Another good week with lots to do. Feeeeeels good. I think Friday was the only day I didn’t have anything I had to do after work. So I bought a fancy fan.
Monday was my second time volunteering at the library. Still filled with excitement at being there. Still wanted to do more. I offered to help teach the HTML/CSS and WordPress classes, so there goes the rest of my Mondays for the a while. I think it will be a lot of fun and I hope it will make me less shy and/or socially awkward.
Another part of my week I’ve liked was talking with Kelly. We’re been attributing our compatibility to both being geminis, but I’m going to have to say it’s that she’s a really cool person and is easy to talk to. We talked over wine on Wednesday and I convinced her to go to a bar with me last night for some sort of noise concert. We ended up staying on the porch the whole time talking about literature. She likes the Romantic period and I’m into Victorian, but somehow we’ll find some common ground.
Saturday morning I also went to my second ukulele group meeting and it was extremely crowded since uke fest is next month. I was soooo close to volunteering to do a solo, but no one saw me when I raised my hand. Probably for the best. Had another delicious lunch at City O City with Sean. It’s still his favorite coffee shop. Then we spent all day thrifting for his new house he bought (uggghhh, home ownership?!). That’s where I took a picture of the nocorns/horses above. I feel like I go thrifting a lot, but I’m ok with it. Sean snagged this reversable vest from Regal Vintage:
We rounded off the day with more beverages at St. Mark’s Coffeehouse before I was ushered off to said concert at the invitation of another friend. Kelly described the venue as being full of Chads. :)
Busy week. Matt left for spring break (it took me two hours to drive him to the airport because I had to drive around this horrendous traffic jam). Planning on playing dusk-tennis with Kyle later….
and what am I thinking?
I just want to curl up in bed and read.
Too bad I don’t have a good book right now. I’m going to have to peruse my Kindle for some good reads.
01 | Re-do my branding/website
02 | Website project for a caterer
03 | Visual vocabular project
04 | Inforgraphic
I thought that you might need something a little lighter after all those mentally taxing design videos.
I had a good weekend. I ate some dim sum and thrifted with Kyle. On Sunday I enjoyed brunch and The Ring of Fire at the Denver Performing Arts Center with Faith. Mmm. How was your weekend?
I was wondering, do you think it’s possible for me to social media any more than I do? I media socially pretty hard. But I have the dilemma: I find very little motivation to do things that have no definitive deadline and I sans school, I have a lot of just such things. One of them is studying vocabulary words for the GRE, which I may or may not take “soon.” Potential solution? Illustrate (aka, doodle) words out and post them in a microblog. Is this crazy? I still don’t expect anyone to read it, but I think enough strangers will pass through to make me keep going. No promises. But if i did create one, it would be here.
This one just snuck in around lunch time:
I’m feeling a little mentally exhausted. There are too many things that I find inspiration in and it’s getting a bit time consuming. I might to have to start being inspiring.
UPDATE: I really think there’s something to this gif thing adding a new dimension in the way you view and “image” and how you feel about it. I mean, they showed a bunch of artsy photos with people hair blowing (which I was kind of like |:/ about), but what I really appreciate are these: whatshouldwecallme.tumblr.com
They’re silly, they mostly deal with experiences I don’t really relate to, but I’m completely addicted to them. Why? Because the series of images convey the emotion, bring context to the caption and you experience. Very interesting. Well, at least for someone who did some brief research on visual rhetoric.
I may not know what I want to do and where I’ll be in the future. But I do know what I really like. I want to somehow absorb all the information and sights on these websites because it’s disheartening to me to know that I’m missing out on valuable inspiration. #FirstWorldProblems.
01. TED Talks. I think general opinion agrees that these are all amazing. It’s not that I’ve just discovered it, it’s just that right now I feel like I need to see all of them. I recently thought “Yeah, I’d pay a lot of money to go to one of the conferences.” It would be like my SXSW. And I looked it up and it costs $6,000. ::faints:: Never would I ever expect something to cost that much. I guess that’s why they make killer videos for them, because they’re “ideas worth spreading” and they need rich people to help.
02. Denver Egotist. If any of your followed me on Twitter (and I know none of you do) you would notice the influx of things from the Denver Egotist I tweet. I just love all their design things and videos they post. I often appreciate websites that curate all of the internet’s diamonds in the rough.
03. Co.Design (aka, Fast Company Design). Another resource for things that utterly stun me. Sometimes I forget that these websites are comprised of more than one person. I’m always thinking “How do you have to time to find all these incredible artists?!!? Take a break! Eat ice cream. Be lazy! Like meeeeeee!”
