facebook statuses

I launched facebook statuses anonymously in mid-may of this year, to basically test the waters and see what kind of response I would get. Long story short, I started collecting people's facebook statuses and republishing them as typographic illustrations. Over 170 statuses later, I was hooked. This is my new way of sketching and brain storming. Plus it is really fun to document what people are comfortable sharing with a large percent of the internet population. Below is a favorite / popular one:

Website Make-Over 2009

Since it's officially the first day of Fall I felt like it was appropriate timing to show off a little bit of my spring cleaning...most importantly was my long overdue website re-design. Pictured below is my new site, and after that is a friendly reminder of what my old website / logo looked like.

Also you can visit my new site HERE!

Word it for July: "fly"

Word It Wednesday! (It really is too easy to make these matchy-matchy theme days...)



Another piece for under consideration's word it blog. This month's word "fly" also tailored to my current love affair with vintage airport totes, so the lettering I ended up using is my little nod to those excellent totes from way back when:



The multicolored Pan Am bag can be found on etsy for $22.20
(but you might have to race me for it!)

T.GIF (week two)

In honor of the traditional "TGIF" I will post a few .gif of my patterns every Friday:

T.GIF (week one)

In honor of the traditional "TGIF" I will post a few .gif of my patterns every Friday:

Mac Icon makeovers

A thing I have been wanting to do since I became more tech-savvy with my mac was to customize my dock icons. If for some reason you are not familiar with this, you can do this with both mac (here is a help link from apple) and PC computers! The thing I ultimately learned is: you don't really have to be tech-savvy at all to do this...oops.

Anyway! It is a longer-term goal of mine to create my own set of icons to share with the world, but until then I have found some pretty great options:

- The yellow and bird icons can be found at Pixelgirl, which also has a ton more icon options.

- The cute Boston Terrier icon was custom made by Jennifer "Bagel" Han (she is presently working on an entire set which should be released soon, so keep checking back at her website!)

Word it for May: "here"

I recently completed another piece for under consideration's word it blog. I love how basic the words end up being, which really leaves you open for any solution. I had been meaning to try some clean hand lettering using illustrator for a while, so I used this as a chance to experiment.

Vote for Kid Baltimore

Once upon a time I posted about my day as an intern with Spur Design (where I now happily work full time!) Well, over the weekend I was pleased to find out that Kid Baltimore, another blog maintained by Spur's co-owners Joyce Hesselberth and David Plunkert (wow...do I have enough links yet?) has been nominated for Nickelodeon's Parents Pick for the Baltimore, Maryland area! So without further explanation, please suppose us and vote!

PS - you can vote once everyday until July 15th! Thanks for the support!

Yes, I have a twitter

Honestly, most of the time I don't think I can ever answer what it is that I am exactly doing...But! I will keep you posted on things I like (L O S T) / hate (nicolas cage) and give you reminders when I have posted new patterns...seriously, what more could you ask for?

You can "follow" me HERE

Current Obsession, Boston Terriers

(image via cute overload, via Sarah Serata)

Really it is dogs in general, but after a lot of research on the perfect apartment-sized dog for me I am officially settling on the Boston. So, now I am on the lookout to adopt sometime soon-ish?



I am also going to take a moment to plug kelly lasserre, who did this illustration above for me in honor of my crazy spring obsession (I named him BLT, "Boston Lasserre Terrier", it's perfect really). Check out her blog HERE or her webiste HERE. She has been taking illustration requests from a few friends so check out her updates!

Word It

One of Under Consideration's many sister / sub-sites "Word It" has entered my radar. It's a very similar set-up to that of the well known "Illustration Friday" site, but the submitters seem to be much broader. Participation is really simple, submit an image that follows the word theme (which changes monthly, currently its "transition") and wait for it to be posted! A great way to jump back into quick sketches and a nice way to self-promote as well (you can include a link to your personal website which will be added along with your submission).

Below is what I submitted last night. I have always loved the periodic table, so this month's word was a great excuse to reference the periodic table's design.

Wordle from this blog!

"Wordle is a toy for generating 'word clouds' from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes." - explanation taken from wordle site

So I decided to take part in this interactive project and here is a sampling taken from this blog 70 most frequently used words. I am pleased to know that I talk about patterns & design most!

favicon.cc

Are we seeing a small trend? favicon.cc is by far the most efficient way to test and design a favicon for your website. Even animated ones!



Favicons are one of my favorite website embellishments, and while working on some site updates I came across this site and fell in love with its quick and easy process. It already gives you a transparent background to work with, it saves your most recent color selections AND it allows you to easily animate! Much like the bgMaker (described below) you can watch your favicon being generated as you work (example pictured above).

bgMaker

Background maker allows you to create a simple web background



All you need to do is design one swatch (seen above), pixel by pixel. You can easily change the dimensions of the square, select web friendly colors and watch your pattern develop as you work. It's been around for a while, but I have been playing with it a lot recently and decided to share. I plan to do more, there is something so nice about small pixel designs.

Kid Baltimore

I currently am working as a design intern for Spur Design. My first project was to design a playful banner for the site Kid Baltimore, a blog devoted to family activities, projects and trips. Feel free the check it out, below is the final design currently in use.



The entire design was built using illustrator, and orange icon is meant to be changed depending on the season.