Sunday, January 29, 2012

My First Day

So, today is day one of having a blog to showcase my graphic design work. My online portfolio. My hobby put on display. By no means do I consider myself professional. What I know, I've learned through trial and error and I happily admit that I learn something new with every project I take on. My next endeavor: Illustrator CS5! Merry Christmas to me! It was a gift from my parents this year, something I've had on my "Oh, how I want that" list for about a decade now. I literally cried when I opened the box. For those of you who know the design software at all, you may chuckle when I say that I use PhotoShop 7 (yes, 7) for everything I do at this time. Sad, I know. But it's gotten me by. And I know I have only skimmed even its capabilities.

My passion has grown over the years for design. I drew and painted in my younger years. I did independent study my senior year of High School and got a couple grants and scholarships. My freshman year of college, I was an Art major with focus on graphic design. But being the silly 19-year-old that I was, the fact that senior designers slept in the studio in order to complete projects was too big of a commitment. I switched to Business. But I have continued to hold a special place in my heart for design.

My first experiences came when I worked for a web design company after college. I learned some basics of the PhotoShop program from coworkers. Plinking my way through a different program (can't recall what it even was now), I did what I could. Lots of band pics - Andy's band, Sarcoma (calendars, profiles, logo, etc).  I learned more when I took a class at my next job, a computer learning center. The fire was officially ignited. I designed a 'why you should hire me' pamphlet to include with my resume, in hopes of landing a job more focused on marketing and design than just administrative.

As it thankfully always goes, God kept me on track to finally land at my current job. I don't do design there, but it still provides a creative outlet in its own way. I get to work with numbers, lots of data, and build systems and reports that make sense of all the data. There truly is a lot of overlap and it challenges me in so many ways. Graphic Design remains my hobby. It's truly the best of both worlds. I don't ruin what I love to do with forcing it to be my source of income. It's simply something that I can do for myself or for those in need of simple design projects (for a non-professional designer price).

After struggling with infertility, we had planned to adopt a child. Part of the process included creating an Adoption Profile, which is given to expecting mothers. I have done two of my own as well as another couple's and very much hope for the opportunity to help other couples wishing to adopt to create theirs. I created an identity for that specifically, Glimpse Designs.

I hope that this blog will bring more side jobs for me, invitations, announcements, photo manipulation projects, calendars, logos, identity pieces, etc.
















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