Health and Work

For the past couple months I experienced some health issues. I got very sick after the work I had in the last week of October and first week of November. It was a cold that lasted at least 16 days. I stopped counting around then and I know it lasted a bit longer, as well. When I got over my cold, I began to feel really awful pain in my right eye. It felt like pressure, I suppose. It was mild irritation every now and then and often happened later into the night so the assumption was it had been caused by strain and being on the computer too much. As time went on, I discovered it was getting worse. The pain was now more unbearable than ever, happend CONTINUOUSLY throughout the day, every day, and at the START of the day. I would keep the eye closed in hopes it’d relieve the pain but it didn’t.

Soon I found myself having both eyes closed and when I was with  friend I would hold onto their arm while standing blind. Spent much of my time laying down and trying to rest my eyes. I did have two eye appointments to see what was wrong but recieved no negative results. Eye are healthy, thankgod. NOTE: My biggest fear, besides death, is blindness. It’s crippling. The belief right now is that it was caused by some sort of sinus infection(hence happening after the long cold, which was very bad for the sinus’ for the first week). It started to go away by the last week of December and only hits me now when I’ve been sniffling a lot or sometimes during stress.

ANYWAYS…to the work:

DESIGN

This put a HUGE hold on my work. I HAVE been able to get a couple things done recently, though. The logo help I mentioned last entry has been worked on. I’ve done some concepts and made one into a full vector. I’m not sure I can show that right now so it’ll have to wait till next time. So will the rebranding of our start up company. Expect MDMM to become something else. It took me over a month to think of name then a couple weeks to get a logo and branding plan together. I’m still tweaking things around but I’m pretty happy with it. Safe to say, it has more typography based logo and I’m very pleased with myself on how well it came out. I have fewer typography works, and even less good ones. This one, however, I am confident came out REALLY well.

JEWELRY

I’ve unfortunately not made anything lately but I did make some holiday specific pieces that I tried to sell. A necklace did but nothing else. I do wish it was spring/summer because that’s one of the things I’m most looking forward to: selling downtown. It was such an enjoyable experience last summer and I wish I hadn’t discovered it so late. If things work out I can share a vendor tent with my friend, who taught me what I know, and sell my very small stock with him. See my deviantart for jewelry I’ve made.

and make sure to visit my Etsy shop.

ILLUSTRATIONS

When I started to feel better, though was still sick, I was working on an illustration on and off. I took about 6-7 month break from anything Warcraft related but have gotten into it again. I intend to still try and focus on original pieces, though, as I want to get my series/stories started and all the concepts/designs of those fleshed out.

This picture has been coming along REALLY well. I’m very happy with how the shading is turning out and it’s almost all coloured in, character wise. I still need a background but it got further along than most of my pieces and faster, too. I’d like all my upcoming illustrations to be coloured like this, unless they’re purposely in a simple style.

…

For now it’s a lot of works in progress and I’ll get back to those next entry.

Productive couple of weeks.

Been over a month since my last entry. I can’t actually recall what’s happened in most of that time but I suppose it was, for the majority, spent working on Illustrations since MDMM work was slow.

I’ve had a lot of work in progress pieces that I had to put aside to finish this:

Kyoko redrawn from old concept.

which I showed last time.

JEWELRY

I had to stop going to the Rutland Sunday Flea Market because I wasn’t selling -anything-. I sold $9 worth of stuff on ONE day but I couldn’t afford to keep trying since I had no income. I might go back now, though, since I have a bit of money. I think sales should improve closer to the holiday season. I did make some new pieces closer to the last day there but haven’t really made much since then. See my deviantart for jewelry I’ve made.

ILLUSTRATIONS

As I said, I’ve had a lot of work in progress pieces, as in illustrations. I did complete one fan work for a comic artist and writer:

Emma and Warrick from Namesake.

And these were the WIPs I had to hold off on to finish other work.

This one has nearly all it’s basic lineart done, however I am NOT happy with the certain parts, particularly the feet. I’ll likely have to do things over somehow.

Character redesigns from a personal startup series called KissxssiK.

And this was a sketch I did later on that was intended to be a bigger picture but ended up just being 3 couples. The ink lineart is actually already halfway done but I stopped because I wanted to finish the above picture first. This has a much smoother sketch illustration so it’ll be easier to complete.

