I decided to try and be a little bit more adventurous with what I bought and picked up things I'd never tried before. I ended up spending about �10 more than I usually do but that's ok. After that, I came home and since then, I've pretty much been sitting in front of this computer all day.
I've tried to be productive and work on redesigning my portfolio website, but it's not really coming along that quickly, since I can't even decide on a logo for myself. If I get the logo sorted, I know that I'll have a better idea of how I want my portfolio to look but I need to design it quickly. I want it all complete by the time Summer is up so I don't have to worry about it once I'm at University. I also want to advertise it with stickers in town and maybe that way I'd get a few small jobs and therefore increase my portfolio at the same time.
Hannah went for a job interview today to work at a sports shop. She got it too. She starts work on the 17th of next month.
[15:31:22] Neil: Is it every day?
[15:31:29] e�? hannah.you're just like a dream.: Yeah
[15:31:44] Neil: I guess we're not going to see much of each other. :(
[15:31:52] e�? hannah.you're just like a dream.: We will.
[15:31:56] Neil: How?
[15:32:10] e�? hannah.you're just like a dream.: Because its not 9 till 5 everyday
[15:32:27] Neil: But it's still every day.
[15:34:21] e�? hannah.you're just like a dream.: Sometimes only till 11am.
[15:35:06] Neil: How are you going to stay here if you're in work every day?
[15:36:26] e�? hannah.you're just like a dream.: I might not be working EVERYDAY
[15:36:29] e�? hannah.you're just like a dream.: Just most days.
[15:37:49] Neil: Yeah and you have dance on Mondays and Fridays and Sundays. That doesn't leave much room
[15:39:28] e�? hannah.you're just like a dream.: Yeah but obviously i'm not going to choose dance over you
[15:39:46] Neil: But you are comitted to dance.
[15:40:24] e�? hannah.you're just like a dream.: Yeah
[15:40:46] e�? hannah.you're just like a dream.: But i think you are more important
I do hope this isn't the beginning of the end before it's even really begun. I just can't quite see how we're going to see that much of each other if she's at work all week. I think it's going to be a lot harder to see her. It's the distance that's the problem, mainly.
I emailed Amazon yesterday regarding my order of graphic design books. Apparantly, one of my seven books would take 4-6 weeks to order, which effectively was holding up the other six. I didn't want to wait over a month to get my books so I decided to cancel the one with the delay instead and hopefully, I'll be recieving my books either tomorrow or early next week. I'm hoping that they'll give me some inspiration for how I'm going to redesign my website.
I was speaking to Will earlier, one of the guys in my multimedia class:
[18:30:20] got my spresto!: I sent of a a5 illustration to go into this zine type thing and i used loads of colours and then ,when i sent it i thought 'that is gonna be way too many colours for a zine' an they replied saying...
[18:30:38] got my spresto!: Its nice, thanks. But we only produce two-colour issues: this time will be brown and blue (provisionally pantone 1545 U and Pantone 278 U) do you think you could adapt it that way? I�d be a tiny bit concerned that we have already got somebody commissioned to do our cover whose style I would say is pretty similar to yours, but I�d be dead keen to ,include you both as you are both new contributors.
[18:30:39] got my spresto!: Let me know what you think about the colour thing first � we could also run your piece with a suitable article if one comes in.
[18:30:59] Neil: Nice
[18:31:05] Neil: What magazine is this?
[18:31:10] got my spresto!: mercy
[18:31:50] got my spresto!: but the illustration i did was like pure summery and im gonna ahve to change it to like a bit more dingy and autumn looking i think, hope it dont need too ,much changing
[18:32:37] Neil: Let's have a look. And I need to start doing what you're doing too. It's a good idea, submitting your stuff to magazines. What did you actually say in your email/letter to them?
[18:33:05] got my spresto!: er this...
[18:33:08] got my spresto!: Hi, I'm looking to contribute to the 'OUTDOORS' issue of mercy and would like to produce an A5 illustration. I have already started on a peice but thought I should email first to let you know and find out if there is possibly a space for my work. I can send the finished illustration within the week if you would like to see it.
thanks,
Will
[18:33:34] got my spresto!: an he jus sent one back saying "got for it!" so i jus sent him it today
[18:34:05] Neil: I may have to create something and steal your space.
So I found a piece that fit the theme and spent about 30 minutes changing all of the colours into blue and brown. The piece in question is A Quiet Moonlight Walk. It doesn't look very colourful now. I'm hoping they'll accept it. However, as that guy's letter to Will said, they already have someone with a similar style to Will and Will's style is similar to that piece of mine. Three similar pieces may be too much for one magazine.
The magazine in question is Mercy. I've never heard of it before, but apparantly it's a free Liverpudlian A5 magazine that comes out every two months with about 1,000 copies made. It basically has a few editorials about various things happening around Liverpool, accompanied by some artwork. It's about time I began creating stuff and submitting it to places. I'm never going to get anywhere if I don't.
And speaking of emailing, I emailed Andrew, founder of Diaryland and voiced my concerns over how tired and frustrating Diaryland is to use these days. I have been using Diaryland since 2001 and in that time, nothing much has changed. In particular, the page where I archive all of my entries takes FIVE MINUTES to load up because of the way it's set out. That's crazy.
I offered to work with him to redesign Diaryland. I've spoken to him before about it and he said that it was something he definitely wanted to do but he seems too busy to do so. It bugged me so much archiving all of my unarchived entries though because each time I wanted to view all of my entries, I had to wait five minutes just for the page to load.
I made a quick mockup of what Diaryland could possibly look like if it were redesigned. It took me about 30 minutes to create it. I think it looks pretty nice actually. Much better than how Diaryland currently looks anyway. Unfortunately, I accidentally didn't save the PSD file, which means I only have that JPEG and not the actual editable file, but I guess it's easy enough to recreate if neccessary.
It'd be pretty cool if I did redesign Diaryland. What a project to have in my portfolio and tell clients about. "Oh, and I redesigning the website of one of the largest and longest running journal sites". Yeah that'd be good.
