Napkin Concepts
Napkin Concepts is run by a fellow Graphic Designer and a pretty good friend. Take a look at the desgins and make sure you read this description Jake wrote for the blog.
“Welcome, you have landed yourself on a page that highlights the best napkin concepts. Heres how it works; if you draw something, plan something or just write something on a napkin, email it to napkinconcepts@live.com and we will post it for everyone to see. Our goal is to find the best napkin concepts and share them with everyone.”
Three Simple Tips From a Local Artist
Its been a while since I’ve talked to an artist other than my classmates. Yesterday a sculpture came in to talk about his sculptors and he gave some advice.We were only supposed to be in their for about half the class, which is a little less than an hour, but it turned I was in there for a little more than two hours. He talked for the majority of the time, but for the last twenty minutes me and a fellow classmate stayed and talked to him more about his designs and what we were doing. He gave a few helpful tips I’d like to share, and some of these I do myself.
1) Step back from what you are doing and take a break. That can vary from a short walk, to a month. It really doesn’t matter, unless theres a deadline.
2) Go with the flow, if you make a mistake, you might ruin the design more if you try to fix it. Simply, don’t be stuck on one specific design and try to perfect it.
3) Do what you want to do, unless you are designs for a specific brand. Your design might not always appeal to everyone, but it will appeal to someone.
I tend to take breaks from what I am doing, and do something else to take my mind of what I am working on. That varies from watching TV to playing video games to working out/going for a bike ride. Getting your mind off of what you are working on can be very helpful. There are times where I design something on paper or in my head and I want to make it exactly how I imagined it, but somethings that is very difficult. Then I get frustrated and trash the design unsatisfied. Recently I have been putting the design in a folder and going back to it later. I’ve made some cool designs by doing that. Finally do what you want, unless its for a specific brand. Design something you like, because there will always be a group of people out there that like the same thing.
Grand Opening for GraphicHouse
Recently I have been in a bit of a dead period with drawing and designing. My computer has set me back with its sloppy performance. Crashes would make me lose designs and that would irritate me. I put about a week into fixing the computer up and making it run faster, but its still not nearly as good as I want it to. An upgrade is in my future. But for now I am able to use Photoshop and Illustrator for a few hours before my computer overheats. Classes started up again and I am taking two art classes. A 2-D Design class, which I have been using Photoshop to get some ideas worked out, and a Computer Art class which basically I can use a great computer, the CS5 Suite and get 3 credit hours for just playing with Photoshop and Painter. Ontop of class projects, I began to work on “Project Alphabet” which is a design exercise to help kick start me again. In the next couple months I hope to post plenty of new designs. With that said, I’m going to call it a night so I can wake up at a decent time and work on one of my projects.
