Today, I come to you from the comfort of my living room for the first time, ever! My hard work last month paid off. As it turns out the whole goal of making more money was to get to spend it! Welcome home MacBook Pro, you will be well loved.

In between the working, sleeping and endless jaw gnashing I managed to take some pictures. Not very many but at least there were one or two that I thought decent enough to share. On the plant that gave me two beautiful pink flowers a week ago appeared this white and lavender bloom.



And just for fun, here's a "Behind the Scenes at Heather Ink" photograph for you.

I haven't stopped working in over three weeks, which is great but jeez I'm tired. All the forces of natural graphic design selection have pointed to me and said, "Alleluia! She is the one you need!" I've done work for regular clients, new clients, and rush clients. Just when I don't think it can get any crazier I open my email and BAM a new project DUE RIGHT NOW. I have a huge laundry list of project to finish this morning and more deadlines for the afternoon and some for tomorrow. The dogs are the only thing keeping me sane man!

(AND! My first anniversary is coming up, can anyone toss out a unique gift idea? I believe the theme is paper?)

For the month of June I've taken over a marketing job at one of the companies I do graphic design work for. I've worked in an office before but never a quiet office. The last time I sat at a cubicle was at the unusually hip office of IKEA North America more than five years ago. An office where jeans were considered "dressing up" and dancing was not unusual. After that I had a desk in the back of a massive IKEA store, at which I didn't sit much. Because we always had so many reasons to be running around fixing signs every where from the parking lot to the sofa department to the warehouse, a day at my desk was a rare treat. When I left IKEA I had my own store where there was a computer but no chair. Being in a yarn store is nothing like being at a desk, unless you'd like me to go into a lengthy comparison between needy middle-aged women and annoying bosses that are perpetually emailing you with the latest crisis.

I am again working at a desk job, but from home. I've been building my graphic design studio over the course of the last year and aside from the occassional drawing session on the deck I remain at my desk most of the day. A desk job.

Or so I thought.

As it turns out sitting at a desk at a computer hardware company is somewhat uptight, and my unnecessary gesticulating when something is not going as I had planned begins to look a little odd.

Needless to say I took a deep breath when I got home.

Even though we have the world's largest television and full surround sound, I think I might want to go to the theater to watch the new X-Files movie. It doesn't come out until July 25 but I am already excited! As an added bonus the movie poster is really nice.

It's about the time of year when a fresh flock of new design talent will be hitting the streets, banging on doors, begging for jobs and hoping someone takes pity on them enough to give them a couple thousand dollars a month. The first and most important thing every young graphic designer needs is a strong portfolio. Here are some tips and hints on how to make a good portfolio great:

1. Quantity: How much should I have in my portfolio? To show a good sampling of your work your portfolio should have 10-15 pieces. But quantity does not equal quality. Less is more. If you have a few really strong pieces it's better to highlight them than show too much and have nothing stand out.

2. Substance: What should I have in my portfolio? You should tailor your portfolio depending on what kind of job you are looking for. If you want to be a web designer than you would need at least two well-developed website layouts. If you'd like to get into advertising then stock your case with different ad layouts, maybe a campaign for one company that includes print, web and outdoor ads. But for a general rule try to fit these parameters:
- Poster
- Logos
- Stationery suite
- Brochure
- Advertisements
- Catalog or annual report
- Invitation
- Magazine article layout
- Calendar
- Coordinated promotional piece

3. Presentation: What works best? Start strong and end strong. The order in which your projects are presented to your audience is very important. Lead with your best piece, end with your second-best and make sure there is another strong piece somewhere in the middle to hold interest.

4. Case: What kind of portfolio is best? There are two main types of cases to display your work, ring-bound plastic sleeves or my preference, a hard clam-shell case. I use a leather Spink & Gabor case that holds 15x20 inch boards. All boards should be the exact same size and black. Maintain similar margins around all projects and throughout your case. Whatever method you choose make sure you mount your projects cleanly and neatly. You don't get bonus points for this in the real world, only minus points. If the plastic sleeves are dirty, go buy some Windex and clean them. It must remain pristine. Maintaining a clean portfolio sub-consciously tells your audience that you will maintain and respect their property and projects.

