My home is awesome...

Well, we all know that Maine is awesome, but now we have a award to prove it. Blue Hill and Deer Isle/Stonington were both recognized as being two of the six most imaginative communities in Maine. Above is the invitation I was asked to design for the Blue Hill award event. This area of Maine often get attention, but this award seems really special. It's not just highlighting some good places to eat or pointing out scenic vistas; it recognizes some of the truly important parts of the area. Looking at the list of consortium members is really incredible. I feel so lucky that I had to opportunity to be involved in or at least observed so many of these groups.

Patternification Continued...

I've recently been in a photoshoppy kind of mood. I use photoshop a lot already, but I'm trying to learn new things. I figure it will be useful at my new job at WGBH (PBS Boston)! These are some fun little guys I made accompanied by their original swatches:

Patternification and Majesticity of Autumn

Moosehorn Stream leading to Hot Hole Pond, Maine

Autumn

Drawings for the fall Johnson & Johnson newsletter kids' page. You can see how the leaves got sneakier and sneakier as the drawing progressed. I'm especially fond of the bouncy animals.

a follow-up

A new version of the logo I designed in the spring. Without realizing it, I designed the original using some outdoor-sy images. This one is more appropriate for the fall and winter. The silly glasses make me smile every time I look at them!












The original

The French

I'm don't usually like super-frilly things, but sometimes when things are super-super-frilly I do like them. The Palace of Versailles is one of those things. Here's a combo of two photos I took while I was there:

The Watermelon... Continued!

The object in my hand from last week's post was not a watermelon but a tomato- an heirloom tomato in fact! Last week at the Belmont Farmer's Market (every Thursday from 1:30 to 6) I became entranced by some beautiful heirloom tomatoes from Kimball Fruit Farm. I was struck with an epiphany! I snatched up a variety of the beauties and created a fun little game. Enjoy!

The Blue Hill Fair

For the first time in years I was able to go to the Blue Hill Fair (silly college got in the way). Here are some observations:













































whoa...























































I learned goats like to be on things



























There's a type of tomato called Mr. Stripey

Tiny Watermelon?!?

Is this the world's tiniest watermelon?



















Stay tuned to find out....

My favorite thing for the day!

Today in my email from VERY SHORT LIST there was a link to this website: Ugly Dance
It's a nifty, perhaps creepy, little guy dancing to a very catchy song by the band Fulkultur. I had never heard of them before, but I like them now. So I guess their very clever promotion worked! I do think they should have included a link to their regular site though. If there is one, I couldn't find it.














Also, if you've never heard of it, VERY SHORT LIST is totally worth checking out. Everyday (maybe every weekday) they showcase one very cool thing, usually a book, movie, or nifty website. I'm not a big email list kind of person but I really enjoy this one.

Something useful...

As I work to constantly improve my website, I have been learning nifty new things. Earlier I tried to get one of those fun little favicons up on my site, but I was unsuccessful. Today I tried again and found this awesome website! Favicon.cc lets you draw your favicon or upload an image. You can also make animated ones, which opens up a whole new world of possibilities. Now all the sites I work on (there are three: my site, mainetalks.com and a super secret one) have favicons.


I used this image to make a favicon for my Maine site.

Some Illustration...

Earlier this summer I did some freelance for a firm outside of Philadelphia. I was asked to design the kids activity page for a Johnson & Johnson quarterly employee newsletter. I was excited because I always loved those activity books when I was younger– things like connect the dots, coloring pages, matching, etc. I got to come up with the activity, create it, then design the page. I was also asked to make a new logo for the page. The whole project ended up being quite a bit of vector illustration which was different for me, but ended up being fun.




In the newsletter there was an article for parents about backyard safety. I decided to tie the kids page into that. I ended up with a fun backyard maze! It was kind of difficult to sketch out the maze, I ended up just kind of making it and adding as I went.




These were my four original ideas for the "kids corner" logo.





This is the final logo. My idea is that some of the objects could be switched by season for the different newsletters.

The Sights of Montreal

During my spring break this last sprint I took the train from Philadelphia to Montreal to visit a dear friend. I love Montreal. I can't help comparing it to other cities I know; most of those other cities don't hold up well.
































In Vermont, the train ride itself was quite nice. Of course I rationalized that I would get a lot done on the train. I ended up taking my computer out about 8 hours in, then using it for maybe and hour...





















Many of the houses in Le Plateau Mont-Royal, the mountain area where Viviane lives, have great spirit and fun staircases.



























Ad campaign (http://getyourbuttseen.ca) by Ogilvy of Montreal. Eye-catching and to the point.









































While grocery shopping with Viviane, I got really excited (some might say too much so) about the design of the generic brands at the store. Everything of this brand is bright yellow. These huge swaths of yellow look so amazing throughout the store- beans, toilet paper, aluminum foil. If only everything was done so tastefully.




















Some other eye-catching design in Chinatown.