Do yourself a favor and check out Kushtie Script by HeadFirst. Really nice. It has playfulness and elegance all at the same time.

Also, grabbed some free patterns off of deviant art from Ransie3.

I have this idea in my head for a design direction to go for my portfolio site. Just testing out the idea and seeing where it goes. A lot of the time doing these small designs helps me create a better picture of the big design.

I stumble across new designs and products all the time on the web. One blog leads to another article leads to a flickr page and so on!

Stumbling across one’s own work, from a design archive (aka my external hard drive that all of my school work is on) is so fun! Seeing where I was and how I have matured as a designer and person is so interesting. Below are a few of the portfolio design concepts I had when graduating from RIT.

One of the things I notice is how much I focused on design first and content second. I needed to take a deep breathe, step back. Layout and content, then adding visual style is how I work, now. (Thanks to some great mentors!)

How adorable, right?!

The idea behind this design: a “design your own playhouse” for kids! It was to be an interactive site with a section dedicated to building the houses and then a just-for-fun games section.

This was one concept of two that I had for a certain project and the other one won out. I  came across this concept design the other day and forgot how delightful it is. Makes me want to finish the interactive game I started to make for it…

I was looking on Etsy, loving all of the creative and beautiful works of art and became inspired by this color combination and well, it just made me smile. And then I created some art. Quick, simple. Life is sweet.

Oh and it started out with wanting to create a pretty geometric form. Here it is.

Recently I visited my best friend in upstate WI. She is a cook for a campus of 30 students and she likes to make homemade goodness for them. While I was there, she taught me how to make bread, and we fantasized about opening our own bread shop someday.

That is where the inspiration for this design comes. There is no content, but the design was created in an hour. I wanted it to look earthy and have a homemade but modern feel. The white and futura font bring out the modern and the burlap background with a pic of some fresh bread give the earthy feel.