It’s still raining! But a lot warmer so it’s not so baaaad. This is for Virginie and her little card business. Now I’m considering making it a Threadless sumbission….for more $$$. Contract sez I can’t use it until after 6 months AFTER the contract is over in 6 months. If you understood that last sentence, that makes a year. Aww…

Ugh. That was a bad pun. I’m going to Seattle in a few hours for a good ol’ girly shopping trip. I’m thinking shoes, hopefully a cute pair of Nike Dunks or those lemony colored Vans with laces that I’ve been eying. Also, we’re going into the city so if the outlet fails to be a success (which I doubt), there’s always Goods in Capitol Hill for some sneakers or some design books from Peter Miller.

For this month’s desktop, I wanted to try the new/old trend with the vintage, geometric, rainbow gradient look. Thanks to PSDtuts for the cheat sheet. I added some bling cuz it’s no fun without some diamonds. I think I’m slightly blind now thanks to a month of hot pink April.

Finals week is finally here and as interaction design students, we don’t need to do exams. As a replacement, we get to do final projects or portfolios that sum up the whole design process of the entire semester. Woohoo. There’s 333 due tonight at midnight(tuesday), 404 due thursday, 391 presentation on friday and Italian exam on saturday.

I quit a long time ago. I’ve stopped to care. After I do my part, I stand back and watch. Not a very good thing to do but it’s already officially summer in my opinion. So today while waiting for Azmina and Paula to finish up the documents, I completed my mother’s day card. I took off the wings since Virginie was worried that they wouldn’t fit in 5×5. She was right.

It’s now 12:29am and Derek is still in front of me finishing off his own project. Poor Derek.

Yes, mom. I got the job.

Well, sort of. For Patrick’s consulting company, he wanted to hire someone to do branding and a whole functional community-based website thing. I wouldn’t be doing any of the coding but that kind of things was out of my league. Website-making is not my forte. He hired another guy for that job but he hired me too just for the branding stuff and logo. Yay? Yay!

We had a meeting yesterday (Sunday) at his super awesome office downtown on Richard’s Street, a block away from Waterfront station. The place was an old original building with exposed brick and old school radiator (the one that coils up like a snake). He furnished the place with Wassily chairs and other stuff from Yaletown Sofa and Koolhaus. Now I kinda wish that this job was an office job instead of a contract work-from-home deal. Boo. After the meeting we had a nice lunch at a sushi place which he paid for as a “business meeting”. Free meals are always more delicious.

Virginie, a nice girl who wants to start her own card business, also let me do some of the designs. Totally up to me whether I want to do it. No pressure, which is nice. It’s not much pay but I didn’t really expect that anyway. So here’s what I’ve been working on for mother’s day. She wanted a tattoo style “I love mom” design since she saw the stuff I did for my website. Honestly, I’m getting a bit tired of those. I like cute, colorful, Tokidoki stuff. Whatev.

If everything could ever feel this real forever
If anything could ever be this good again
The only thing I’ll ever ask of you
You’ve got to promise not to stop when I say when

Stuff I’ve done/thought recently:

• My new desktop wallpaper!
• I suck at making website layouts
• Still fat (f*ck)
• School stuff
• New hot guy at school: Shawn Desmond (white guy, tall, shaved head, muscle-y, hotttt)
• Looking for new sneakers
• Saw Foo Fighters <3
• Just came up from a game of DDR with Andrew at the mez
• Need a haircut soon

I’m done! Now it’s time to sit back and wait for the money to roll in.

I made the mistake of making my portfolio now instead of when I’m not incredibly busy and prone to temptation. It’s 2:34am and I have yet to start on my model making of Rus’ and Paul’s research paper regarding neighborhoods in Tuscan hills.

Anyway, the point of this post was to show a really great example of what I think a strong portfolio site should look like. May I introduce to you www.davidairey.com. David Airey is a graphic designer/consultant with the most professional and complete website I have seen so far. Here are some of the brownie points he made with his site:

1. BLOG: His main page hosts a blog, a popular trend I’ve been seeing a lot of lately. I think it’s a great way of showing off your personality with the style of writing and the topics discussed. David likes to give graphic design tips and his experiences with working in a creative environment. It also makes people come back to your site on a regular basis to check-up on updates.
2. STORIES: With each project on his portfolio, David likes to write little intros on the client and what they expect of him. It shows that he doesn’t just make things look pretty; he really considers what the client needs and what would be appropriate for their business.
3. PROCESS: Now, this part is the kicker. I really liked how he shows the process of designing from his initial sketches and how it evolves until the client loves it. I’ve been learning in school how process plays a major part in design and this is just evidence of how a successful graphic designer uses and shows it.

It’s clear, direct to the point and I’m envious. His blog is now part of my list of design blogs I check everyday to waste time. My site is still on standby but now I want to do it over and slap this blog on top of it as my homepage… which would probably mean that I’d have to change the polka dots to make everything match. Uggg. sneak preview of my portfolio here.

The Last Piece

The League of Cliche Evil Super-Villains