Characters from the long going story concept, Unlock. Left to right: Shiruva, Mugon, Kyoko, Kei, Mana and Kan.

These both were put aside while I finished the first image, the Kyoko piece, and then when I went to go back to them I became busy again. I worked on a Halloween pic whenever I was free instead of these because I wanted to TRY and get one done before Halloween. Unfortunately I became SO busy I couldn’t do it. Right now it’s in colouring stage.

Kyoko from Unlock in Halloween costume.

DESIGN

The reason I became very busy is actually a very good one. I was working on a website during the month over time, pondering ideas for awhile before finally getting a good one and jumping into the styling of the Global Integrated Energy Corp website, which was been put on hold while other client projects were being done. I’m actually going to be able to get back to it again, soon.

Later on in October I started working on another site that was originally being done by my co worker but I had to take over due to her no longer seeming to be taking part with the company(due to school. I wish her luck.) I had to put it aside for a priority client project in the last week but have finished almost all of it within the last couple days. I am not only waiting for Valleyview Automotive‘s confirmation of any further content necessary for the site.

Last week I had recieved a client for some business cards. I had to revector their logo to update it and did some card designs for them to choose from.

Lakeside Financial Planning mock up business cards.

I originally was asked to make a Facebook cover photo and Twitter background and to help them brand their social networking. There’s possibly other work to do as well but it’s kind of play it by ear right now.

In the middle of working on this, I actually got contacted to do a poster for a christmas party. I pushed to get that done in the same week and finished it last friday, where the cards had been done maybe tuesday.

Christmas poster designed to look retro.

SIDE NOTE: I had also been trying to organize a month long planned Halloween party at the SAME time(which didn’t even work out. Barely anyone showed) so had 3 pumpkins to carve, several errands over the week prior, decorations to deal with and 3 different types of cookies to bake. I ended up baking 2 of them ON the night of the party. Helped me at least occupy my mind, which was furious at the lack of people.

Around the same couple days, maybe right after or on the same day I got the business card client request, I got a request to help design a logo for someone. I have that work coming up.

As well after finishing the poster, I got a request from the same person who send the poster one to me for help on a logo, some graphic design work, and some web design work.

All within a couple weeks time. It’s a LITTLE bit crazy, right now.

But it’s good because all this freelance activity and business has allowed me the chance to design my invoice after 2 years of not needing them, since all my activity had been either volunteer work, for friends(very casual) or through MDMM(so payment went through the company and not directly to me).

I like being productive.. <3

Work mock ups, Etsy shop, and illustrations.

September has been a bit of a slow month. Client work is on hold, though MDMM’s site is being revised. I am finally able to put up the mock ups for some clients for portfolio purposes as well as the branding package for MDMM I was finally able to complete.

Cars, Inc Logo

Cars. Inc. Branding Package

Cars. Inc. website mock up.

The Vernon Search and Rescue Logo

Just one of the Vernon Search and Rescue website mock ups.

The MDMM Branding Package

With MDMM site almost done and client projects on hold, I’ll be working on the big GIEC project again, or hope to if communication goes well. I have to wait a bit to find out. I’ve got a general idea of what I’m going to do so I’m looking forward to that.

In the mean time I have a couple illustrations I want to work on, some of them old that I want to finish. I was able to finish one original series piece and I have another one to do that I put on hold for this one, since it was for a contest.

This was the entry for a contest called “Draw it again”.

and

This was the original image that I was redrawing. It was done May 1st, 2007

2007

It deffinetly has to be done before the 30th so I’ll put that up soon. As well there is the jewelry. I have been making it a lot lately and finally was able to get the equivalent of a credit card by upgrading my debit card, thus allowing me to open up an Etsy shop.

In addition I’ll be going to the flea market every sunday. Yesterday was my first day going. It didn’t go that well for the first time. The flea market I intended to go to was closed and so I tried to go to the other one which sets up 2 hours later than the first. I had no issue getting a spot, but I sold only one thing(and took a commission for another) so it was a bit of a bring down. Hopefully next sunday will be better, as I’m going to try the 6am market again. It might be busier. It’s also cheaper and supplies the tables for you.

I also have two freelance/volunteer projects to do. One is something for my jewelry artisan friend that I will be doing in exchange for everything he’s done for me and continues to do, while the other is for an old client that finally should see completion since she seems to have most of what she needs done.

