Getting my hands dirty, at long last

Graphic designers use computers all day long at work, which is a reality that I wouldn't have easily anticipated when coming out of school oh so many years ago. When I chose the graphic design field, it was because it promised a desirable balance of tech and traditional art/illustration. Even in the first decade of my career, there were still light tables, drafting tables and markers within our offices. Not so anymore. Along the way, illustrating by hand became more or less economically unfeasible—on the computer it's so much faster and accurate, easier to make revisions, and much less messy. Customers these days have no idea what to think if presented with a preliminary sketch (I learned the hard way a few years ago), they expect to see a "final" illustration and still be able to easily and quickly make major revisions to it.

I miss traditional drawing media and the hand-eye precision it requires, the happy accidents and discoveries you make along the way. I'm resolving to not eliminate creating original works of art from my personal work, at the very least; and, I'm trying something new, a technique outside my comfort zone. I'm taking a semester-long, studio art class to learn screenprinting. Thinking back, the last art class I'd taken that was more than a day-or-two-long workshop was back in 1997. Yikes.

After attending one of those workshops a while back, a hands-on screenprinting demo, I was excited by how easy it seemed to create a lovely product from a simple stencil. Revved with enthusiasm, I asked for a screenprinting kit as a birthday gift. I gave it a try at home and was quickly intimidated by the kit. It came with too few instructions and several mysterious solvents and chemicals. There were too many opportunities to fail without any knowledge base to troubleshoot from. Even though I tried to invite some printing-experienced friends over to help me get over my hang-ups, the craft-dates didn't materialize; I had screenprinting paralysis. The kit started to gather dust.

My first class was this past Monday night. The instructor gave us some history of screenprinting, having herself learned the technique in its American heyday back in the late '60s, early '70s. We started out with cutting a simple design out of freezer paper, attaching the freezer paper to a screen, and printing our stencil using a mix of three or more colors across the screen. We got to the business of creating our designs rather late in the class, but thankfully, I'd brought a sketchbook that had some drawings in it from when I was designing Dash's raccoon doll and was able to get something down on paper quickly. Wrapping my head around making a stencil with the appropriate negative and positive cutouts for my sketch was a little tough that late at night (the class is from 7 to 10 p.m.), but I managed it. I finished seven raccoon prints and cleaned everything up just after class officially ended. (Photos to come—sorry, we were so pressed for time, I wasn't able to get my camera-phone out with paint-splattered fingers.)

I have homework for next week's class—coming up with a high-contrast grayscale (or straight black and white) design to print out on a transparency. Looking forward to it!

Flash Cards for Kid's Lunches

I was reading an article on Asha Dornfest's Parent Hacks blog asking parents to discuss a topic dear to my heart: How to get your child to eat more of her school lunch?

Dash just started Kindergarten and while we don't yet know if he will be too busy socializing to eat his lunch (likely!), we do know that Rosie has brought home many an uneaten lunch. We have taken some steps to keep this from happening, but it's just frustrating as a parent to find that your lovingly packed lunches get ignored or discarded. I was reading through the insightful comments and saw some parents were recommending that your child pack his own lunch. My first reaction was, forget that! My kids are too young/irresponsible/unmotivated and then I stopped myself.

While they might not yet be able to physically pack their lunches, they can certainly get involved! Since Rosie eats about 50 foods total (not including variations on chocolate), we have already been to a nutritionist. I have detailed lists [OCD-alert] of her foods broken down by their nutrient content. I decided that my best option would be to make flash cards with delicious-looking images of the foods on them (because Dash is not reading—yet)!

I took my lists, my graphic design skillz (practically applied—I'm just making usable items here), and made some decisions on how to structure the cards for the kids' use. Then, I stayed late at work to print them out. Pictured is one of three pages from my layout. While the food pyramid at USDA's website is helpful, the group-breakdowns weren't set up for balancing a lunch for kids. There is a lot of information there, go look if you want.

