Beloved Monsters

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Happy end of February!

This past weekend I got to see the Eels in concert up in Columbus. Saw a good concert with a good friend, and they even played one of my all-time favorite songs – My Beloved Monster. Which got me thinking about doodle monsters (so I doodled), and real-life monsters. Monsters can be furry, or scary, or have three heads. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the three-headed monster that is the interwebs.

As a print designer, my experience with web is still growing (mainly building this site, and professionally managing content & updating work-related websites on Drupal and WordPress). But I do know one thing: When Adobe launched Muse a little more than a year ago, I was excited and then immediately let down.

My problem with Adobe Muse is this: all it does is perpetuate print design standards in a web world, where they aren’t necessary. Muse is literally telling us “pay no attention to the code behind the curtain”. I have a belief that as designers, its our job to understand how things work, then we take that knowledge and apply it to our projects. Why would Adobe want to pacify us? Keeping us in a print mentality is dangerous, and encourages the idea that web is big and scary and impossible to learn. But it’s not, it’s the exact opposite. I love working within perimeters and rules, and that’s exactly what web is. We should want to learn. We shouldn’t want to live on false hope just to make our lives easier. Muse is an internet band-aid for designers, and band-aids always get super mega gross and fall off, even the super cool Batman band-aids.

Web is like learning a totally different language, but it’s not impossible to bridge the gap. HTML & CSS open up entire universes. They challenge your imagination, and make you think hard. While there is no user interface, short cut, or plug-in in the world that will help you remember how you got that code working at 3am the night before, there are moments of epiphany and brilliance that can only come from understanding the native tongue. Learning it fluently is a challenge, but not the impossible mountain I had made it out to be when I graduated college.

We shouldn’t be seeing it as a dreaded inevitability. It’s a way of creating awesome things in different ways. Understanding how the web, browsers and search engines work together is extremely important, even if you personally never build a single site. You might have to work with a developer one day, either via a freelance project or as a design studio cubicle-comrade, and understanding the language is invaluable, saves time and avoids horribly messy miscommunications. Plus, in smaller companies design and website management (or even marketing and web management–or design, marketing and web management, which is what I do for a local non-profit) are being rolled into one. So whereas the website might already exist, it could be as easy as updating your old LiveJournal (like a simple WordPress CMS) or it could be a little more complicated. Understanding CMS limits are also very important, because they are not all created equally.

I’ve taught myself enough (with guidance from friends) to tide me over for now, but I’m going to start messing with my site again in my free time (of which I have, but I schedule horribly: there’s this show on Netflix called the West Wing, perhaps you’ve heard of it?). I don’t know how long the redesign will take me, or what I want it to look like, but I know I want it to be more awesome. It want it to be all of the awesomes. And while I doubt that I’ll ever be worthy enough to upgrade myself to “web designer/front end developer” and know my brain isn’t quite suited for the role of “backend developer”, its no excuse to not be competent enough to interact with a real one when I need to.

-Hearts and farts, Katie

I’ve had this entire post sitting on my desktop as a stickynote (virtual, not post-it) for quite awhile. I’ve noticed that’s become a habit of mine – writing fully fleshed-out blog entries and then never posting them. I know, totally silly. I am an internet-wussy. 

For more well-known opinionated opinions, the uber-talented Jessica Hische spilled her brain recently about web design and as always, good things came out.

 

 

Politics & Puppets

What do political debates and sock puppets have in common? The internet loves both of them when alcoholic beverages are involved.

We’re getting ready for the Veep debate on Thursday (Oct. 11, mark your calendars!!), so if you missed playing along during round one of the debates, you can still join us for round two with our VP Debate Drinking Game. The twittersphere has been sending us suggestions for drink words left and right, so it’s gonna be a great list :)

If you missed the video outlining the first debate’s rules, check it out. We had so much fun we’re making another one for the Veep debate!

In other news, my DC trip was awesome. I got to catch up with a few friends, eat some spectacular food, and fill my eyeballs with art museums. DC sure is a buzzing place, and while I miss the metro, I’m glad to be back home with Bacca.

Oh Canada…Oh America

So the next big adventure? Yup. It was Canada. Ottowa, to be exact. I was lucky enough to convince Paul to take me and see the Van Gogh: Up Close exhibit before the pieces went back to their respective museums, never to be seen again. Having been a complete Van Gogh nerd since I was in elementary school (for one of my birthdays, my mom found a “pin-the-ear-on-van-gogh” game. Gallows humor, yes, awesome mom? double yes), it was one of those once in a lifetime exhibits that I felt I HAD to see. And I’m so glad we went. It was really amazing. And Ottowa is a busy little town, with fantastic food, and gorgeous sightseeing. It made for a wonderful weekend.