So WORK wise it’s slow..but I definitely don’t have the opportunity to be bored.

Summer Surprises: Work + Jewelry

It’s been a long summer, with some really dramatic things affecting me to the point of severe depression. Can’t say it was a great summer, at first, for that fact. But the season got better in different parts that helped me get through it.

Been pretty much broke this whole season, single, with barely a social life and no work. Then I started with MDMM which got me on a more positive path. I was trying to do many contest logos during my “rut” and now I had proper work to do.

I worked first on MDMM.ca so the company can start making it’s way forward. They had clients before I came, without having a site. So you can imagine our hope for progress with an actual site and portfolio up. There wasn’t much yet, but we’ve begun to add to it. One of the first projects was the Wise Wildlife site for Pete Wise. I made a mock up of a logo that wasn’t really necessary but here it is:

At the same time I’ve been working on the branding and design for GIEC. Speaking of: here’s the logos I made up for that client.

The branding for this company had to be considered as a blanket company branding, since they had several sub companies they’d be connected to. Not only that but we were making the site for them to have pages for each sub company. We needed to brand the major blanket company first.

I received a very vague description of GIEC, which contained a lot of medical focus but it seemed to be going more towards technology. A lot of focus was the fact that their products were things found all over the world and brought to North America. So of course the globe was the main thought. As I had several sketch mock ups with a G surrounding a shape, with the more recent ones being globes, I noticed they had an old logo with just that.

Perfect. I thought it would be better to connect to the old company with familiarity and so I stuck with the more recent mock ups that used a globe. Note: I did not change my original mock up to meet this old logo. I stuck with my plan. The client wanted many tweaks and we tried a couple fonts, with lowercase and uppercase focus.

When we looked for outside feedback, someone suggested green since they thought it looked a bit “cold” for energy. Problem was that the company didn’t focus on literal energy. The boss and I thought it’d be good to use green anyways so I tried to think of a way to include it. I figured the obvious choice was make the map, but I didn’t want it to be too complex. I then realized if I filled in certain squares with green, it’d make a very simplified, pixel style version of a map.

The squares, or pixels, already made me think of technology and this made it more so.

After suggestions from a family member, request for others tweaks had come in but there were issues with how it’d display in different versions, like black and white. I tried it but it didn’t turn out well. When we were coming to the end of trying to push for a choice, I stayed up all night determined to see if I could get a version with the requested tweaks. One of those desires were rainbows, which connects better with the sub companies due to the chakra theme in some of them. I had predicted frustration and dislike towards it but am I good or what? I actually was able to combine the serious tech/global logo with a friendly atmosphere in the rainbow. At least I think so.

In the end, Version 3 of Mock up 1(Uppercase rounded corners) was chosen.

 

I also worked with the boss to get his other company site up, Cellwerx, as well as touching up his old logo.

From this:

Into this:

 

 

My next project is Vernon Search and Rescue and KV Cars, which I’ll share in my next entry.

I did a couple contest logos in between my work, when I had free time.

These first two were done at the usual place, at designcontest.com

 

And this one was my first contest entry at a new place called 99designs. I was informed of this place, and hiretheworld, by my boss. It’s just another option to earn some extra money if I do well. I haven’t had the opportunity to make any contest logos since this one, which was quite awhile ago. I should probably get back on those. I’m so broke.

 

+++++++

In addition, I’ve found another creative joy that I’ve always considered but never really knew where or how to start. During a Block Party downtown, I was complimented on the huge amount of jewelry I tend to wear. I was wearing even more that day since I’d bought 1 bracelet, a ring, and a ring-bracelet. I had been discussing with my friend how I still wanted a jewelry head piece and something for my arm. Less than 5 minutes later I’m speaking with a jewelry artist about how he wanted to get into those, as I saw one on his mannequin. He wanted to start making them, and only had one example so far, so he offered to make one for free if I found him while he was still in town.

So I started visiting his tent over the next couple weeks and talking to him while he makes and sells jewelry. Cool guy. The activity seems really fun so I’ve decided to start up myself, as an extra hobby. I use to craft and sew when I was younger so making jewelry isn’t really something new in my mind.