Here's my structure. I set up five categories for the kids to pick one or two each (with guidance that they needed to have at least one from EACH number group), color-coded them, and added where they fell in the USDA Groups set up:

1. main course items, purple; my main course foods have the most protein, come from the USDA's meat/beans/nuts/seeds group and will help to keep my kids' energy levels high.
2. fruits and veggies high in vitamins, red for fruit and green for vegetables; many of these foods are raw, just how my kids like them.
3. side items, orange; are often from the grains group, but might also be a vegetable with a lower vitamin count.
4. snack foods, white; treat items with higher sugar, mostly chocolate-flavored for my kids (#4 will be first to get eliminated if a previous lunch has #1-3 come home uneaten!).
5. drinks, blue; my kids drink white or chocolate milk or water, no juices, so easy pickins here.
   

The kids were super-excited about the cards last night and wanted everything, but remember where this post started? They weren't finishing what they were getting. In fact, Rosie hadn't eaten her main course from the prior day (edamame, which is a favorite), so she didn't get a #4 today. Here's what they picked for today's lunches, with a quick addition of pizza for Dash:



**DISCLAIMER** These cards are for my personal use; I am not selling them and many of the images I used are FPO and not licensed. Were I to sell them, I would either shoot new images or legitimately purchase the photo licenses from the image owners.

Nylonthread, selling her wares (in public!)

My new business card, do you like it? Designing this card is only one of many reasons I've been a little quiet lately.

Heedless of my better judgment, two weeks ago I signed up to be a craft vendor at a local holiday bazaar. I'm now two days and counting till my act must be together. I haven't done anything like this in 12 years (and even then, I shared a booth with a more experienced jeweler who has since made a very successful career of it).

For those of you who are local, here are the details:

October 25th, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
2008 Holiday Craft Bazaar
Good Shepherd Catholic Church
8710 Mount Vernon Highway
Alexandria, VA 22309

I'll have everything that's up on my Etsy site and more! This past weekend, I scoped out another craft event to get some ideas and a few things stuck with me: dramatic colors and interesting displays helped set off the items for sale; many of the vendors didn't have business cards (hence my newly designed card above); and also the vendors who had items that I was interested in did not accept credit cards. I hardly ever carry cash, and I know many people who don't as well, so I will be using Propay.com (recommended by users on a Etsy listserve I belong to) to accept credit and maybe make a few more sales that way.

Wish me luck, and stop by if you're local.

Lurkers De-Lurk!

Hi everyone, It's officially "tied to my apron strings" De-Lurk day! Just pretend that Aimee's graphic actually says January 11th, okay? Thanks.

I may regret this, but I've changed the comment feed to accept anonymous commenters, so feel free to overwhelm me with your love. Obviously, if your particular idea of affection includes spam, I will be forced to return to my "registered users only, includes OpenID" filter.

Welcome!

Today I am working from home and realizing two major issues that I have to add to my proposal for serious telework.
1. I need high-speed Internet. I had to upload/email a 2.7 MB file and it took 20 minutes. See what I mean?

2. I need a second phone line for the computer's phone connection. While my cell technically does work from my basement office if I stand on the table near the window, that is not useful if my customer wants to give me changes on the fly while I input them.

Art Nouveau image request

Say, here's a request to all you image junkies out there: I have been looking for an art nouveau-style image of a dragonfly.


It seems that the most popular art nouveau motifs are flowers, vines, flowing fabrics, flowing hair, abstract curvilinear patterns, female figures, really fascinating typography, and astounding architectural details.


Insects, especially dragonflies, seem to me to be well suited to this style of art, with their intricate tracery in the wings, and the tapered symmetry of their bodies. Nevertheless, I have not found any satisfactory images.


I am close to attempting to draw what I have in mind myself, but for that, I would want a sample of something similar. Anyone interested in helping me with research? It's purely personal.

Halloween Windows!

I found this crazy-wonderful idea at Aimee's site! Make cut-outs of Halloween-themed shapes, backlight your window (we have fabric pleated blinds that let light through) and you have a scary scene. I love it!

When I finally got my act together to cut out the shapes, I didn't have any reference shapes to trace, and very little time, so I just free-handed the shapes quickly and went for it. I tried to make a stencil-look for BOO on the ghost, but it looks a bit more like 300. Just imagine that it really says Boo, okay? Thanks.

Dover Design Thursday!

