I was given 6 different header graphics to work with, created by Mr. Nathaniel Jankins.
Originally Marie was looking for just a rotating header, but I thought to myself: How could I make this COOLER?

After seeing all the images and realizing that they were so varied in color, it was clear to me that I had to create 6 different color themes to match:

I decided that it would make the most sense to keep the theme consistent for the user’s browsing experience, rather than changing on reload.
I set a session cookie for each theme, so the user only sees one theme per session.

So go check out Agentlover.com and let me know-Which one did you get???

I teamed up with the most excellent Nubby Twiglet to work on my friend Molly Crabapple’s website.

I was really happy to get to add a few css3 details to Nubby’s design, like a drop shadow on the main content.
The folks viewing the page in older browsers won’t see them, but those with more modern browsers will get a couple little bonuses.

I took what I did on Sadie’s site using Cufon for font replacement– and took it to the extreme, really allowing Nubby to do what she does best with typography.

Nubby did her own post about her contributions to the site, as well as the business cards she made for Molly.

As always, I’m looking forward to more rad collaborations with the ever-wonderful Miss Nubs!

Behold– my band has a website!
Also, tonight we have a practice.

& you get to watch.

8pm on Ustream at thiscantendwell.com

Come watch and we will make some pretty music in your earholes.

I recently worked on a site for Mr Blacktooth himself, Carey Haider.

He had a really clear design in mind for himself, so I just spun up the code on this one.

Whether he’s posting photos, apparel design, and video– he never fails to entertain me.
Go check out what Carey’s been up to- you’ll be glad you did!

I recently had the pleasure of designing the personal site for performance artist, Sadie Lune.

Sadie Originally said she wanted something that was “Freak Show meets Art Nouveau”, and I immediately knew I had to make her an illustrated header.

I did a lot of design research on freak show and circus posters, as Art Nouveau was already a well-researched aesthetic for me.

I tried to combine the hand-lettered, banner laden, design of the freak show poster, with the heavy line weight and realism of the art nouveau poster. This was the result:

I was especially pleased with the integration of the header and the curtains.

I also used a transparent graphic for the header, allowing the moon in the background to show through on the page.
The moon remains stationary, as the picture of Sadie and all the content below, scrolls freely.

As for the left sidebar and post headers, I wanted to continue the retro theme and incorporate an old newspaper feel.
I mixed up a bunch of different fonts and graphics to try to achieve this.

There are some other nice details to the site, like the event calendar on the left; which Sadie can use to not only put new events into, but can also create new posts automatically without having to reenter all the event information.

I’m also particularly fond of the custom search bar, testimonials, and flickr galleries– which update automatically when Sadie updates her flickr.

I’m really happy with how the site came out!
What do you guys think?

Oh my god!

After months and months of drawing and coding, This Is Star has a new look!

I’ve been doing a lot of code and design on other people’s websites for the past couple months, and it occurred to me that a new look on my own site was way overdue.
The previous design had been standing strong for just over 2 years, and I knew it was more than time for a change.

The new site has some neat features that I’ll share with you now.

Custom Category Headers

I designed the site to skin the headers of various posts, by category.
This way, when I make an audio post, it calls a header illustration with a cello bow and a microphone.
I have similar headers for several different types of posts, and plan on adding more as my collection of post topics grows.

I was inspired by the manner in which sites like Tumblr autoformat your posts by type, and I wanted to do something similar on my site, which is wordpress based.
Changing the header background dynamically by category seemed like the simplest way for me to get this feel without going overboard.

Fun with JavaScript

Seeing as I’ve grown a lot as a developer in the time that has gone by since I did my last site design, I thought I should show off some of my newer skills.
One of those skills is using JavaScript, which has become much more simple and dynamic in recent years thanks to the rise of libraries like JQuery and YUI.