The time there resulted in this being made

It came out wonderfully, and I’ve had people approach me about it already asking where it’s made. It’ll be produced in larger amounts next year, hopefully with more attention on it if I’m wearing it around town. After this was made I stuck around to hang out and learn to make jewelry myself. The trick is recycling. Literally. You take old jewelry and salvage the pieces.

Broken jewelry can turn into new crafted work. Some jewelry is very gaudy due to the sheer amount of stuff on it. If you take that apart and make several minimalism style work, it looks much better. That”s exactly what I did with an old necklace I got from Mexico. The entire thing was 14 pieces of green chunks. I’ve already made 4 pairs (2 being the same style).

  

 

Been helping him, and the Henna artist who comes to town with him, to pack their stuff every night they leave. In return I’ve recieved a free Henna tattoo(getting the second tomorrow) and it’s been a good trade to learn to make jewelry, get some donated supplies, and to make a website in return. I think it’ll be fun. And I can’t wait till next week to sell some. I might even try some indoor markets to get a feel for things.

We’ll see. I’m all pumped up. I’ve got more to say in my next entry but that’s it for now. Just going to have to wait.

NOW we’re getting somewhere.

It’s been a month since I last wrote a blog entry but I think it’s fair to say I can make up for that. I’ve got some news and some work and even news about work.

That’s right. I’m working, though it’s starting as volunteer work. I recently joined a group of people that make up MD Marketing and Media. It’s a small but fun company and I believe it’ll progress well and fast with the people it has so far. The company had some clients before having a site and now it’s up and running at www.mdmm.ca so I expect things will begin to progress even faster.

Before working on the site, as well, I redesigned the logo, which they needed before really getting serious, and am currently working on the rest of it’s branding package.

The redesigned logo for MD Marketing and Media

I’ve also got two different logos and a brand package for a company and it’s sub company but I’ll talk about that next entry when the package is done.

Other than that work, I did a few contest logos since my last entry. Some are a bit of experiments as I tried typography styled work, using grids and some more crazy ones that I couldn’t do it that sort of thing.

Cheerful Colours: a jewelry company

I sketched all of this ahead of time and thought it was great but after hours and hours of vectoring it, I was so tired and I hated it. Not only that but I had worked late past midnight to finish it and was exhausted. It just didn’t feel worth it. But it was an interesting attempt at such a thing, at least. It’s definitely one of my more unique designs.

A beauty salon company called Marina Beauty

This was another typography styling experiment plus my attempt at making a more symbolic way of displaying something that may require a full body. The contest holder was looking for “mermaids” being used. I decided to try something different and make it so the mermaid feeling was displayed through the hair, considering that is part of a beauty salon. The fishes going through her hair actually have their tales represented within the ends of it. So each end of her hair formed in groups of two and came together at the fish ends.

I thought it was a great idea but I think this would have been better as a stand alone image or maybe if I put it in a circular logo placement and not on the side it would end up better.

Real Estate Property Company

This was a logo for a company focused on the property aspect of real estate and not the actual homes. They wanted a logo to incorporate that fact but the entire list of entries was eliminated with no feedback so that didn’t go too well. I had attempted to focus on it, myself, by using strong large shapes of the hills and land with a very plain house. I used blue in some versions but green in the end.

A car design company.

I absolutely LOVED making this logo. I don’t know why but when I sketched it out I was all excited to make this in illustrator. It was a fairly simple to create one once it was planned out because I could use a grid to get everything right. The only real challenge in the vector stage was the R cause its a wrong object instead of using just lines. This really is a favorite logo of mine and I plan to always have it in my portfolio.

Airline app logo

I did this one for a blind contest. Actually that’s only half right. Originally it wasn’t a blind contest but it was changed to one after I made this. Luckily I did this before anyone started to take from my design. The logo did fairly well but the direction of the contest went two ways and unfortunately for me, the end result was the other direction. But I did get bronze so that’s cool.

So that’s basically what I’ve been working on in the past month. I’ve actually been told of two to three other sites where I have access to freelance and contest possibilities which is great. In between projects I can work on something there and hope for some money, since right now I’m still technically volunteer.

Broadening Connection

And the rambling begiiins..

Now.

I’m not quite sure if I mentioned it recently in any of my entries but during the last few months, while designing and coding my update portfolio website, I’ve felt it necessary to make sure I’m reaching a broader spectrum of exposing myself as a graphic designer and artist, of making sure my personal brand covers the places I’m in and connects with each other better, and developing my place within the designer community. I’ve kept mostly to myself for the first year after my graduation as a graphic designer and honestly that’s been a poor decision.

