I’ve chosen to read these books slowly because, hey, who likes to say goodbye?

On a brighter side, I can say that I will be visiting the same building where I once sat on the floor for hours on end in Spring 2012 when Connecticut gets it’s first Nordstrom Rack store! Sure it’s not the same, but it will be a nice bandage to ease the pain. :)

Who still cuts paper by hand anyways?

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For some time I’ve been exploring different cut paper projects on the internet and admiring all of the time and hard work that has to have gone into some of the pieces that have a lot of details. I’ve really been having the itch to try some projects that I could possibly try to sell on websites like etsy.com, but remembering the pain that paper cutting causes for your fingers has been holding me back. Until today.

Silhouette SD Digital Craft Cutting Tool (QuicKutz)

I was watching a tutorial on how to make your own custom chipboard letters, because lets face it, why wouldn’t that be something that might turn out to be handy to know how to do one day in the future? Exactly what I thought. So as I was watching, and preparing myself to watch this girl in the video cut some letters with her exacto knife, so totally threw me for a loop and had her handly little printer cut the letters FOR HER!

This blew my mind.

Prior to this I had thought that you had to send out projects to be die cut, or you had to pay at least a couple thousands to purchase your own die cutting machine, but low and behold, you can buy your very own printer that cuts for no more than $250 on Amazon!

I think I might have to start saving up for one of these bad boys. Sure, I’ll start looking into it more and find out if there’s anything better for that price or what a slightly larger one would go for, but I’d be happy with this one!

I can’t help but think “If only Holly knew about this during senior project…”

It’s been another long while..

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I think its safe to say that I find it easier to make current posts about what’s going on in my life when I’m working on a long-term continuous project. That explains why I have been terrible at posting throughout the Spring/Summer. I’m hopefully returning to blogging per the request of one reader, and hopefully as a result of more writing I’ll attract more readers! Knowing that people read what you write is a pretty good inspiration to sit down and do some blogging.

Compared to previous posts that have been strictly about my design endeavors I think I’m going to go out on a limb and change this blog up to include other things. Sure, design is fun to write about, but since this is my blog, I think I should include other aspects of my life in here. I’ve become a big fan of hiking and outdoor activities within the past 3 years, and I think I’ll keep track of some of those moments in my life on here. I’ll also mention the search for more work, and anything else that I see and capture that I think is cool. Odds are if I think its cool, and you’re reading this, you’ll think its (at least a little bit) cool, too!

This past weekend Shaun and I went on a late afternoon hike up Chauncey Peak in Meriden. Not the longest of trails, but for the day after a pig roast it was a good size. The initial vertical climb was more than Shaun had made it seem, but after I got into the groove  of things it was great to push through to the top and just sit and take in the view.

I think we were able to see the top of East Rock, Gillette Castle and we pretended that we were able to see the elevator factory in Bristol. It was nice and breezy at the top, so while I was sitting down, blinking in photos I was able to cool down. It was interesting to just sit up there and watch the towns below, especially when the clouds began to cover the sun and shadows were created in the valley. It reminded me of some sci-fi movie.

New Year News

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Hello! Happy 2011!

The new year has only just begun, but already I can tell that good things are going to happen this year.

I started to apply for jobs at the end of 2010, and I also started to apply for some internships, too. Never hurt to just apply, right? Since then I’ve gone on some interviews, and I’ve been offered a six week internship with a highly regarded Connecticut design firm! Sadly it’s a non-paid position, but I’m excited about the priceless experience that I’m going to gain from my time at the firm. I feel like its going to make me a much more valuable designer and I will learn almost everything that I wanted to learn in school but did not (except for web design stuff, I don’t think I’ll ever manage to learn that unless I take another class on it).

It’s started to snow in Connecticut, and its time to start skiing and snowboarding again! I’ve been fighting a cold for a month now and just this past week it’s turned rather nasty. It’s kept me from the mountain this week, and I’m pretty pissed off about that! Hopefully the medicine that I got today from the walk-in clinic will kick me back into shape so that I can enjoy some trails if not this week, then definitely next weekend. I need to break in the new board that I got at the end of last season, with the sweet dot typography on the bottom :)

Tomorrow Holly and I are going to visit our teacher Mark at his studio and do some catching up, and then we are heading to NYC to take a letter press class! We made christmas cards for Sean from the writing department this past fall, and hopefully this spring we can use our new letter press skills to print some beautiful graduation invitations for him. So exciting!

Motion work

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So I’ve been hunting on both of my computers and external drives to find some motion work to put on my computer. As I’m collecting videos to put online I’m finding it kind of fun to look through my process book for the motion graphics class that I took at UConn. I love the little sketches that I made to put in my book and the fact that I went back after initially drawing them to re-draw them in two colors to better show how action would take place.

Despite how much time and dedication it took to make a motion piece in class, I would love to be able to have the opportunity to work with after effects or a similar program again for work purposes. It’s hard work, but in the end it really pays off and is fun to share with others! Check my portfolio site for updates!