featured again!

So, apparently my site was featured again, this time on Smashing Magazine under Textures and Pattern Designs Showcase.  What an honor!

As a designer, I find myself feeling like my work isn't quite up to parr, or I get depressed because there are so many designers out there who are so much more talented. So when things like this happen and my work is featured on multiple sites, it's a nice little pick-me-up.  A reminder that I'm on the right track and that those designers who are so much better than me, are actually the same people who are pushing me and motivating me to be a better designer.

So here's to all of the amazing designers in the world who have brought me to where I am and are pushing me to where I am going.

got to have it.

This is a dream come true for any designer.  Genius.

For those of you who are like me and dying to have one, you can get it at Little Factory for $52.00 USD. The scarf is available in Numbers, UpperCase and LowerCase.

I need one.

everyone's a designer.

Sad but true. With the emergence of mainstream design software, everyone has become a designer. Has this affected the perception of the public of what good design really can be? Has this affected the quality of the work actual designers create?

There are so many questions that pop up when you start contemplating the role of 0's and 1's in design. How many designers today have the drawing ability and precision of some of the masters we study in Art History?  Some of the most intricate designs are the illuminated manuscripts from the early ADs.

What about the typographers from the early and mid 1900's? They produced some of the most beautiful typefaces. Typefaces we don't even think twice of using today.

Have we compromised design by making it accessible?

i heart google analytics.

Want a boost?  Install Google Analytics. Submit your site to a few places that hand out web awards. And wallah!  You've got yourself some numbers. Here's some exciting stats from my site for the month of June:

• Unique visitors:  755
• Pages view:  3,222
• Average time on site:  00:01:27
• New visits: 92%
• States that love me the most: Indiana, California, Texas
• Most popular screen resolution:  1280x1024

Google Analytics is so in depth and user friendly that it's easy to become obsessive about checking stats.

the storyboards that wouldn't show.

storyboards & eating raw.

Here are a couple of the storyboards I've been working on in the Storyboarding class I've been taking this summer. It's really exciting for me to see how they are coming along. On this project, I'm experimenting with a style completely different than anything I've ever done, and it feels great! As promised, an update on the "eating raw for one week challenge". I am the type of person who does things in a whim, without much research or thought. As an artist, this can be good. When it comes to other things (such as telling the whole world through your blog that you're challenging yourself to eat raw for one week) it may not be so good. Eating raw lasted close to two days. We realized that it takes a considerable amount of planning (which because I do things on a whim, no planning was involved), money (the walnut tacos, even though they were scrumptious, cost us about $30 to make), and it can be uncomfortable in social situations.

The first day of our raw diet, the design team at Aptera went out to lunch. Being the only girl on the design team, the guys usually decide where we do lunch. We went to a place called Wings & Curls...a restaurant completely devoted to hot wings and fries, and I felt silly ordering a chicken caeser salad, sans the chicken.

After Dan's comment on my "eating raw" post, and Carrie's post "waffling:what should we eat?" and the comments that went along with it, I'm realizing there is a lot more to eating raw than just the fun of using a blender to make dinner, drinking green smoothies, and feeling like you're feeding your body healthy foods.

Eating raw may be something we try in the future out of curiousity, but I have now realized that it's extremely tough, that and it may not be all it's hyped up to be.

got wood?

I'm terribly excited. Today, my website was featured on a new Design Meltdown chapter Got Wood 5. As Patrick says, "Sometimes there is a trend, and sometimes there is a trend. Is the use of wood the new glossy style? It just might be the case. I have noticed for some time now the shift from a technical aesthetic (things like shiny sites, badges, saturated colors etc) to a more organic style (think brown and muted colors, and wood of course).

As I researched my database of sites for this article I couldn't believe how many sites I found that used wood. There were so many I just got tired of looking to be honest. But this wasn't until I had 40 samples to provide here. Which by my standards certainly establishes this as a solid trend.

Sure the style has been around for a long time, in fact it was one of the first articles on Design Meltdown. However, there is a massive surge of design using this style and it easily warrants a fresh collection here on Design Meltdown."

...and I'm number 3!

Yeah!