Part of that may be due to the lack of confidence or the lack of experience and the desire to focus on that as well. But it’s hard to get anywhere on just your own, sitting there and waiting till you hear a whisper of something that might get you somewhere. I’ve applied at 15-20 places last year lost as ever and unsure how to approach things. Now I feel more confident in how I move around the community, especially since I’ve made the decision to actually attempt a connection and really putting myself out there in both talk and display.

What I mean by that is this:

When I finished my portfolio, I thought “So what? I just sit and wait and expect people to suddenly be interested more?” No. Definitely not. I don’t create any more presence or become any more experience or learn anything from this. What I do get is what I should: (1)A professional display of my portfolio for the employer, (2)a place for an interested client to look for some freelance work or commissions, and (3)a clean and quick way for fellow designers and artists to view my work without the clutter of works in progress, sketches, and sometimes just nonsense. A professional site = professional person. Or at least that’s part of it, right?

So here we have a portfolio, and I’m sitting here thinking to myself that this doesn’t change much besides improve my image to the people I’m directly trying to show my work, which is usually the employer. Any artist who knows me from earlier doesn’t visit the site because they know the place to go is Deviantart if they want anything and everything I’m working on.

I wonder, then, if I had to start over as an artist and begin my connections, what do I do? Things are easier now. I don’t have to search all over the web for places to expose myself, because the places we know are huge. Especially now. Deviantart is just one example. So I started there. The community there has something known as “groups” in which you share the artwork you already have up to be displayed there for others who either are (a)part of the group too or (b)watching the group. I joined 6 of these so far in a couple days and have already submitted work to 3-4 of the groups. So far it’s already shown positive results.

I’m a bit overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of artists and images, especially since I’m in 6 of these groups. Sometimes art gets shared more than topics are discussed, which is alright. The groups then serve more of a purpose of sharing work with fellow artists in that sense. And wow, is there art or what. I spent 3-4 days just looking through the Logo folders alone. And I don’t mean skim my eyes over the thumbnails but “open in new tab” for about 90% of the submissions, with the other 10% usually stuff I’d seen in previous groups or things I can see so clearly as a thumbnail I know if I’m not interested enough to want to skip it. There is same damn good stuff in there and it’s inspiring. Kind of makes a person feel little in comparison but inspiring nonetheless.

I have been on Behance since before I graduated so that was already a first step. I haven’t really looked into the community there as much as I should so that’s probably the next step but what I did do was look further into LinkedIn. I really have taken that place for granted and so I wanted to look around. What I found was two groups that I found interesting. One was for ‘Graphic Designers’ and one for ‘Freelance Graphic and Web Designers’. I joined both today after tweeking my profile a bit and I’m already seeing several topics full of discussion with the other designers and it’s great.

Unfortunately, I’m about to pass out as I write this as 3am but I’ve already seen 2 or 3 topics I wanted to read and I haven’t even clicked the “Show more..” button yet.

Point of all this is I don’t want to just sit here, working by myself on logos and webdesigns with only the silence to speak to me. I don’t think you get the full enjoyment in this career choice if you aren’t talking to the others who made the same one. Having a job and working with a client can give you fullfillment but currently everything is silent and theres a whole different feel speaking to people in the same place as you. And there an even different one when you look the your more experienced peers. It’ll certainly be interesting speaking to them if I can get the words out of my head without being half awake and rambling. Even more so if I can make any sense.

…

 

ANYWAYS.

In the meantime I’ve got some work since I last wrote. I had a lot more logos that I did when I got back from the short vacation and a couple days ago all entries were either eliminated or in a contest that closed so it’s finally safe to put these up.

This was one of three concepts I came up with. It seemed the best one, though I think the first concept would have been better in the end due to the direction of the contest. It was styled to be like an old sign.

All of my logos had their concepts drawn while I didn’t know the direction of the contest in an attempt to come up with something completely unique and not driven by the work of the other designers, which happens a lot in those contests. When the contest takes a direction and one designer is doing better than the others, everyone jumps after him/her and suddenly all the logos are starting to look the same. This can happen very early when the contest holder still wants to see ideas but when one little rating goes up, suddenly that’s what they want. I didn’t want to be blinded by this.