I used JQuery on my site to make a few neat effects that I’ll show you here:

If you click on one of the “Advertise Here” buttons on the right hand side, you’ll notice that the information on purchasing ad space on the site expands below the ads.
This allows me to display the information without adding an unnecessary extra page, or allowing the user to navigate away from the main content.

If you hover over my logo on the top left, you’ll see that it animates slightly.
The lovely logo is, of course, designed by the equally lovely Nubby Twiglet.

You’ll also notice that all my archive pages and categories will expand using a collapsing menu.
This is powered by Collapsing Archives, and Collapsing Categories plugins, respectively.

Dynamic Footer

A web design trend I’ve seen popping up a whole lot lately is putting lots of dynamic content for social networking in your footer.
I really like the look of these big footers anchoring everyone’s pages, so I decided to do my own version, integrating design elements from my category headers, as well as the site header.

I hope all of you like the new site design as much as I do!

Biorequiem

Most recently, we spent some time working on redesigning Biorequiem,
the online home of Miss Zoetica Ebb.

Zo was looking for a clean, simple design, with lots of dynamic elements.
The things I’m most proud of on this site are invisible– the way the sidebars update with recent posts and generate thumbnails on the fly, and the galleries automatically integrate new content when it is added– without a need for further coding.
I’m also totally in love with the logo Nubby designed for the top header!

iCiNG

A few months ago, we launched the new face of iCiNG, Gala Darling’s fashion & lifestyle site.
Nubby incorporated the illustration I did of Gala’s crown logo into her fantastic magazine layout navigation header.
From Nubby’s mockups, I integrated the design into Gala’s content management system and blog software.

This project was the start of my web work with Nubby, and I expect there to be many more collaborative web design efforts in store for the two of us!
Keep your eyes peeled!

I am proud to announce my new Jewelry line!
I’ve always been a huge fan of laser cut acrylic stuff, so somehow I got the crazy idea to make my own!

This is the soft launch, so there will be more designs and colors added over the next month or so.

Click below to view any of my pieces in my etsy shop!

Awww yeah!

I’ll be vending all these pieces and more at Stumptown Comics Fest in Portland over the weekend!
So if you live in that area, you can come see in person!
I’ll be vending with a certain other lovely lady in red.

<3!

Page 12 of the 24hour comic I did with Miss Mary Bee!

Writing/Modeling by her,
Illustration/layout by me.

Sorry I’ve been a bit lax on posting these! We’re halfway done!

My friend Nicole, bless her lovely lovely heart, recently returned from Japan and gifted me this bit of awesome.
I am totally into Moleskine and Helvetica, and this is a wonderful marriage of both.
This may be one of the most appropriate gifts anyone has ever gotten me.

I am so in love with it, words don’t suffice.
I haven’t written anything in it yet because I feel intimidated by it’s brilliance.
I’m sure I’ll get over that soon, that is, it I can stop ogling it long enough to pick up a pen.

Thanks again, Nicole!!

[Click for bigger!]

Page 4 of the 24hour comic I did with Miss Mary Bee!
Writing by her, illustration/layout by me (after a photo, of her, by Alan Davis).

Got all that? ha.

Page 3 of my 24 hour comic with writer, Mary Bee.

We holed up at the Comics Outpost for a full day of drawing, along with fellow 24hour participants Doctor Popular & Mike Hales.

What is 24 hour comic day?

put simply: 24 pages in 24 hours.
Here’s my second page (the first is the title page, and I’ll be posting that last):

It was a departure for me. I’ve been pushing the amount of textures and collage stuff in my work for a little while,
partly influenced by the non-digital work I’ve been doing (which deserves a post one of these days)
& I did a few sketchbook/collage things digitally recently that people responded well to.…
So for the challenge, I decided to really embrace that collage aesthetic and let go of illustration a little if the page or time limits called for it.

I’ll be posting this comic a page or 2 at a time over the next couple weeks.

I am both satisfied and shocked that I made it through all 24 hours, and left with 24 pages in hand.

Extra thanks to my writer, Mary Bee! I couldn’t have done it without you!