Today, I give you peacocks (because Dash loves them; they are beautiful, delicate and curious birds):

In Greek mythology, Hera, the Queen of the Olympian gods and goddesses, commanded Argus to watch over Io. Io was a woman with whom Zeus - the ruler of the Olympians - had conducted a passionate love affair. However, in order to protect his mistress from the wrath of his wife, Zeus had transformed Io into a heifer. So Hera, who was quite clever, had Argus guard her rival, the heifer Io. Zeus was not pleased. He sent the god Hermes to dispatch the monster. Hermes managed to subdue Argus, and here the details differ depending on the source of the myth. Some sources suggest that Hermes lulled Argus to sleep, while others state that Hermes killed the monster.

So in the end, the nearly perfect guard creature was defeated by the wit and cunning of Hermes. Hera paid tribute to Argus by placing his eyes into the tail of the peacock, her favorite bird. In this way, Argus was immortalized, his eyes adorning the feathers of Hera's peacock.

According to some superstitions, the "eyes" on the peacock's feathers are the "evil eye" so, if you place peacock feathers in your home you will never have privacy. Kelly, I don't think that applies for paintings of peacocks, but with kids, who has any privacy anyway?

Thursday is Dover Picture Day!

Kelly's "happy birthday mom" post, featuring a Dover Design Sampler image of a Marc Chagall painting inspired this post (and I have serial intentions!). I get the Dover sampler weekly and download every last JPEG they send.

The images are beautiful, weird, historic, cute, or sometimes just confusing. Here is one that caught my eye for you today:



While we were visiting with AJS's mom (Grandma I-ko, to Dash) last weekend, he brought out this wonderful tome of Vintage Advertising cuts that had belonged to his dad. It was gorgeous! It was such a fantastic snapshot of Victorian design sensibilities, for fashion and graphics, I just wanted to rush home, scan each page and create an online archive. But, who has time for that sort of thing? There were all sorts of corset ads, not unlike this one, that AJS said he quizzically (or lasciviously) viewed many a time as a young boy.

Corsets are just fascinating creations altogether...they are just one of many, many fashion items that you only need to give a sideways glance and label, "a woman did not have anything to do with this idea."

Career meme

Here's a meme I found on Molly & Kelly's blogs. What's amazing to me is that my first declared major in college was Industrial Design and that's what came up as my #1. Maybe I shouldn't have dropped it? My chosen career was down at #18, which isn't too bad, really. I have actually gained income from working in #s: 3, 7, 9-11, 16-20, 26-27, and 32. I would have loved a career as a medical illustrator, but my history of fainting at the sight of blood would have gotten in the way.

Instructions to the Career quiz at Careerbuilder.com:

a. Go to http://www.careercruising.com/.
b. Put in Username: nycareers, Password: landmark.
c. Take their "Career Matchmaker" questions.
d. Post the top-whatever results

1. Industrial Designer
2. Interior Designer
3. Website Designer
4. Fashion Designer
5. Cabinetmaker
6. Model Maker
7. Animator
8. Electronics Assembler
9. Sign Maker
10. Desktop Publisher
11. Cartoonist/Comic Illustrator
12. Office Machine Repairer
13. Costume Designer
14. Set Designer
15. Makeup Artist
16. Multimedia Developer
17. Exhibit Designer
18. Graphic Designer
19. Artist
20. Computer Animator
21. Musical Instrument Builder and Repairer
22. Bicycle Mechanic
23. Furniture Finisher
24. Potter
25. Boilermaker
26. Picture Framer
27. Craftsperson
28. Welder
29. Upholsterer
30. Tilesetter
31. Medical Illustrator
32. Jeweler
33. Cable Installer and Repairer
34. Carpenter
35. Electrician
36. Security Systems Technician
37. Autobody Repairer
38. Plumber
39. Gunsmith
40. Dental Lab Tech

SAVE THE SPINDLE!!

I just learned that this hilarious and attractive piece of pop art located in the Chicago suburb of Berwyn, IL is planned to be demolished. What a damn shame!

The "Spindle," affectionately known by Chicagoland residents as the "Car Kabob" was created by artist Dustin Shuler in 1989. The site owner planned to bulldoze it to build a Walgreens, but a local activist group drew attention to the sculpture's plight. On Friday, July 27th, 2007, The Chicago Critical Mass rode to the Spindle in an effort to raise awareness surrounding the sculpture. Around 2,000 cyclists made the 14.8 mile trek from Daley Plaza in the Loop in support of the artwork.