5. Resume: Can it be unique? Yes! It should be original and creative but also clear and legible. Design an envelope to go with it. You can also design a self-promotional piece that has samples of your work on it. Take extra copies of both to an interview and make sure to leave at least one behind on your way out.

Your portfolio is an extension of you. It shows how you work and how you think. If you keep it looking sharp and up to date you will never have a problem finding someone to show it too, and hopefully they will give you lots of money for all your hard work.

Being a strong print designer requires me to be fairly, OK, completely useless at web design. My time is consumed by pouring over paper samples and printing methods rather than learning Dreamweaver and typing code. Because of this my portfolio has always been a large Spink & Gabor case that I tote from client to client. I am good at keeping my print case up to date because who doesn't love any excuse to haul out the spray mount? I wrote a tutorial about mounting portfolio boards here. Aside from that I've never had an easily viewed portfolio. I put some items up on Coroflot last summer but I've never been happy with their site. It's hard to use, the navigation is weak and it doesn't display the pieces as nicely as I would like.

Thanks to Estetica Design Forum I think I've found what I've been looking for, a website to display my work beautifully. FinalCrit.com lets you upload your images and then Presto-Change-O! they're in a fantastic Flash based website! Click here to see my new online portfolio!

Whether you're a young designer just out of college without enough experience to get things just the way you want them or a seasoned specialist like me FinalCrit can help you display your goods just the way you want. For free!

Apple filed a federal trademark infringement suit against the City of New York and their GreeNYC campaign. GreeNYC created a logo that is being used on bus shelters, hybrid gasoline-electric taxicabs and even Whole Foods shopping bags. Apple says the logo looks too much like their logo and people may confuse the two.

Apple is claiming the GreeNYC mark will "seriously injure the reputation which [Apple] has established for its goods and services."

"This well-known city is using its new design in a variety of contexts that have absolutely nothing to do with Apple Inc.," New York City claims.

What do you think? Is Apple overreacting? Or has New York City bitten off more than it can chew?

My overwhelming obsession with Sharpies also extends to an obsession with using them. Using them to make lists. Only minimal amounts of work would get done if I don't make a list each day. But the list can't be just any list on any kind of paper with any kind of pen. It must be a neat, clean sheet of paper the same as yesterday's and written with the Sharpie color of the day. Some days may have the same Sharpie color as the day prior, this depends on my mood. The text is also of the utmost importance. I had tried using the PocketMod for a while, but NOPE it was too bulky, the lines were too thick and that made my writing feel too cluttered. The list must be perfectly spaced with a perfectly aligned left edge, if it isn't I start over. If a line runs too long, that's it, new list.

I have to make lists everyday because I could so easily find a million other things to do besides work. Things like petting the dogs, sitting in the sun or taking photographs could, and very often do, distract me from sitting down and actually working. This is where the neat, orderly insanity makes all the difference. I am just better at being distracted and that's why the overly systematic list works in my favor. My head fills up with all the things I should be doing and then opts out of all of them. But, if I make a perfectly aligned, tidy list it speaks to me in only ways I can hear. "HEY! YOU! Sit down! Make money! Then...buy shoes!"

When I hear that I sit down and work.

FAMILY ALERT. OLDEST NEPHEW IS SET TO ATTEND A PROM. ALERT. ALL SYSTEMS GO.

Not only does he have his drivers permit, but now he's going to the prom? With a date? What? This is not possible. Alright. Maybe it is possible, but I will never say I like that fact that he is 16, with giant feet and a deep voice. (I am still taller than him though so all is not lost.)

With the tuxedo rented and the plans falling into place, my sister bravely decided to invite 22 high school kids to her home for a pre-prom party. I received a call for help with the invitations. Yay! If I can't be there to take a thousand embarrassing photos of the kids then I will do my best to contribute in other ways, other embarrassing ways.

