I just launched a new section on my website! On the navigation menu, you’ll now find a photography link. I am in no way a professional photographer, however I do like taking pictures and love the quality of 35mm SLRs. I hope to improve upon my skills and I’m anticipating enrolling in classes for the fall.

This week I attended  a design meet up! One topic that came up repeatedly was web design and its future trends. There has been a lot of uproar over it, especially with Apple officially calling out Adobe and refusing to incorporate Flash into it’s most recent releases of iPhones and iPads. Steve Jobs has essentially declared that HTML5 and standards compliant websites will be the wave of the future.

I’m not necessarily sure that Apple is stepping away from Adobe in the interest of public good, but I do know that Flash right now has its limitations. Any time you run scripts that require plugins in your code, you risk not reaching the part of your audience that may not be able to or does not want to install these plugins. So you need a way to make sure your content is still accessible to everyone. This is impossible to do with flash, unless you go to the trouble of duplicating your content in HTML (and if you go that far, why not just use HTML to begin with?). As more and more people use things like iPads and smart phones, mobile design becomes more and more important. Content must be delivered quickly and efficiently.

I use flash a lot in my design work right now, so it’s hard for me to imagine it ever going away. In fact, I’m fairly sure it will stick around for quite a while longer, but I am interested to see how things will evolve and adapt.

I’ve been delving deeper and deeper into wordpress theme design and modification. So this entire month has been a fantastic learning process for me.  It’s a complete work in progress, but I am amazed at how much customization can be done.

Last work I was working on a banner for one of the premier scooter clubs of St. Louis.

30 Days Scooter Gang is a club that prides itself on the camaraderie of its members as well as a love for smaller displacement bikes. For the most part, members have bikes between 49cc and 250cc engine capacity and favor the classic vespa style. I designed a 6′x2′ foot banner to represent the club using a vector illustration I created of a vintage vespa and taking design elements from their existing patch and website design:

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Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year fatefully fell on the same day this year. In fact it seems like the entire weekend is an observation of several holidays what with our local Mardi Gras celebration happening on Saturday and Monday being President’s Day, also. I thought it would be fun to create a multi-holiday greeting card, so I settled on the two I considered the most fun and created this thoughtful lol-tiger-esque card just for kicks. Earlier I posted a sneak peak of
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A sneak  peek if you will:

Valentine’s Day is literally around the corner, and I’ve been putting forth a good amount of effort to create a pair of Valentine cards. Today I finished with the one and in the style of the fashionably late, I should finish the second one on the day after Valentine’s Day. It’s the thought that counts, right?
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I’ve been experimenting with origami recently, and while I enjoy making animals, especially birds, I think I enjoy making boxes more.  Perhaps it’s a latent, cat-like tendency of mine. Today I made a single sheet box with a lid made of flaps that fold into itself which ended up on my Thing-A-Day blog:

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Official pictures from the show are up!

This is one of the drawings that I started ages ago…almost 4 or 5 years. I originally had wanted to submit it for an illustration contest, but things came up and then I never had the motivation to finish it.  I finally just sat down and put in the last few touches I wanted. I still see  a lot of imperfections, but I don’t want to mess with it anymore. I’m quite tired of looking at it actually, so if you’d like the original drawing, contact me and I will gladly make an arrangement!

All graphite on bristol board. 8.5 x 11 in.

Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures at the show, and none have been posted on Star Clipper yet, but I do have my own submission photos. There were some pretty awesome pieces there though, so if I have time I may go back to get pictures so I can share my favorites!

Entry #1: I See Motor Scooters

Entry #1 is a tribute to my Genuine Stella in all of its chrome and sparkly blue glory. You can’t see it in this image, but in the goggles are advertisement images of a Stella. It sort of describes my state of mind when I decided to buy the Stella.

Entry #2: Love and Music

Entry #2 is a set of working miniature MUNNY iPod speakers. The sounded is boosted by a “wooden” heart battery powered amplifier. Turn it on, plug it in, and you’ve got wonderful music!