Category: Design

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Design challenge, day 7, the tea is silent.

I’ve managed to get through seven whole days of designing something every day. I’m honestly not sure if I’ll be able to keep this up, but I’ll try.

I found this image on http://unsplash.com/ and saw the quote somewhere. The combination reminds me of when I used to really take my time to set up my tea, to steep it properly, make sure the water was the exact temperature it should be for the type of tea. And I really remember these moments to be silent. There’s something about the ceremony of it that takes you out of the world and holds you in that moment. (Or maybe I’m too in love with my tea.)

Tea is drunk to forget the din of the world. ~T'ien Yi-heng

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Design challenge, day 6, designing a staff page.

As a web designer, I’m often challenged with tasks such as creating About pages and Staff pages for companies. I thought I’d try a Doctor Who themed staff page, where the company (TARDIS) is selling companions for time/space travel trips.

I’m staying within my 800×800 square design challenge space, so I just cut off the page at Amy and it only includes the “meat” of the page, not a website header, navigation, etc.

Each employee shows their name, job title, a unique identifier in red (each employee could be called out depending on their skills), and a mini bio.  I included a subtle call to action at the top of the page. And if you were to hover over any part of a team member’s bio, a call to action would popup to book a trip with them.

In working through this challenge, I realize that I often forget to include call to actions on a Staff page. For service based clients (which we often have), this is definitely a missed opportunity.

Doctor Who, TARDIS staff, web design

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Design challenge, day 5, Carl Sagan’s ultimate pie

Tried to do something different from the illustrations today.

Reading Cosmos really changed the way I thought about the world and what lies beyond it. It made me feel small in that good way that you feel small standing next to the Grand Canyon.

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
– Carl Sagan

I love this quote. People are always trying to be cute when you say you made something from scratch. “Did you grow the wheat?” And Carl Sagan went billions and billions of steps farther.

I thought about using a sans-serif font – something that says, “Take me seriously, I’m science.” Then I thought about Carl Sagan and, yes, he wanted to be taken seriously, but there was always something light and friendly about his approach to sharing science with the world. I mean, what a cheeky thing to say.

This typeface makes me think of an old, friendly book. The colors remind me of the old Cosmos book we own, printed in the 80’s.

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. - Carl Sagan

Oh, and the photo is of a nebula being burned away by new stars being formed in the middle. Or maybe I’m interpreting this wrong.

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Design challenge, day 4, coffee!

Tried something different today and I’m not sure it works but I’m putting it out there anyway because I want to go to sleep. 🙂

Used the Paper app on the iPad then moved over to Photoshop to rearrange what I sketched. I tried to simplify each luxury as much as possible. Can you still tell what they are?

"What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?

 

“What on earth could be more luxurious than a sofa, a book, and a cup of coffee?…Was ever anything so civil?”

― Anthony Trollope

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Design challenge, day 3, somewhere in the black hills of South Dakota…

This one’s a little morbid.

“Rocky Raccoon” by The Beatles popped into my head today.

I’ve actually never imagined this song to be about a raccoon. Having heard it over and over as a child, I would think that I would have had this whole little fantasy of a little raccoon, trying to gun down another raccoon and win back his little raccoon girlfriend.

But no. Rocky was always a human in my head.

Anyway, I heard the song in my head and started sketching a little raccoon. Then I thought it would be hilarious if Rocky had a giant hole in his chest from Dan (the girlfriend thief) while trying to convince the drunken doctor that he wasn’t hurt at all. Yeah. I’m messed up.

rocky-raccoon-2

Doot doot dodododoot, doot doot dodo. Come on, Rocky boy.

 

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Design challenge, day 2, Dovahkiin.

I couldn’t help but create something silly about Skyrim. I’ve put way too many hours into the game and still play on a fairly regular basis even though the game came out almost 2 years ago. It’s kind of like playing an MMO without the idiots.

someone-stole-your-sweetroll

Anyway… the challenging part of this was actually letting myself use Trajan (because I feel that it’s often overused) and finding a Celtic-inspired font that didn’t look like a smashed sweetroll. Well, that and drawing the sweetroll. These challenges are supposed to take .5-1 hour and both of these have taken about 2-3 hours. I think I need to let go a bit.

Celtic: http://www.fontspace.com/sam-wang/celtic

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Self-imposed design challenge

I’ve decided to challenge myself to try to design something every day. Here’s day one, Doctor Who-inspired.

John and I devoured all seasons of Doctor Who available on Netflix last year. Now we’re waiting on the 50th anniversary episode to air next month. I’m very excited to see John Hurt as the Doctor.

Anyway, wish me luck in my endeavor towards better design!

Bowties are cool.