For the invite's creative direction my sister was thinking "clip art" and "something with a tuxedo theme." I was thinking, "Do I have any of Jen's prom pictures?"

After a quick call to my parents, a couple of scanned photos arrived in my email box.





My creative direction was falling into place. Last week I picked up some great free dingbat fonts from BittBox.



The theme of the prom is "Our own constellation." Puke. Gag. Vomit. Regardless, these stars worked out perfectly. I got the rest of the details from my sister, and she unknowingly was supporting my endeavor to make this:



I hope she likes it!

Today was one of those days where I woke up and was excited to spend the day with my husband. Fortunately, he felt the same about me today. We had a big day planned with running errands all over town, and right from the start everything meshed into place. We were chatting back and forth while we drank our tea. The topic changed from the dogs to news to the iPhone.

Yesterday, Thomas installed the 1.1.3 firmware to my iPhone and so this morning he was showing me the new things I could do. The most useful of which is being able to put Safari web shortcuts on the home screen. He went along adding a few of my favorite sites. CNN.com has an icon, dooce.com has an icon... "Do you have an icon for Heather Ink?", he queries knowing full well I did not. "Let's make one, it won't be hard!"

We head off to my office and start clicking away. All we had to make was a 57x57 pixel image and edit some HTML. Now my blog has an iPhone icon! Right there! See it?



Install it on your phone. Right now!

And! In the process I talked him into helping me add a favicon to my blog too. (This is something I had tried to do unsuccessfully about six months ago, but it turns out it was an easy fix and of course the mastermind figured it out while I was showering.)

So now when you add my website to your browser favorites it has this pretty little icon next to it! I'm so excited!



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How to add a favicon to your Blogger blog: Digital Knowledge Center article

Creating an iPhone icon for your website: FOREM article

On this most super of all Tuesdays, I hit the poles. As promised I took along my camera and documented my experience for the Polling Place Photo Project.

Heading out to vote in the primary election should be the top priority for Americans, but taking photos of your polling place should be the second priority for designers. In a campaign called Design for Democracy the AIGA - the professional association for design - is working to “demonstrate the value of design by doing valuable things.” Working with different government agencies to redesign the voting experience, the AIGA hopes to improve the interactions between US citizens and their government. Designers across the country can contribute to the cause by documenting their voting experience and submitting photos to The New York Times Polling Place Photo Project.

"The Polling Place Photo Project is a nationwide experiment in citizen journalism that encourages voters to capture, post and share photographs of this year’s primaries, caucuses and general election. By documenting local voting experiences, participants can contribute to an archive of photographs that captures the richness and complexity of voting in America."

When you're the youngest of a family I think you either let thing happen and quietly observe, or you're like me where you observe situations then just start yelling. Not screaming, but yelling. Yelling because nobody would listen otherwise. I always hated it when people used to ignore my input because they thought I was too young. I have really good ideas, damnit, and I don't bother talking unless it is a really. good. IDEA! So when people don't listen that just makes me YELL.

This passion toward being listened to is something I've had to set aside in my professional career. I understand that people running their own business may not necessarily agree or even want my input on every aspect of their marketing plan. I can respect that however hard it may be. But for the select few that are close to me, the yelling will never stop. I am not so young anymore but habits are hard to break, and this one is especially difficult because I'm not even trying. It's not very often that I get to combine the yelling with my passion for graphic design because I mostly freelance for other companies and yelling at them that their logo sucks is just not good business.

The only time I can really yell until my heart's content is when it comes to NobleKnits, my sister's yarn conglomerate. Nancy is a designer in her own right. She is a published knit and crochet author. She refashioned her clothes before 'refashioned' was even a word (think Molly Ringwald circa Pretty in Pink.) But when it comes to print and logo design she takes a step back and lets me take over, but not at first. Nancy always has a million ideas circulating through her head and so when she sets her mind to a new business concept, all best watch out. I try to get her to be patient while I design a logo or a business card, but she can't sit still. Within an hour of a phone call I'll have an email with 20 ideas attached to it. I clench my teeth and open the email always fearing what might be inside.