Now, back to America. As most everyone knows. we’re 7 days from the first presidential debate of the 2012 election season. Needless to say, some pretty exciting things are happening over at Debate Drinking, mainly the best presidential debate drinking game ever made. So keep checking up, awesome things are bound to happen.

Also also exciting, following the debate, I’ll be in Washington D.C. next week. Two days full of the museums we didn’t have time for during our Honeymoon. I’m pretty ecstatic.

4 months later…

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Oh how time flies.

All of the sudden it’s been 4 months and I barely have any doodles to show for it. But I’ve gotten plenty of life adventures under my belt. More than ever before, I’m pretty sure. We drove to Maryland for a wedding, drove up to Pennsylvania to visit family quite often, visited my best buds up in Cleveland a few times and I got to attend Weapons of Mass Creation Fest. More recently, I drove to Chicago to see my 3rd-5th grade BFF & pen pal. (While I was there I also got to catch the Lichtenstein Retrospective–it was amazing to say the least–). And, that letter to the editor? The DDN published it on Saturday, May 12 on page A11! I got so much great feedback from people all over the community, and reaffirmed the idealistic notion that people still pick up their local paper every now and then.

As for doodling, I’m slowly but surely getting back on the horse. I’m trying to not crash when I get home, and instead set aside time for personal projects. It’s been working. I’m experimenting more with brushes and textures and getting more comfortable with my Bamboo. I’m more comfortable in photoshop than I’ve ever been, and it used to be my most-avoided program (InDesign 4 lyfe). I think my style is getting closer to where I want it to be, and that’s always a good thing. My boob-lines look way too blue, must have to do with web colors vs. cmyk. They aren’t that blue on Facebook or Twitter, I swear.

I’ve got one more big summer adventure coming up, perhaps I’ll make something about it soon :)

The Dayton/Denver Debacle

I submitted my first letter to the editor ever today. I’m positing it here because it’s relevant to the design community here in Dayton, and if it doesn’t get printed I hope other people get to see it. Enjoy.

 

On Friday, April 20th, the Dayton Daily News ran a story announcing that the city of Dayton’s Economic Development Department had chosen a design firm based in Denver, Colorado to create a website. The main purpose of which is draw new businesses into Dayton. This firm from Denver had beat out 15 other firms, including 5 quotes that came from local companies.

Later that morning, every self-respecting web developer and designer in the city of Dayton did a spit take in disbelief. Heads were slammed against desks, my twitter feed was a fuming lava-pit of frustration, and we were all left with the same question: “Why?”. And who was this company from Denver, Atlas Advertising? They’ve built the same sites for other cities, such as Indianapolis and San Francisco. Sites that they claim have perfected driving new businesses into their respective cities. However, watching our tax money fly off to a design firm in the mile-high city frustrated me the more and more I thought about it.

You could make the case that none of the local design firms have the specific “experience” in creating an online economic development hub. Ironically, Dayton is pretty good at doing things that haven’t been done before, and we brag about it every chance we get (do the Wright Brothers ring a bell?). And it’s not like Dayton firms haven’t handled massive projects before. The client lists from our larger design studios in the area is quite impressive (Babies ‘R Us, Kmart, Target… I could go on, but you get the point). From traditional marketing campaigns to viral videos, e-commerce and every kind of web development under the sun, we’ve pretty much got a myriad of talented design firms of all sizes for any of these endeavors.

Money could be a factor. It’s possible it would have been more expensive for the City of Dayton to use it’s own local businesses. But that doesn’t seem like a good argument for the city to make. “It’s too costly to invest in our own local companies, so please, come build your business here in Dayton so we can have more talent we don’t utilize!”.

To me, it seems like a bigger problem than money, or experience. It boils down to the idea that the people leading Dayton don’t believe in Dayton. They don’t see the talent that’s right outside the front door. I’ve seen that talent, and I want to invest in it and be a part of it. That is why I have chosen to live here. It’s almost as if they’ve never met Dayton. So, they invited another group of people who have also never met Dayton to make decisions for Dayton.

I ventured over to the Indianapolis and San Francisco sites that Atlas has built. There really isn’t anything that distinguishes them from each other, save for the fact they’re in different locations. So this means that Dayton will have a site that looks just like everyone else’s. We’ll be paying $45,000 of our tax dollars plus monthly fees to blend in. But Dayton shouldn’t blend in. The whole point of attracting economic development is to show our city has resources that can’t be found elsewhere. What does Dayton have that no one else has?