04. The 99 Percent. I just looked at their website and was instantly overwhelmed by things I wanted to click and know about. Carissa insisted I subscribe to their podcast a while ago. I did listened and enjoyed a very small handful, but I appreciate it more when I can actually see the person talking or the images I’m supposed to. So good.
05. Design Envy. Always reliable for a bit of good design. I think it’s always refreshing and interesting because its curated by a different guest designer each week or so.
05.5. GOOD Magazine. Regrettably, I don’t actually read this a lot, but I have it always been like “This is fantastic. I should start reading this more.”
A simple dish, but I think some people forget the awesome power of a few cherry tomatoes. (There are herbs in there, I swear!)
Spaghetti with roasted Tomatoes and herbs
(via RealSimple)
12 ounces spaghetti (3?4 box)
2 pounds cherry tomatoes (about 6 cups)
6 cloves garlic, smashed
3 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for serving
kosher salt and black pepper
1/2 cup chopped mixed fresh herbs (such as basil, parsley, and chives)
shaved Parmesan, for serving
- Heat oven to 400° F. Cook the pasta according to the package directions. Drain and return it to the pot.
- Meanwhile, on a rimmed baking sheet, toss the tomatoes, garlic, 2 tablespoons of the oil, ½ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper.
- Roast the tomatoes, tossing once, until they begin to burst, 20 to 25 minutes.
- Toss the pasta with the tomatoes, herbs, and remaining tablespoon oil. Serve with the Parmesan and additional oil (if desired).
NOTE: I roasted some asparagus with the tomatoes just for good measure.
I love this lecture by Chip Kidd. I love his zest.
It’s not often that I go to some lecture or forum and not enjoy it a least a little bit. At the very least, I’m content and don’t really regret going even if it’s not the most extraordinarily compelling. Opportunity cost stuff, you know.
However, last week I went to a two hour creative forum (with an hour of mingle time) and I mostly regret staying. Recently, it’s been the norm for me to see somewhat eccentric, passionate, and energetic people. The two designers they feeatured were…and of course I only saw them for two hours and they probably have a whole different side of them…the stereotypical high-brow design-tools that the media makes fun of. The kind Woody Allen would want nothing to do with. There’s confidence and there’s arrogance. They didn’t feel like any of their clients were capable of being insightful, creative, or understanding their work. That’s no way to be. Everything should inspire and influence you. There are many kind of wonderful design styles that can influence you. There are surprising perspectives that anyone can show you.
They talked about being reductionists. As in, they were able to find the “true essence” of the project and represent it. As in, a lot of white space, short phrases, periods, black type. They describe having a several hour presentation of their work with their clients where one of the partners reads out of a 20-page packet of design justification. Doesn’t that sound horrendous?! They said sometimes their clients don’t understand how amazing their work is so they have to explain it to them. They explain every single thing they did do and explain every single thing they didn’t do. Ugh.
They were the polar opposite of the idealists-we-can-change-the-world designers. They talked about limitations and making sure that their clients stayed grounded. In the way that some people feel the need to justify work that is subjective by making it scientific, they have to justify their art by dragging everything through an arduous process which distances themselves from their clients and audience as superior.
I believe that good design embraces its audience. Clarity and simplicity are not the same thing. There is a way to make meaningful design in varying levels of complexity. I believe that no one should be lectured on why they should or shouldn’t like something. Even if it’s not instantaneous, it should hit them like a ton of bricks.
James Victore described it like this: You want your audience’s reaction to be “Huh? WOW!” not “Wow!…Huh?”
Something has to give. And it’s not serifs.
Right now I’m nursing a green-white tea blend bleary-eyed at my computer. I fight off illnesses with mass quantities of tea. It usually works. I think I’d be better right now if I hadn’t gone out today. Does that make it ok that I didn’t post anything on Friday?
On Friday I was helping out with this event (I feel like I could have helped out more, but no one would give me things to do!) and I designed this poster. What do you think?
It was a great turn out. And I think, yet another first, I didn’t feel like I was a painful wallflower at a party I didn’t really want to be at. I had people visit me and generally spend most of the time with three other lovely people. Most of which I met within the last two weeks…great right?!
I spent most of the weekend reading. I officially have finished all three books in The Hunger Games. I’m not going to add any additional recommendations to the ones you’ve already heard. There was nothing extremely special about the books, but it was just a good story to absorb myself in.
I now have a accumulated a backlog of actually exciting things I want to write about…I hope I get to them before they become irrelevant…
Groggily, Jacklynn
Jane Powell was a lot sassier than I thought she would be, on all levels. I should have known, though, Matt has told me that the musical theater-ites can live on forever.
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