Happy New Year!

Back to School? What?

Happy New Year

Amazing Vintage Design Resource

The Library of Congress has a huge collection of WPA Posters online:

The By the People, For the People: Posters from the WPA, 1936-1943 collection consists of 908 boldly colored and graphically diverse original posters produced from 1936 to 1943 as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal.

Of the 2,000 WPA posters known to exist, the Library of Congress's collection of more than 900 is the largest. These striking silkscreen, lithograph, and woodcut posters were designed to publicize health and safety programs; cultural programs including art exhibitions, theatrical, and musical performances; travel and tourism; educational programs; and community activities in seventeen states and the District of Columbia.

The posters were made possible by one of the first U.S. Government programs to support the arts and were added to the Library's holdings in the 1940s.

I am so excited about this that it's almost silly. Good vintage design makes me really happy, though, and I've really been into art deco lately - an aesthetic that many of these pieces have. I look forward to much inspiration from this source in the future.

Don't Give Up On Me

I'm still here, still crafty in my heart even if I don't have any extra time these days. Hopefully that will change soon. In the meantime, I'd like to share one of the logos I'm designing:

Our class is designing potential logos for a local preschool. The best five out of the class will be sent to the client for her consideration. My instructor warned me that the final version with the type might be "too sophisticated" for the client. Oddly enough, I'm ok with that. If it isn't chosen, it might just become my own logo.

Design Provides

There's so much cute stuff out there and so little time (so little room, so little money...). The other day, I was horribly tempted by "Happy Hermits" stationery by Apak. I saw it at Uwajimaya - wonderfully dangerous place, that store. I was drawn to the warm pretty colors, and cute, slightly sinister characters. They reminded me of the sort of thing I sketch in the margins of notebooks. Lately, I've been lusting after stationery in general, which is odd because I don't often write letters. Perhaps having nifty stationery would provide an excuse? I was standing in the store, asking myself who I'd write to, imagining how fun it would be to send letters written on this stationery, picturing the reactions of friends. In the end, I was fiscally responsible and walked away.


Instead of buying stationery (for now), I came home and made some of my own. The graphics are from a recent design piece I created for school. I really loved the palette of neutrals, for which I blame Alison (I used to think blue and gray and taupe sounded boring - what on earth was I thinking?). The next step is to get some envelopes from Art Media in the same colors and call it a set. Maybe transfer some of the houses and trees onto sticker paper - ooh, my own stickers!

I really enjoy playing with Illustrator - crisp, clean scalable graphics that look so cute when they are designed slightly askew. For the things I like to do, it's a better program than Photoshop. That said, one of my favorite things to do is to combine vector graphics with photography. The contrast makes me happy.

Beginingz

I'm taking a web design class this term, aka "Interactive Media" - here is my first web page, pulled together in about 15 minutes with the help of some very basic instruction in Dreamweaver:

http://web.pdx.edu/~sdeloe/

I used tables, created a link, and placed images, including the page title. Simple, lots of room for improvement, but I'm still pleased as pink punch with it as a first effort.