My current life

right where I belong..

the view from my beach chair

my current neighborhood

my precious beach-loving dog Ollie

In honor of Father's Day

My Dad......

• is the youngest of 3 boys in a family from San Antonio
• is 6'5, the tallest in his family, and the reason why I am so tall
• used to train the whales and dolphins at sea world when he was in college. He flew to california to pick up a new whale and spent the next 48 hours straight with it to get acclimated to its new home. he also used to stick his head in whales' mouths and has a scar on his forehead for the time a whale tooth cut him as he pulled his head back
• made me play every sport i can think of as a kid, hoping I would somehow inherit his competitiveness; sadly, all i cared about after a game was where we were going to eat, and even playing volleyball throughout highschool I didn't get heated over a game
• turned me into the greatest texas longhorn fan on earth. we tailgate before football games, hate all other teams, and jumped up and down like children in the middle of the night after the horns football team won the national championship. we bleed burnt orange to the core
• loves buying me new shoes, things from best buy, and anything from the UT Co-op in Austin
• used to play catch with me on the street in front of our house every evening after dinner when i was growing up
• is the worst back-seat driver ever so i can't stand driving when he is in the car
• does all the laundry in my family
• could sit and watch golf all day
• since i was an only child, used to play 'Pretty, Pretty, Princess' with me and would put on all of the jewelry pieces required, including the plastic clip on earrings
• used to let me put clips and barrettes in his hair when i was little
• taught to to swim, ride a bike, and drive. drove me to all my practices, attended all my games and tournaments, and has cheered me on my entire life

Happy Father's Day!!!

final photos

the chosen 4 photos for my intro to photography deliverables

'worm's eye view'

Zebra Orange! (for 'shoot a fruit')

portrait

'goggles'

some more of my work

Locks of Love Brochure pages for Indesign class

Jenny Holzer feature layout for Typography 2:

Pizza, Beer, and Design

The only way to survive studio week

Screen on the Green

On Thursday night I went with a few people to Screen on the Green in Centennial Olympic Park. Everyone stretches out on the grass and they show a movie on a giant inflatable screen in the middle of downtown Atlanta. We rode MARTA down there and it was alot of fun. This week they showed Field of Dreams. I think we might go next week too when they show Home Alone

the lovely MARTA station

Before the movie they were playing music and people were getting up and dancing. the little girl in front of us had the best dance moves

Personal Brands

On thursday, in my cross cultural class, we had to present the personal brands we'd been working on for our final project. You could tell we all mildly slacked because we had so many other class deliverables to be working on, but it was still interesting to see the direction everyone took.

I named my brand Speek (because of my name) and said it is design that 'speaks' to a wide, youthful audience that wouldn't necessarily know much about design but that appreciates things that are new and different and new trends being set. 

This is the logo i went with:

probably could have made a more interesting one, but I was pretty happy with the outcome for the time being. I went with a whole hippie/bohemian vibe and tried to exaggerate that aspect so it was pretty fun to present to the class. incense, oldies music, head scarves, rugs and bare feet on the floor, etc etc. all in all we the whole class probably could have done a better job on this project but it was still fun to think about none-the-less. 

My friend Stewart sang a song he wrote as part of his presentation, and I love love love the words to it so I'm going to post them here, It's called Michigan Blue

These houses in rows

and it's all that we've chosen

to lay where we've fallen

the simple life

is a mannequin's strife,

it's just death that we're stalling

But for more,

there is no room for war,

but for now, i'm just asking how

With feathers furled

in the Michigan Blue

all I can think of is you

All of this pain

just from missing a train

do you think of us too?

But for more, 

there is no room for war

But for now, I'm just asking how

hope he doesn't mind me stealing his song to post on my blog. i love how the words are woven together to paint a picture. I think my favorite books and song lyrics use the fewest words to create a one larger image. no unnecessary words but somehow the few chosen have such an impact. I am such a word addict...haha. word nerd

anyways, enough for now

Studio Week in Full Swing

I have critique in 6 days.

Yesterday:

Coffee shop from 1-6pm

School from 8pm-2am

sleep by 2:30am

Back at school by 9am today

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

dreaming of travel

Lately I've been feeling a little nostalgic for this:

and maybe a little of this:

and quite possibly some of this:

after watching an old slideshow i made for my friends before i left Florence:

and reading my new blog obsession:

http://oiasantorini.com/

a blog of a family that up and moved to Santorini and now lives in a cave house overlooking the water.

