Every brief starts with a blank page

Design in Spring

Brisbane is at its best in Spring. Fabulous clear blue skies, warm weather and… festivals.
Festivals, pretty much my favourite thing.
Right now in Brisbane we have the Brisbane Writers Festival and The Brisbane Arts Festival. Despite Campbell Newman's apparent lack of interest in The Arts, Brisbane has managed to look great and be full of inspiring stuff right now: visually, musically and intellectually.
Closer to home, The Hub continues to do a great job, curating interesting exhibitions with really high quality pieces.
In the smaller gallery right now is an exhibition by John A Robinson and Malcolm Cassidy – I loved these pieces by John.
So what does being surrounded by all this creativity mean to a graphic designer? I start thinking about collaborations, how to create projects to include people like John. How to create projects to include the student I'm now mentoring from QUT Creative Industries, Taylah Elliott.
And I feel grateful to live in a place where creativity is valued.

Do you like me? Are you following me?

I have been on a very steep learning curve for the past year. This time, a year ago on a family holiday in Greece, four over-40s had a very funny conversation about social networking. It was revealed that we really knew very little. Guy did seem to be the most knowledgeable of us all but the conversation ended in peels of laughter and a mutual vow to learn this stuff when, to Guy's horror, he logged on to read us his company's tweets, only to find that the 23 year-old in charge of this important side of company marketing, was tweeting about his weekends!

I have kept my promise: I have been working with a fabulous woman Tanja Perl of The Perl Project who advises business, small and large, of which social networks to use and how to use them. (And yes, I designed her identity and website.)
And just last week I went to a workshop with Sam Shazzam, principal of Brisbane-based social media company, Good Funny Smart who practices what she preaches by having created and continuing to run  Aldi Mum (43,000+ likes) and School Mum (22,000+ likes) which are both a source of income.
This new knowledge is not only good for my business but crucial for being a great designer for other business.

And what about you. Are you using social networking for your business and has it earned you any money yet? Are you curious about what else you can do and have the quality of tweets improved? Tell me.

I'm on Linked In, I have a Pinterest Board, I love my Facebook page.
And I have 56 likes today. I'm aiming for 100 by next blogpost! Please like me – I'm curious what can happen.

Mentoring moments

If you have been following my blog, you will know that I have been working with Greta Bennett from QUT's Creative Industries' faculty in a mentoring role for the first semester of this year.
I remember when I was studying to be a graphic designer, I didn't really understand what the designer did – they didn't do the illustrations or the photography, they didn't write the copy… what exactly did they do?
So that's what I tried to introduce Greta to – the role of the designer.
Greta is drawn to photography so towards the end of the mentorship we worked on a few real life photography assignments. The first was for Laeta Loca and the second was for Queensland Strawberries.
Queensland Strawberries and Sarah Heath Design have created a tagline 'how do you eat your Queensland Strawberries?' and we have come up with many ways to answer this question: one being a photo essay by Greta.
You will see that Greta's photographic style is vintage so we worked together to plan the images, planning the running sheet for the day, organising any props, clothing styles – amongst other things. Here are the 9 images which will appear as A2 prints at the Regional Flavours festival for Queensland Strawberries this weekend.
Well done Greta.

A sweet shoot for Queensland Strawberries

My last day as mentor to Greta Bennett, QUT Creative Industries student. A perfect Queensland winter day in Wamuran, working on a photo essay to tell the story, "How do you eat your Queensland Strawberries?".
Greta brought her friend, Jazza as model, together we styled the shots and the children performed beautifully. Thanks to Luv-A-Berry for using their farm as location.
Watch this space for the finished piece.

To WordPress or not to WordPress

Yes, that is the question. I am currently designing another website in WordPress (pictured above). I have found a great coder and we are getting around many of the limitations of designing for WordPress. The main frustration is the visual limitations – all the beautiful sites in the world are not WordPress. But, the popular opinion is that WordPress has the best SEO (for Google searching) and it's Responsive (shrinks and rearranges itself to fit on smartphones and tablets).
Having said that, I designed my own site using Wix which is Flash-based and has unlimited flexibility from a design perspective. I can put anything I want, anywhere I want and style it anyhow I want.

The interesting thing is that the site I designed for a client recently who specialises in Social Networking and business was in WordPress (of course) has almost identical Google Analytics as mine. Now isn't that interesting. I am actually getting more traffic to my site because I'm using the social networking tools regularly. But the Google search engine doesn't seem to be sending any more traffic to that business than mine. Actually the opposite. So, watch this space for regular updates on that.

In the meantime, I am recommending WordPress for businesses which need traffic and Wix sites for information-based sites not reliant on search tools.

Up In Lights

Tonight is the QUT short film festival which I was invited to attend. Meanwhile I was also asked to be interviewed by Michael Beaty to be a part of his short film called Unique Caboolture. Flattering.
Now I find out that the film I am in will be shown tonight at the festival I am attending! Up in lights! I hope they were kind in editing.

Well done Bribie Island State High School for taking out the big prize. It was a great piece, well deserved.

Cool Canberra

 

I just had a fabulous weekend in Canberra with my girlfriends. What surprised me the most was how changed Canberra is with its architecture and graphics. The new modern architecture is in keeping with the best of the older modernist buildings and Canberra is looking good. 

The National Portrait Gallery is truly jaw-droppingly gorgeous. The interior is even better than the exterior.

Graphic design was consistently good too. Our hotel had lovely brown paper placemats in the restaurant, La Bicycleta with a beautiful line drawing of a bicycle in the corner. Very simple, practical and quite beautiful.

I really like the logo for The National Museum, shown at the top – the tagline for the museum was 'Join the Conversation'.  

Student Success

Where Meg and I struggled to take a really usable image of Laeta Loca's felt pod lights, my visiting student, Greta succeeded.
I love the industrial background that The Hub provides – it is a really beautiful building, full of tonally textured concrete walls, cement board, steel, glass.
Well done Greta.

Websites, Widgets and Wordpress!

I have just finished this site for The Perl Project and have done another 2 this year already. The Perl Project specialises in website strategy with a focus on how to use social media. Really interesting and amazing stuff.

So for me, having such a strong base in print and being fairly new to web design, I am really enjoying all the learning. And I thought a widget was that thingy in a Guinness can!

Great advice to all creatives... watch this.

I have this on my personal Facebook page already: it is a really great video for anyone who knows they're creative. Ira Glass is the host of radio program, This American Life and gives some great advice here to new creatives. It did remind me of my early days.

Meet Greta, the QUT student who I'm mentoring.

This is Greta. Greta comes in each Thursday for 3 hours and is thrown into whatever's happening in the studio that day. 
This week, Mel from KW Doggett came in and talked paper.