Endings bring beginnings

Life had been kind of stressful lately. The semester is almost up and so will end the original purpose of this blog. I'm not deleting it, nor am I going to stop posting. Rather, the blog will have a new sort of purpose. I suppose I need some creative outlet for my life still. I might post poetry or sketches, maybe some previews of my artwork, because I plan on spending a good portion of this summer painting and such.

John and I have also been spending a lot of time talking lately, about us, about ourselves, about whether or not we're able to reach our full potential without first taking the time to figure out who we are as individuals. It's been a long and ongoing conversation. We both still need to do a lot of introspection before we reach a conclusion about any of it.

During these conversations though, he gave me an idea, and it's one that has lodged itself into my brain. It would combine my love for traveling with my desire to code and design web sites and such for a living. Either as an individual (or even a student organization) we could raise money to go over to developing countries and help plan, build and implement online solutions for businesses just starting out. It's still a young idea and it will require a lot of research and development, but it's something I think could work.

Trident Billboard

This billboard was dreamed up by myself and my lovely boyfriend who's ridiculous in some aspects and genius in others. It was for an extra credit assignment, where we had to create a billboard for any packaged consumer good. I don't know why I went with Trident, I think it was John's idea. We were playing off Poseidon's trident and the symbol of power it is and how Trident's gum has "the power to clean" your teeth and such.

The only thing my professor said was wrong with it, was that the product needed to be bigger. I probably could've used a larger version of it down in the right hand corner instead of just the logo as well.

Better luck next time I guess!

So while surfing the internet (like I usually am) I came across this banner and was thoroughly amused by it:

First of all, I love the comic/Lichtenstein throw-back idea and although the font-choice is horrible, I do enjoy the Excel joke.

P.S. I hate Excel.

Extra Credit Billboard

Our latest extra credit assignment was to create a billboard that promoted any Michigan based farmer market or cooperative. I chose the Detroit Eastern Market because it's more local to my location and it's not something many people know about. When people think of Detroit, farmer's markets are not exactly what comes to mind.

TEDxUofM

I officially applied for a spot at the 2011 TEDx conference at the University of Michigan this year. I'm super excited for it. John spoke so highly of the event last year, and I can only imagine that it's going to be a great experience. Having the opportunity to listen to such innovative and motivational speakers might be exactly what I need to get my own projects rolling again.

Six-word pic

This assignment was probably the most fun, mostly because it allowed us to just goof off, or actually take it seriously. We had to create a six-word story about our interpretation on the word "relationship". Considering I'm in a relationship that has lasted a year so far, I felt like my interpretation could be taken in the most literal sense. Here's what I came up with.

(Original picture credit: ThePuzzleGuy's Etsy Shop)

P.S. I love you babe. <3

Facebook Causes Promo

Extra Credit assignments, aren't they god-like?

For this particular one, my group and I had to create a Facebook Cause promoting some kind of environmental group. We made up our own group called "GreenSpot", a group dedicated to cleaning up the local streets that have been littered with trash by the students.

We designed our own logo, as shown below and justified it with it's simplicity and potential to be printed on tshirts, bin tags, etc.

Since the group isn't real (yet, my boyfriend and I have thought about starting it) we deleted the cause, but below is a screen shot of it.

Sweet Polly's Web Design

My mother has assigned me the project of creating her new bakery's web site. I'm quite thrilled as I really love web and graphic design more than anything else. These are some of the ideas I was dreaming up (while in class today). Hopefully Adler doesn't mind. The class is about being creative anyway, right? It's better I'm daydreaming ideas then listening about his former students.

Anyway, here's the photos of my journal, the sketches and the scrapbooked version. I wanted some ideas as to colors. Since Sweet Polly's colors are something of the pea green and dark purple area. I've also had the font types I messed around with. My plan was to screen-capture the site as I was making it, but the software I have is a demo and therefore adds a gross watermark to it. Bleck! I'll screencap the finished project when I'm done though!

Keep Calm and...

I feel like I want to make some of my own parody posters of these. Maybe I'll do that soon. For now, I really just need to focus on designing my mother's bakery site. That would be good...

Extra Credit Assignment

Today I worked with Ryan on an extra credit assignment for class. Our prompt was to create a 8.5x11 page advertisement that promoted the idea of "smart growth" and pointed the reader to organizations providing more information.

This is what we came up with:

 

Note: Smart Growth Online and Smart Growth America logos are credited to their respective companies. We did not create them, but used them for academic purposes only.

Creative Performance Group Project

The next assignment for class was our Creative Performance. It had to be a public performance of any sort, there were no other specifications for it. I decided to do a group project, and what started with just Bethany, Andy, Ryan and myself quickly turned into an almost entire class group project. Apparently nobody else wanted to come up with something (aka be creative) so they took up our offer and joined in The Wave.

All of us took to the street and lined up, doing the wave at passing cars while Andy video-recorded us and took pictures. It was pretty funny/decently successful. The more people who we got to join in, the more points we earned. Needless to say: full credit.

More pictures can be seen at the Facebook event linked above.

App Store Ad

So last night, I was bored. I was lying around in bed, with nothing to do. All of my friends had homework and such that they were working on, so I wasn't sure what to do with myself. I was watching Lost and doodling on my hand with a pen I'd found in my bed (weird, right?). My Twitter status read: "I have too much time on my hands". And then I had this weird little idea for an advertisement.

People are always writing things on their hands, little reminders to do stuff, etc. I do it all the time, everyone I know does it, and how am I going to solve my problem of remembering something, of finding things, etc. other than an app for my iPhone. God knows I'm reliant on it for everything else. So here's a little creative concept to go along with the campaign Apple already has going, followed by the mock ad I made, and an actual Apple advertisement for the App Store.

 

Personal Identity Collage

The first assignment for ADV 220 was to create a "professional identity collage". I don't think I really succeeded in getting what my professional identity was, but I had fun messing around in Photoshop making the collage. Perhaps I should work on developing the concept behind my professional identity a little more...