I've been thinking about how to make my dream of long-term traveling a reality. I've already decided i want to travel more of Europe for at least 6 months straight. And I definitely want to do it before I have too many ties and responsibilities and while I'm young enough to still stay in youth hostels. My new goal is to go around 2 yrs after I've started working. Think I could save enough money by then?

Tobias-Frere Jones Poster

In my Type 2 class, one of our assignments was to create an event poster with the theme of a famous typographer. I was assigned Tobias Frere-Jones and decided to incorporate NYC in the poster since he gathers most of his ideas for typefaces from the city of New York. Here is one of my final drafts.

Locks Logo with color

I think I like this one best

Tinker letterhead suite

I've been working on the letterhead suite for my hardware store Tinker. Here is a draft I just completed. envelope, stationary, business card

Another poster version

I've been making some more changes to my hardware poster. Here is the new draft:

Caroline's visit to Atlanta

A couple of weeks ago, Caroline came to Atlanta for a long weekend. I keep meaning to post some pictures but I just haven't gotten around  to it. It was the first time for me to have a friend visit me here so it was nice to show someone around the city. I also hadn't done many of the tourist-y things yet so it was fun to get the chance. Unfortunately it rained most of the time except for friday so we had to spend a lot of time indoors.

She got in Thursday night but her flight was delayed and didn't land till nearly 3am. I took the trusty Garmin to navigate my way, but unfortunately had some trouble when it told me to take a different way than the signs on the interstate. I ended up following Garmin and not the signs and consequently got mildly lost right next to the airport. luckily i found my way back to more signs and picked her up. 

Saturday we got up and had a late brunch at the original Flying Biscuit over near Little Five Points. It was pretty amazing. I had never eaten there before and ordered a meal that included eggs over medium, black beans, tomatilla sauce and sour cream. it was pretty incredible and caroline and i became pretty hooked.

After that, we wandered around the shops for awhile and then drove over to Little Five to walk around some. It's such a neat area and reminds me a lot of Austin and Berkely. A nice little funky area in the city. I wish our school was located over there. 

We then drove around some and looked at all the beautiful houses. I can't get over how much I love the houses in Atlanta. They're so unique and southern, I would love to live in some of the areas around here. 

Next, we headed to the aquarium. Since it was friday we figured it would be less crowded but it was pretty packed. The only lucky thing was that I got a student discount and only had to pay half of the original ticket price. Perks of staying in school!  We slowly navigated our way around all the different sections and then couldn't resist going back to the enormous tank in one section where there is a floor to ceiling viewing area and a place to sit and watch all the fish. We stretched out on the seats and watched the fish for another half hour. haha, we were pretty entertained to say the least.

Next we headed  back toward Buckhead and got ready for seminar at PC. I took Caroline with me to see the seminar at school which was pretty great cause i got to show her around and introduce her to some people. the seminar definitely wasn't my favorite of the quarter (it was Dragon Rouge) but it was still fun to let her experience some of what I do at PC.  We went out to eat with a bunch of people from school and after that went to Sato and Matheus's and played some Apples to Apples.

Saturday we went to Flip for lunch, wandered around Castleberry Hill some and then headed to the Graphic Imperative exhibit at the MODA with people from school. We rode the MARTA downtown to avoid having to park which is always convenient. Afterward we went to another PC students apartment and hung out for awhile. 

at flip:

on the marta:

Sunday we got up and went to church at 11am and then ate our second helping of Flying Saucer, this time at the location on Piedmont and with my roommate as well as Caroline's good family friend. We ended the weekend with the dinner trip to Varsity downtown and dropping Caroline off at the airport.

I hope that others can continue to visit while I'm here so I can show them around the wonderful city of Atlanta!

the Birth of Wrench-us?

I've been working on a poster for my made-up hardware store called Tinker. We had to make up an event involving our company and make a poster for it. I came up with the idea of doing a lecture series called the Art of Hardware and the posters would be famous paintings with a key element replaced by a type of hardware. hammer, nail, wrench etc etc. Anyways, for this poster I did the Birth of Venus by Botticelli and replaced Venus with a wrench. this is what I have so far:

far

final tinker logo

I think this will be my final draft of the Tinker Hardware store logo. we'll see. i'm also making a letterhead suite and poster for my imaginary hardware store, so i'll post those later

locks logo

I think this may be my final draft for the Locks of Love logo. I'm not sure if I'll be adding color or keeping it black and white, but I like how it's turning out