inspiration to share

I used to work at a retail shop where we got a lot of unusual items in. I made sure to keep a list of the companies so that I knew where to find the items they produce in the future.

Whether they are greeting cards or fabrics, many of these provide a great deal of inspiration to me.

Here are just a few of the links:

Knock Knock

Chicago Textiles

Flight 001

Quotable

TrollBeads

Enjoy!

what a week, what a week.

so, it's been a very rough week for me. i've been trying to give a lot of thought to what i want to do an imovie project on, however, my mind has been elsewhere this week.

My grandparents, aunt and uncle from Vermont came to Maryland for a mini-vacation this past weekend. They very rarely leave the state of Vermont, so I was rather excited about their visit.

Very early Sunday morning, my grandfather was rushed to the hospital with chest pains and it was determined he had a heart attack. Monday he was transferred to Washington Hospital Center in DC where they did a cathederization on him that afternoon. The test revealed he was a walking time bomb and a triple bypass was scheduled for him on Tuesday.

Tuesday, he had the surgery, however, when the surgeon comes to talk with us after the surgery, he tells us they ended up doing 5 bypasses! Nevertheless, the surgeon says his heart is strong and the surgery went well. Before we left that night, we got to see him. He was in the cardiovascular recovery room, still hooked up to a ventilator and was unable to hear us. I have to say, that is one of the most heart-wrenching things I have ever had to see.

Today, my grandmother, aunt, uncle and father went to see him. He is doing well. He was up walking around and may be able to come 'home' by Sunday! He'll recover at my parents house for a few weeks and they'll return to Vermont when he's able to travel.

Being someone who has never lost anyone close to them, this experience has really had a huge impact on me. I have really been thinking about a lot of things lately.

I could go on forever with all the emotions I have been experiencing lately, so I'll stop there. While I haven't decided what I want to do my movie on just yet, I'm seriously trying to figure out a a way to incorporate my grandparents into the project. Any suggestions or thoughts?

show & tell: interesting typography

I just realized that I let Stephanie borrow my show and tell magazine from this week so I was unable to scan in the ad I showed in class. However, I was able to find a similar ad for the same product (Extensis Suitcase Fusion), just a different scene.

I love the look of putting typography together to form a picture, though, I've never done a project like this for a class, but as Amy said, it's a standard project for a typography class. I hope that I will get to do something like this in a future class at UB.

autism in the news...

While on the internet last night, the above story caught my eye on Yahoo. The website that has posted the videos showing autism's 'red flags' is that of the organization I chose to 'represent' in my campaign project. The videos on their site shows two clips -- one of each child asked to do/play with identical toys, one child was 'normal' while the other had been diagnosed with autism. The video on Yahoo's site interviewed various medical professionals who were worried that these videos would cause panic in parents.

This is the same issue I had with the text I initially wrote for my campaign. The problem is, the warning signs could in fact be autism, or it could be that your child is just a bit slower than the next, or it could even be some other illness.

My initial idea included photos of kids looking sad (I know, I know, no sad children!) and there were headlines like 'No big grins from Travis yet? Is he just not ready to smile or is it autism?' Obviously, my intent was never to make parents paranoid that their kid might have autism, but my small group suggested I take a different approach to the assignment all together. I put it aside a few days and I took into considerations the suggestions from my group and I opted for a 'happy children' approach, with parents looking back on when they first noticed something was wrong with their children, and the proactive steps they took to get to the bottom of the problem. I definitely think this works a lot better.

show & tell: list of favorite words

My favorite words include words that make me happy, inspire me, or remind me of certain people/occasions:

-Dream
-Star
-Create
-Friends
-Imagine
-Sleep
-Money
-Go
-Fun
-Happy
-Travel
-Perhaps
-Actually
-Apple
-Green
-Chaos
-Fabulous
-Fo shizzle
-Othorhinolaryngologist

this is what we have to look forward to...

I stumbled across a blog that had posted this link to statistics from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health which shows the rate of depression in adults employed full-time. Unfortunately, the design industry is number 5 on the list.

I guess that makes sense though -- there are constantly deadlines, last minute edits at the request of your client, indecisive clients, etc.

I noticed that a lot of the comments on this blog I found were from folks that had been designers that had transferred over into production. They still designed on the side, but were able to be a bit more selective in what jobs they took, so that they could really put their creativity into their work.

Briefly after I graduated, I took a temp job in Alexandria, VA at the American Physical Therapy Association as Assistant Production Manager of their two publications. I really loved the work I did there, but the 2 hour commute was a bit more than I could handle! That is definitely one career path I wouldn't mind getting back into. Maybe someday I'll do that again and do freelance design on the side.

show & tell: classification

Like many people in class, I found my example of classification in Real Simple.

However, the article I had initially picked out was about shoe organizers. The different items they featured in this article could be intermixed into other classifications, so I chose a different article before posting this on my blog.

The article I chose is about tights -- it breaks them down into the following categories: control top, sweater, leggings, regular. The tights are then broken down by the 'winner' in an additional classification - best black, best color, best patterned. I have included a page from the article above.

to feather or not to feather?

Perhaps the decline in the real estate market has got my boss thinking, but lately she's been on a kick about feathering the photos we use in our marketing materials and for the photos of our properties in the MLS. I'm somewhat torn on the idea of 'feathering' these photos -- part of me thinks it does give them an 'elegant' look, but part of me thinks it's somewhat tacky. What do you guys think about this look?