Archive for design

Thanks, Guys.

I made a thank you card for the people who gave me stuff for Christmas.

I like hexagon patterns. The big white hexagon on the back is for writing my thank yous with a brown gel pen.

I did everything in Illustrator. The typeface is the awesome Museo. Three weights of the family are free at myfonts.

Card for Thanking

Here is a thank you card I made on Sunday for people who were kind enough to remember me on my birthday. Thanks, guys!

Thank You Card - Birthday 2009

The typeface is Futura, set in different weights. Everything was done in Illustrator and printed on white, heavy paper and then rubber-cemented to white cardstock, which I folded in half to make a folded card.

Not Without My Pet Website is Alive!

I designed a website for a friend from work, Raquel, who is involved with a great non profit: Not Without My Pet. The organization helps victims of domestic violence who own animals. Often, people will delay leaving abusive situations because of not knowing how to take their pets with them, and being worried about their pet’s well-being if they leave the animal behind.

Not Without My Pet aims to help those people by “partnering with domestic abuse shelters to establish pet care facilities.” It’s a wonderful cause, and it was fun to design their site for them. Many thanks to programmer Russ for doing the great programming work on it.

I wanted to include some great pet photos on the site and Raquel was awesome at enlisting her friends’ help – she and her friends amassed a bunch of cute and charming snapshots of their pets. I threw in some of my own too. Check out the screenshots below.

And go look at the new website: www.nwomp.org

Not Without My Pet - Diva!

Diva’s my parents’ amazing mutt. She is intelligent and soulful and likes contemplating stuff.

Not Without My Pet - Huey

Huey’s my parents’ other good dog. He is goofy and funny and is a sparkplug of a tank. He is not named after Huey Lewis and his news.

Not Without My Pet - Bonzai!

There’s Bonzai, Gab’s parents’ dog, who is very smart and clever and likes going on hikes.

No joy is equivalent to creating a Decimal Equivalents Chart

I have a decimal equivalents chart up by my computer. It’s been xeroxed about twenty times and I think I must have eaten some fries off of it or something because it’s definitely seen better days. Disheartened by the seeming dearth of (pretty) decimal equivalents charts on the internet, I decided to create my own. This is probably the first of many, because I see much room for improvement. This will be sufficient for now, though!

Decimal Equivalents Chart 1

I hope I didn’t mess it up! And click the link below to download a hi-res version as a pdf, with crop marks to boot. It’s 4″ x 10″.

Decimal Equivalents Chart PDF

A Stripey Birthday is a Happy Birthday

I made a card for my Uncle’s birthday. I was in a clean, summery mood, so a made a super-simple and bright birthday card. Here’s the front:

Birthday Card 1

And on the back (leaving room for writing, which I did with a brown gel pen):

Birthday Card 2

Done in Illustrator, with ITC Avant Garde Gothic. Happy birthday to my uncle! And yours too, whenever his is.

Mother’s Day Happened Again

Mother’s Day is an annual celebration. This year, I made my mom a mix cd of songs I thought she might like. I made liner notes; the proof of which is below:

Mother’s Day Liner Notes FrontMother’s Day Liner Notes - Back

I made these using Photoshop and Illustrator. The script font is Emily and the font used for the song list is ITC Avant Garde Gothic.

Our special mother’s day activity was going to see Star Trek on its opening weekend. In honor of this sacred and special event, I made a commemorative mother’s day card:

Mother’s Day Card 2009

It was a one-sided deal. I made it all in Illustrator. The font is Huxley Vertical. I harvested the art from House Industries’ Vectagrams, part of the House 3009 font family.

A couple other headlines for the card that I considered:

“You boldly go where no mother has gone before!” (Sounded dirty)

“Mhaaaaaam!” (Too obscure?)

Star Trek was awesome, by the way. A perfect mother’s day treat.

Thanks for the franks

Here’s a one-sided thank you card I made. I wrote in the 2nd frame with a nice brown pen. It was awesome.

Thank you card

You can use it for your own thank you cards if you want! Don’t sell it on the thank-you-card black market. Everyone deserves to be thanked for something. Click to make larger, yeah.

Happy Father’s Day, Dads!

A day late to posting, but I was a day early to giving, haha! I hope everyone had a fine Father’s Day. Here’s the card I made for my awesome dad:

Father’s Day Card

Pattern & text (Adobe Garamond) done in Illustrator. Texture is from a wash I did using moist tissue paper and allowing it to get all wacky. I printed the whole shebang on cream card stock, wrote on the back, and stuck it in a yellow envelope. I like that it turned out to be a little bit disorienting, similar to that classic optical illusion. Scintillating!

Thanks, Constructivists!

I made a mix for my friend Q’s Birthday (Happy [super-early] Birthday, Q!). This is all InDesign, with lines + ITC Avant Garde Gothic and a big Colonna Q. I like how the red curvilinear Q both matches and contrasts with the lines in the background and foreground. And what is Avant Garde Gothic but a bunch of lines and circles? Yum: Lines and circles. When I think of Q, I think:

  • order
  • organization
  • lists
  • red, white, gray, black
  • gore
  • Arachnia
  • Russian literature
  • other incredibly important things

Thanks for being so awesome, Q!
Q’s Mix Front

Q’s Mix Back