Dec
Cornerstone Architecture
Over the summer, I spent some time interning at Honey Design, a marketing and design firm in London, Ontario. While I was only there for a short amount of time, I was able to gain some of the real world experience that can’t be taught in a classroom. The ladies at Honey were so wonderful and taught me so many things. During my time there, I was fortunate enough to be able to work on several projects both print and web. Although I was not able to see any of the projects to the finish (because limited amount of time), it was very interesting to see the progress and work flow at different stages.
One of the projects I worked on was a website for Cornerstone Architecture. This architecture firm is unique in the way it approaches the brainstorming process. One of their methods is to sit down with the clients in a brainstorming session. During this session, rectangular pieces of paper are physically arranged on a blueprint to see what works best (as opposed to simply sketching on paper). This allows for a number of different configurations to be easily created. When one of the configurations looks good, they photograph it for reference and continue on looking at more.
I created a preliminary site mockup using this brainstorming method as inspiration. The final design is slightly different, but the essence is still there. It is meant to bring across the fluidity and movement of their brainstorming process as well as the appearance of a simple blueprint.
My old art director at Honey emailed me recently to tell me that the site was selected to be featured on Canada’s Web50. While the site isn’t actually mine, and the design has changed since the original concept, I’m so excited to see it featured! I was so blessed to be given the opportunity to work at Honey and I learned so much. Thanks!
Dec
MySuiteStuff PS Pillow has arrived!
Back in October, the Envato tuts network held several contests to celebrate their 3rd anniversary. I was fortunate to win one of these contests – a sweet PS pillow from MySuiteStuff! It took a while to get, because they’re all hand made, but I’ve finally got it! Very soft and very cuddly 
Kind of funny, it reminds me of a pillow I made for my buddy Eric at PixelChef Creative for his birthday in January. The craftsmanship isn’t as great as the MySuiteStuff pillow, but in my defense, it’s an odd shape that would take practice to perfect.
Nov
Lemonade: Documentary
More than 130,000 advertising professionals have lost their jobs in this Great Recession. Lemonade is about what happens when people who were once paid to be creative in advertising are forced to be creative with their own lives.
This movie looks very interesting! I cannot wait to watch it when it becomes available.
Oct
WordPress: Different Number of Posts per Page
WordPress allows you to set the number of posts to display on each blog page, but it does not allow you to set a different number of posts between different blog pages. A recent job of mine required me to do so and I found a couple of ways to do it.
Oct
A Week of Tees!
I just received some tees that I ordered this week, from a couple of my friends. Felix Lau created the wonderful Brush Daily and Alan Chu made the other three. Current favourite has to be the apple and orange one. It’s a little morbid and a lot of fun.
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Oct
Book Review: Forms Folds Sizes
Anyone who knows me will know that I love reference material. There is just too much information out there in the world for one brain to retain. Forms Folds Sizes, by Poppy Evans and Aaris Sherin is a wonderful book full of “all the details graphic designers need to know but can never find.” (That was from the front of the book).
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Sep
Ed Lives Here
A couple months ago I interned at Carte Blanche Creative. While I was there, I worked on a project which involved meeting with a representative from Spicers. She introduced to us the Ed Series, a promotional piece by Newpage.
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Aug
Book Review: Sexy Web Design
This month I chose to read Sexy Web Design by Elliot Jay Stocks. Growing up, I “learned” about web design very slowly, through online tutorials, mimicking techniques, and trying to recreate certain effects. If only this book had been around back then.
Stock’s book outlines the complete step by step process of creating web site. What I particularly enjoyed was that he begins at the very beginning – how to do the research before beginning a website. While most would begin at simply looking at the design of a site, Stock begins with looking at what kind of information the designer should be looking for from the client. He even gives an example of how to write an email to the client.
Speaking of examples, the entire book is one big example. In order to explain web design to the reader, Elliot goes through the entire process of building a website using a hypothetical client and project. I find that learning by example is one of the best ways to learn, so this was an excellent read.
Jul
Book Review: Don’t Make Me Think
Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think was a great starter book on web usability. The tagline “A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability” is a most suitable one. I would recommend this book for anyone who has anything to do with web design: designers, developers, marketing managers, even company CEOs.
Krug goes through the reasons why web usability is important, specific ways to improve a site’s usability, examples of live sites and how they can be improved, ways to perform user tests, and more.
Jul
Yahoo! Homepage Redesign
Lovely surprise when I opened up my browser to Yahoo! today, a brand new homepage design! I relly don’t even use Yahoo! except that I like those random bits of news on their homepage that amuse me when I first open up my browser.
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