According to Wikipedia, the mayor of Berwyn, IL has agreed to move the sculpture down the road, but this has not been confirmed.

Go here for more information about saving the Spindle.

Photo credit: Sean Gallagher

Visible life alteration

Whaaa? Are those mountains shaped like mammaries? And they're erupting with.... ack!

Pregnancy and childbirth have made a huge impact on the work of these friends of mine.

Jeff and Ellen are couple that live and work in Boston as fine artists; they both went to college with me. As far as I've been keeping track of them, Jeff's work has been clever and funny, making homages to Japanese horror movies with animated vegetables, or poking fun at commercially packaged foods, while Ellen's has touched on explorations of many different subjects, many of them dealing with strangenesses in the world and bringing them into sharp focus, with humor.

Close to a year ago, they had a child; during Ellen's pregnancy, she was in awe of the bizarre transformations going on with her body, and these changes inspired her sculpture.

"Boob balls" and




"this little piggy goes to market" are other work that were focused on her impending motherhood.

Having gone through this experience twice myself, I completely understand the fascination with bodily changes, and applaud the Warmouth/Wetmores' hilarious and attractive pieces!

Yet another casualty of tax hikes: Franz Bader Books

AJS has been keeping me apprised of skyrocketing property assessments for businesses across DC, telling me about how the owners of The Black Cat are wondering how they are going to stay in business and is very concerned about how any small or start-up business is going to survive. One of our favorite long-time restaurants, AV Ristorante Italiano, closed its doors in July (but was bought out, a related exception). Will all the eclectic, fun, and colorful places we love around DC fold and be replaced by Globalized, soul-less chains?

This hit home for me today in a different way today. I was referring a co-worker with a high-school-aged son (who has an artistic bent, but needs some guidance) to Franz Bader Books, a wonderful, small, art-and-design bookstore (est. 1963) that's close to GWU's campus downtown. While searching for the street address, I found Jerry Lebo's blog and learned that it's CLOSING. This year. Within months.

If this is so widespread, what will DC look like in a few years? Will we even recognise it?

Here's a link from DCist.com that tells you how AJS really feels.

Helvetica turns 50

Max Miedinger.

Eduard Hoffmann.

Rock stars they are not. Nevertheless, in 1957 these Swiss typeface designers created a sans-serif that shaped our world. In high school, I used press-on type sheets labeled "Helvetica" (and thought, WTF does that mean?) for random projects. In my Advanced Typography college courses, we were given multiple heirarchy-building projects that used every weight and nuance of Helvetica imaginable. Helvetica got me my first design job.

And now there's a movie about it!

Even so, it's not my favorite typeface. Most electronic versions of it, especially on PCs, have awful kerning and spacing issues, like the programmer just didn't feel the love. I am still all about giving the props to the designers! However we butcher Helvetica 50 years later is not their fault.

Gaaack?!?

And, whaaaa? After staring at the graphic for several minutes and trying to glean a deeper meaning from the British 2012 Olympics' new logo, I have come to a conclusion. There is none. The hot pink disaster is a jaggy, "extreme," stacked-and-teetering version of the numerals 2,0,1, and 2.

No epilepsy here, but the ick-factor is hurts mi brain.

Playset design for beyond preschool

Our kids love our playset right now, as all the research and development for its particular design and function is for ages 3 to 10 years. We had friends over for a Memorial Day barbecue yesterday, and our friends brought their children. With the exception of Daniel (6 months), all the kids that were over were in the optimal age range for enjoyment of our swingset/slide playset, although at 8-almost 9-years, the entertainment factor is pushing it for Kira. In fact, at 18 months (and not officially in the bracket) Liam was arguably having the most fun of all! Dash just marched around and claimed ownership of everything ("mine swing!"), kind of spoiling his own enjoyment, but that's part of being two years old, right? Lila figured out how to flip around on the trapeeze, which Rosie has been happy to just dangle from; kudos, you coordinated little flower!

So, what is there when your 8 to 12 year-old is bored with your playset that was designed to keep a 4 year-old entertained? Some architects and conceptual artists envision "new spaces to stimulate the imagination (and the metabolism) by encouraging exploration and free play."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/29/opinion/29arieff.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

The writer mentions that she has asked other designers for input. I'll keep my eyes peeled.