LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a networking website that helps people use connections and find them to get jobs. You are able to load your resume to the site and companies or people will be able to find you in your searches. It also allows you to be able to search for jobs. It is sort of like big kid Facebook!

Since I will be graduating in May, I have started to get ready to look for jobs. A while back I had started an account on LinkedIn, but I never really used it or updated. This week though I actually started to update it and find connections and see how the site truly works. Hopefully it will do some good!

iPhone Application

Our last project in this class is to design and iPhone application. I will be designing an application for budgeting. There are already quite a few of this type of application already available. However, mine will be able to alert someone when they go beyond their budget or when they are getting close to it. They will be able to set the alert three different ways. One will be to alert when the budget has been exceeded, the second will allow you to set an amount left to be alerted so that you are made aware before it actually happens, and the third will allow you to not have an alert at all if you choose.

Paper Persuasions

Paper Persuasions is a company I stumbled upon online. It is a company near Akron that specializes in invitations and stationary. What is interesting, is the fact that it is ran by two sisters, and neither went to school with this. They have had to change their location twice because of expansion! Their office looks awesome too, and see like it would be an sweet place to work at.

LINK

E-Commerce Site

YAY! My e-com site is done!

The website that Bri and I designed is an e-commerce site for greeting cards. People will be able to order and customize greeting cards from our website, "designyard". After researching many different types of greeting cards and stationary websites, we were able to decide what things we did like and what we didn't. We were also able to see what was working on these websites and what was not. This way we knew what we should incorporate into our own websites.

The main aspect of our site is allowing our customers to customize their designs. Not only will we be giving them a large quantity of templates, they will be able to make adjustments themselves. The customer will be able to change the color, customize text, and upload their own photographs. This will all be able to be done after they sign up on our website and become a member. As a member, they will also be able to submit their own designs to be considered by us for purchase and to be used on our site.

DesignYard

Textures!

I found this site when a professor came into my advanced graphic design class and mentioned it. It is a site that has free images, backgrounds, and textures. Although I don't find the images to be wonderful and outstanding, I feel that I could get a lot of use out of them still. I think this website could come in handy for class projects when I needed a picture of something and was not able to take it.

Link

Harvard Bias Test

In my Diversity In American Society class, we had to take the Harvard Bias Test online. There were many different types of tests on this website. I have taken the age, sexuality, and weight preference tests.

Although it is said that many people find these tests valid, I do not. I feel that it is just a game and if you can concentrate and press the right keys you will have no preference and if you mess up you will have a preference one way.

The tests are somewhat fun and interesting to take for a class assignment but I do not find them valid, nor do I feel they help one learn anything.

Take The Test

Website Inspiration

Even though I do not like my flickr site what so ever... (haha) I do like this one! It shows so many different examples of webpages. Even though I do not like many of them, I like a lot of things about the websites. It helps me with many ideas.

It is good to see other peoples work, because it helps me push myself farther. It also helps me recognize things that I shouldn't do, and things that don't work well.

Website

Top Design Blogs

This site is a great source to find other graphic designers blogs. It lists the top 50 graphic design blogs. It is an easy way to see other designers work and see the inspiration that they find.

I enjoy seeing what other designers find and this is useful. It helps me come up with more ideas for projects and pushes me. When I find something that I would like to somewhat mimic, I have to be able to figure out how it was done and try to duplicate it in some way. It feels very rewarding to come up with something that is new and fresh!

Website

Photoshop Brushes

This website has a bunch of free brushes! I enjoy downloading free brushes so I can use them on my projects. I wish that I would've have realized how to do this a long time ago! I feel that they add a little character to my pieces when I use them.

There are many different brushes on her and they are categorized as well. I usually download the 'grunge' type brushes. It is surprising how many different types of brushes are out there. There is basically a brush for everything!

Website

Inkd

I feel the the website 'inkd' is a wonderful idea! It is a website where designers can submit their designs to be picked and sold online. All of the designs are templates that anyone can buy to use and customize as their own. It also compensates the designer every time their design template is purchased.

It is a great way to run an ecommerce site and have many different options. Not only does it help inkd by having numerous amounts of different types of designs, but it also pays the designer as well.

Inkd

Card Website

This is one of the websites that I am using for inspiration for my project in web. Bri and I are working together to come up with an e-commerce site that sells greeting cards. I have looked at many different sites and I like the most about this one. This site is very clean and organized. There isn't a bunch of textures and craziness in the background of the website to take away from the individual cards.

When designing mine I hope to keep it very organized and clean. I want it to be very easy for someone to find exactly what they are looking for. This is why I would want to incorporate a filter on the side like this website. This way the customer can easily and quickly find what they're looking for.

Website

Kuler

The Kuler website that a friend showed me is so helpful! It allows you to find a color scheme that works well together. It is very easy to use as well. I've been using it this semester for websites to help me pick a color scheme to use. I usually decide on a main color I would like to use and then go to this website. From there I can find more color that will work well with the color I chose.

I wish I would have noticed this site earlier on in college! It would have made life so much easier.

Site

Once Wed

My friend from home recently got engaged and I have been spending a lot of time helping her plan her big day. After tiring out all of the normal wedding websites, I decided to see if I could find any helpful blogs. I did!

"Once Wed" is a blog that had pictures upon pictures of awesome ideas! There are great invitation designs and homemade centerpieces. There are many things on her we wouldn't have thought to try and that would not be on a normal wedding website.

I feel I could even apply this blog to designs for future projects and get inspiration from this site. There is a lot of do it yourself projects on the blog as well as really cool photographs. I would defiantly go to this site to get new edgy ideas for photographs.

Link

Business Cards

There is a flickr account that I found online that has hundreds of business card examples. They are all very uncommon ones too. I find this site very helpful when I have to think of something new for a business card. The cards on this site use different types of media to print on. The cards are also cut into many different shapes and use different types of textures as well.

It is interesting to see all of these different ideas that I would have never thought of. They are all very creative. You can also see many different logos when you look at this flickr account that are on the cards. I will defiantly be getting inspiration for business cards from this site.

Site

Kinetic Typography

I remembered watching videos dealing with type on youtube, while I saw a classmate working on a current flash project. I used to watch what they all Kinetic Typography on youtube all of the time. It was so interesting to see how people chose to work with type and movement.

The videos that have to do with song lyrics or movies scenes are my favorite, because I don't know what to expect. I may have one vision in my head about what they will do with the type and see a completely different one. Many of the videos have multiple versions, and it is fun to see what other people did with the type using the same words.

This is something that I feel would be very useful in videos where you are trying to get large groups to follow along. Maybe at a conference or convention of some sort? Instead of people just sitting and listening to someone talk or reading a plain non moving text on a screen, this would be interesting and interactive. It would force people to pay attention, because they wouldn't want to miss what was going to happen.

VIDEO

TONY

Ummm so my type doesn't want to show up on my posts. I'm working on it for you. lol

Vandelay Design

Vandelay Design is a tutorial design blog that I found during the first project. It is an outstanding tutorial that shows how to do different techniques in photoshop for you web designs. The site had numerous examples and a wide variety as well. All of the different examples have an entire break down of how they were made. It shows how to reproduce the textures and effects that they used while designing the page.

There is also a design inspiration link a well. This breaks down different types of websites into categories to help you find what you are looking for. There is then a direct link to the actual website so that you can see what it looks like and how it actually works.

Here is the link to the website. It is very helpful!

Vandelay Design