Unfortunately, I am pressed for time, and my attempts aren’t turning out as I would like:

close, but not quite there.…

Fortunately, Moo.com just announced that they’re now offering full size business cards alongside their wildly successful mini cards.

& they come in a really handy box!

I might just go ahead and order a bunch of those instead.…

I am the most indecisive girl on the planet, and I’d almost rather order 50 totally different cards than to have to pick just one that’s supposed to define me.

What does your card look like?

BOTH OF US!

That’s right guys, it’s a tie.

Voting happened both on this blog post, and on Aimee’s flickr page.
And the tally was closed at 15 votes each.

So who designed what?

As if it wasn’t obvious, the left design was mine:

Detail shot here.

and on the right was Aimee’s lovely design:

This was a whole lot of fun, and I’m planning on doing more design challenges like this in the future…this time with more participants.

Thanks to everyone who voted, and let me know if you’d be interested in submitting if I held another design contest of this sort.

flightskoolsociety.com and thisisstar.com go head to head in a helvetica-off.

the challenge: using only Helvetica Black 72 point, 14 point, and 6 point, and color, create visual interest only using the dummy type “lorem ipsum”

For the purposes of fairness, we will be voting blind.
We’ll let you know tomorrow who designed what!

vote in the comments for the one you like best! (LEFT, or RIGHT)
Voting ends tomorrow (Tuesday) at 12 pm PST.

update:

VOTING IS NOW CLOSED.

We will tally now!

A couple days ago, while musing about Helvetica, I said the following:

For all my Helvetica obsession, I have yet to make a successful design using it.
Perhaps that would be a good challenge for me; to make a simple and excellent design using Helvetica.

Yet, for any good challenge, one needs a worthy opponent…

Any takers?

Shortly thereafter, I recieved a reply from my friend and fellow ladyscout, Miss Aimee Thorne.

I accept your challenge and hereby raise the stakes.

You can only use helvetica black 72 point + 14 pt + 6 pt. You have to use all three, and only all three. The design will rest on color, typespacing and visual flow, and that is it. no rule lines (this is why i am saying 6 pt, you can use a font that small to your advantage) no images, no textures, no photoshop filters. letterforms and color. that’s it.

I will throw both images when you are done on my webserver (to confuse the masses) and we can have people vote on your blog and on flickr (we both post a side by side of the two.)

I need a challenge these days as well.

deadline. MONDAY.

hop to it.

So there you have it, kids!

Watch this space on monday to see how it goes! We will be voting blind…so no biases in play.
Exciting!

I was immediately drawn to the ornamental design, but was taken aback by the deliberate censoring of the very information the design was supposed to be communicating.

This led me to flip it over, hoping the info I needed would be on the other side:

There was the info, but once again, there was something crossed out that I was unable to read.
This simultaneously intrigued and frustrated me.

At this point I realized that the show it was advertising had already happened, but I thought the flyer design was so odd, I took one home.
I eventually checked out the headlining band on myspace to find that I hate their music (sorry dudes!).

The whole experience made me ponder this concept of mystery design.
While I was frustrated that they made it difficult for me to know what I was looking at, the act of being forced to look further to find out made the design stick in my mind.
In fact, I was so intrigued that I kept the flyer, looked up the band, and made a blog post about it.…even when the specific event it was advertising had long since passed.

So is this brilliant or not?
I went so much farther down the path than I would have if it were all laid out in front of me, but I kind of hated it.
What do you guys think?

p.s. If you designed this flyer, let me know and I’ll credit you. Also, please feel free to weigh in on the discussion.

p.p.s. Any of you have other examples of ads like this?

I drew/designed this flyer for the Public Marching Band on the 22nd.

Hope I see you there!

I’m super into the “Truth Hurts, Read Fiction” campaign by Oxford Bookstore.
Helvetica for the win!

Check out the other two ads:

“I’m in love with somebody else.“
“Son, I am not your real father.”