Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Shop Love
Today was a busy little day shopping in Seoul. So many amazing vintage stores, with cute/weird/quirky/amazing shop displays... Just another reason why i LOVE South Korea...
Take yourself out for some retail therapy.
Evolution of Species
This story does not belong to me - it happened to a co-teacher, but it was so genius that I decided to blog about it. I love being an english teacher in Asia...
During a class discussion about famous people in history:
Teacher: What was Charles Darwin Famous for?
Student:
* The end *
Monday, August 30, 2010
CD covers
Oh, hello! Today I will show you how I made some CD covers for the Music Mix Swap that I'm participating in on Goodnight Little Spoon. It's really simple and all you need is a cereal box and... I have plenty of those...
Step 1: Flatten your cereal box (or hard card) and measure a strip long enough to fit a CD.
I used 260mm long and 140mm wide. Like so:
Step 2: Cut out the strip. (rocket science)
Step 3: Fold up the long strip longways. (haha... it makes sense to me)
You should end up with a square-ish shape that looks about the size of a CD with a fold in one side.
Next, tape up the two sides on either side of the fold leaving the top open.
Step 4: Cover your cereal box-CD-case like you would a normal gift, using coloured paper.
Remember to leave the top open so that you can put the CD inside.
Then you can decorate it how you like - I drew some old school mix tapes...
Hint: I found that when I was wrapping up my CD case - it was easiest to put a piece of A4 paper longways and then cut corners in the paper like this:
(Then you can just fold the tabs over the sides and the top one you can tuck into the open slot and tape inside.)
Finally, cover the whole thing in clear contact - just for extra protection :) If you don't feel like decorating the cover - just choose some cool magazine pages to cover it with :)
You can DO IT!
Sunday, August 29, 2010
7 Things Sunday
So, I'm starting a new blog "section" called 7 things Sunday - just a quick wrap up of 7 things I have learned during the week. It's good to keep track of these things you know...
1. Hand-made CD mix-tapes are a great gift for friends.
2. Washing only your fringe in the sink, is not a good idea.
3. Amelie is a *great* movie. If you have not seen it, watch it.
4. Food and nail-polish and movies and friends is a great way to spend any day.
5. Friends from far-away places make the best surprises. :)
6. Snail Mail is always the best kind.
7. I am mac illiterate. (that's unfortunate)
Design Lab of Death
Before I begin I would like to dedicate this blog post to my lecturer Brian Garman. (And to anyone who has ever used the African Media Matrix Design Labs.)
When I was at Rhodes University I studied Graphic Design. One of our projects was to create a 120 page magazine from scratch. There were 12 of us in our class and we worked on it for almost the entire year. We had our own "special" design lab. (Henceforth referred to as "The Design Room of Death"). This is it below:
Did you notice anything "special" about this design lab?
Wait, look again....
Yes. That's correct. It has no windows. Repeat: NO windows.
This can be extremely deceiving. For example: you arrive at the Design Room of Death on a bright and sunny Tuesday afternoon...
You work very hard on your magazine project for a good few solid eye-ball-straining hours and you expect to leave the Design Room of Death and see this:
Instead, you walk outside and see this:
(also please note the dark eye circles)
Yes, you lost an entire day of your life to design.
Now this may not be so detrimental but what happens in the situation where you have a really hectic design project that you are working on- maybe even for a REAL magazine company or where the design is SO awesome that it just sucks you right in....
Now, let me just add this background... and let me just change this font... and I need to just adjust this tracking... and that leading needs work... and this sizing is a little off... is the colour too strong?...
The literal end.
* * *
PS. in case anyone was wondering... this is how my final magazine turned out - the many hours spent in the design labs and the fruits of my labour paid off...
My magazine was called Juice and it was an interactive (cut-up; doodle; tear-apart; fill-in-the-blanks) /inspirational design related magazine:
The front cover:
Letters to the editor - in a PopArt /Andy Warhol/ Roy Lichtenstein style...
Editor's Letter - yes that's my face.
Flip through a magazine. Then flip through it again and think about how much work went into designing it...
Pretty Packages
Just some of the pretty wrapping paper that I used to wrap my friend's birthday present, including twine, printed tape and a lollipop. Yum! :)
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