Zanone is one of those examples of concepts not driven at all by the contest direction. This can be a huge risk because if it’s very late into the contest, then the client really knows what they want and doesn’t want to see other new ideas. It was a risk I was willing to take as an experiment to see what I could make up on my own. So I didn’t mind that I completely failed to go in the right direction. This logo in particular was a text, as I wasn’t sure if Zanone had any emphasis on the “one” or if zanone was a word I didn’t understand. Keep in mind I drew this and all the other 6 concepts in the car on the way home, completely away from the computer where I could have found out. My goal was to do logos for 5 contests in 1-2 days.

I completed the goal, with 4 contest entries completed on the day I came back and did the concepts and 1 on the next day in the afternoon. One logo design came out poorly because I did the concept poorly but the others seemed alright, in my opinion. I won’t show the poor one. It’s awful.

Negative space is still a new experience to me and I’m trying to get use to it. Obviously, like most people, I took the direction of making the E look like a plug. But I also wanted to do something with the font to help represent electricity in a different way. The client wanted to avoid lightbulbs and lightning bolts and so thats what I did, with the exception of the tiny bolt between the tag line. I made the font look sharp and jagged which I felt represented an electric feel. The client wanted either blue or green with black and green just didn’t seem the right colour for electricity, while blue represents it very well so I used that.

I didn’t want to make the logo too complicated. I used the grid system to make sure everything aligned right. During the concept I did notice how the negative space between the K and B looked like a diamond. I thought it looked great for a future logo having to do with jewelry. If only a company with K and B as their initials needed a one.

Either way the logo didn’t catch interest. There was a lot of focus on the shape caused by K and B connecting in the other logos and that is what the client was most interested in. I can understand that but I didn’t attempt further in the contest due to the fact that about 10 or more designers were all basically making the exact same design, which was a bit disturbing to me. I felt like the line between “following the direction of the contest” and “copying” was so damn close to be broken that it became uncomfortable.

That’s the last of them. I’ve got another logo to post once the contest winner is chosen or the entry eliminated and I’ll put it up. Note that it’s entire focus is typography, though there was suppose to be a small logo added it didn’t turn out that well. I might go back on it just to fix it and make sure it works. Hard to say.

I must pass out now.

Weekly Update: Logo Spam

So I went on a little vacation for a couple days to relax but on one of the days I was gone I felt anxious not doing anything, having been stuck with our car broken. I used my mothers laptop to check designcontest.com and wrote down notes for 5 contests. I figured I could draw them when I was free and I wouldn’t need to be at the computer, which was better since I’d have no other entries to affect what I make. Though it’s good to follow the direction of the contest to fullfill the clients desires, I didn’t want to make anything too close to a previously existing entry.

I didn’t work on the actual concept sketches till we were driving home on Tuesday but when we got home that night I immedietly went to vectorizing 4 out of 7 logo concepts, 3 being in the same contest. I submitted the 4 before bed and then 1 more for the 5th contest the next day.

For the rest of the week I waited on word for the results, as well as another contest I entered before leaving for vancouver. So far only 3 of them have either had the logo eliminated or the contest finished. I don’t like how one of the logos turned out so I’ll just show two of them.

 

This was for a gutter,window and siding company. The contest ended before I left and the results were only just given.

And this was for a painting company where the contest had a lot of entries towards using mars, paint, or hills as the theme of the logo. I used all three in one. The idea is it’s a paint ring with smudge/splatter in the shape of the mountains. The red round shape=mars, the mountains=hills and the splatter/smudging=paint. The entry was eventually elimintated near the end as the client narrowed down their choices and changed the direction of the needs.

There was one of contest where the entry was eliminated but I don’t really like it. Still waiting on the other 3 contests. I’ll probably enter a bunch more soon, as well.

In addition to entering a bunch of contests, I’m trying to get my work out there more in the community so I joined 5 groups at Deviantart that are focused in Design and have submitted some logos to three of them, some more than others because of submission limits. Hopefully this will help me get my name out there a bit more in the online digital world. I also watch all the groups because I really enjoy the actual design work. I’m still going through all the logo gallery folders and looking at every submission. Takes a long time so I do it when I’m bored. Only finished two of the galleries so far.