Dayton has us. And sooner or later I hope for our sake, it realizes that.

The article I’m referring to can be found here.

KBB Friends: Mark

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First friend doodle! Woot!

Some backstory to this doodle. I made this doodle a few months ago, kind of as my first attempt to tackle drawing my friends. The thought came to me while I was discussing my normally weird dreams with my friend Mark. He always winds up in my dreams doing something weird, or telling me to go somewhere, so he joked that he was my Indian Spirit Guide (a la Waynes World 2), and the image in my head was too funny to not jot down. Check out how the final version looks on my portfolio site.

I included staples of his wardrobe (his oxblood doc martens and an orangey-plaid button up his girlfriend had dubbed his “i can’t quit you” shirt in college) and that made it pretty fun, mostly drawing the shirt. I haven’t seen it in years but I’m pretty sure I got the color scheme exactly right. It was one of my first re-drawings using my wacom bamboo tablet, so it was a little wobbly. I wound up using more color than outline, which I liked as well and used that style again when I doodled the republican candidates.

Because it was one of my first ones, I like looking back on it because it reminds me how much I learned when I just sat there with my wacom for an extended period of time. Being able to create characters on a sticky note and then being able to create them again via tablet is a hurdle for me. It’s almost like learning how to use a pen all over again. But it’s a reminder that if I keep playing it will eventually get loads easier.

domesticated nerds

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Guess who made a comic? C’est moi! This will hopefully make up for the fact that I got too bogged down on Wednesday to post. You should go check out the final version on the doodles section on my site.

I figure that I’ll post comics as I come across fodder for them, this was an actual conversation Paul and I had last night. So, that means next week I might have a doodle of a friend, OR maybe a comic. Huzzah for the element of surprise!

Also, I have to take my laptop in to get checked out. It’s been acting buggy, but it’s still under the Apple care warranty (thank goodness). So my doodle post next week will likely be towards the end of the week as long as I have my lappy back by then.

“It’s like a political MST3K…”

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Surprise random post!!! Ok yeah, so it’s not wednesday…but it’s thursday. And there just so happens to be the second South Carolina debate (yes, they had TWO) tonight.

This doodle was made from a conversation I had with my friend Mark, it made me laugh pretty hard, because it’s soo true.

(MST3K = mystery science theater 3000. If you’ve never heard of it, here’s the wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_Science_Theater_3000)

When I made it yesterday I wasn’t expecting to wake up to news of Perry possibly pulling out. So he’s got question marks around him.

If you’re like me, and you hate discussing politics, but love drinking to political gaffs, then you should follow us at Debate Drinking on twitter tonight, and check out our rules on the best republican primary debate drinking game website ever made — DebateDrinking.com. It’s non-partisan, and pro-beer, so everyone can have fun!

My friend Dan started it, and I’ve been helping him out with tweeting it. It’s been lots of fun, and we don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. We’ve even got plans for something for the State of the Union address!

Happy Drinking!

Let the wookie win

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Bacca

 

I don’t think Bacca would be good at interstellar claymation-monster chess, but she would still win based on the fact that she’s adorable.
She’s our real-life dog. We got her at SICSA, a local dog shelter in Kettering, a little over a year and a half ago.

Her superpower is melting everybody’s hearts in a 5 foot radius. And she really does sit like that, with her paws crossed.
The final/colored version is over on the doodle section of my site, go see how it turned out!

 

Hello, world

Hai. My name is Katie, and this is my blog. I’m a graphic designer living in Dayton Ohio. I’ve got a husband and a dog and a house, and everything else is undetermined.

Between looking for freelance design work and looking for full-time positions, my new years resolution last year was to build my own website. I taught myself basic html and css with the help of some friends and now, a year later, I’m taking what feels like an even bigger step. This is my 2012 new years resolution: blogging, posting things, making a cozy home for my stuff on the web that’s more substantial than my nerdy tweets.

I’m leaning towards posting on wednesdays, but we’ll see how that goes. I will post behind the scenes and process work of my doodles, which I love making, and people love seeing. I want to make them better, I want to make them awesome, and I believe this is the way to do it. I’ll start off posting doodles of my friends and we’ll see how that goes.

I also plan to have posts about design, and marketing, and things that really make me think. For instance, I’m currently sitting in the conference hallway of CodeMash, a developers conference hosted in Sandusky, OH. Completely out of my element, but the experience is fascinating. I really want to write about it when I get home. But, doodles first, nerdy pondering second.