It's only been bad one time. The other nine years of stuff have actually been pretty decent. I just want them to be perfect. In our symbiotic relationship we achieve logo, website layout and merchandising perfection by yelling. For some reason I can't help it. Maybe I quickly revert back to all those years of standing in the kitchen with two adults and three teenagers all discussing a topic and me, age 4, expecting to have my opinion count just the same. I'm not sure. I just can't help but yell about Nancy's new ideas. "What is this? Why did you put this here? Why that color? What kind of look are you going for? There's no balance to any of this!"

Apparently I've done this so much that Nancy is scared when she makes a change to her website. Not being able to resist the ideas circulating through her head, she now makes the changes then deals with the wrath of Heather. Except this time? THERE WAS NO WRATH! She changed her whole website around, redesigned her logo and (WOW!) did a great job.



All because she says she can hear me yelling if she doesn't.

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In honor of the new look, NobleKnits.com is offering 15% OFF any order over $50. Use the code NEWLOOK at checkout. Promotion ends Thursday, Jan. 31, 2008 11:59 pm EST. Enjoy!

It's exciting to get up one morning and find your work selected as 'good design' by a group of your peers. I regularly read and sometimes post on the Estetica Design Forum, which is about graphic and web design. In the Logo Design & Brand Identity Forum I found a thread titled Heather Walpole - Print & Identity Design, here.

The piece they found was an identity I did for a local interior design firm, Three Arch Design. I like it, the client likes it, the printer even liked it, but to have it found on the world wide web and posted by a group of my peers is another treat all together! Thanks Estetica!



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Estetica Design Forum, here.

I've spent the last two days up to my eyeballs in ribbon and wrapping paper. The last few years I have made a lot of the gifts we give to people, but this year I was not so motivated. Instead, I've had a lot of fun collecting gifts along the road of life.

I'm actually looking forward to the holidays this year. It's the first year in nine years that I am not working retail in some capacity and it feels great. Yesterday I poured over my wrapping paper collection and chose two coordinating papers, then I hauled out my rubber stamps, pinking shears and glue stick, made hang tags and bound each package with lots of twine.

Of course, once I sat down on the floor to commence my wrapping festivities, I was joined by two furry not-so-helpful helpers. Henry came and and wedged himself in the tightest burrow he could while still monitoring my every move.



Lola went for a more active approach. First she started on my left...



then she made a full circle inspecting every gift, paper choice and scissor making sure to step on each before moving on to the next.



Finally I made some headway. I call this year "2007, the year of the GIANT gift tag." I like how they look and I'm excited to give them!



This is Susan's gift. I've very excited about it.



Oh, and look, Jenny's gift got some special stamping treatments!

I just delivered these business cards to a new client. His logo was clean so they were a lot of fun to design. I had them printed at Will Copy & Print in San Diego. They did a beautiful job as usual.



I am putting them in my portfolio. I really like them.

Projects come in and finished pieces go out. I love it when I land a new client or get a new project from an established client. I never thought I would enjoy freelance design work. I don't know why I thought I wouldn't like it, maybe it was a confidence issue or maybe I thought I wouldn't be able to find enough clients locally. Whatever the reason, I'm glad it didn't completely paralyze me.

I was slow to find clients in the beginning. A friend led me to my first client and that one contract lasted nearly six months, not because it was supposed to but because I was getting my feet wet and he was incredibly busy. I had one or two other contracts during that time period. Slowly more jobs started appearing, an old friend from college needed a logo for her husband's landscaping business, my uncle needed a price sheet for his photo lab and so on.

Now jobs arrive at a steady pace, so steady that I have to keep track of what's come in, what's gone out and who still needs to pay me. I am having such a good time with all of it that I want to do more. Every job is different and that makes everyday different and that keeps me motivated. So motivated that I want a MacBook so I can sit on the couch in the evening and do EVEN MORE WORK.

The global branding agency Enterprise IG has relaunched its identity. Dubbing itself The Brand Union, it sets the bar high. Here is their new logo sitting atop their previous.



So who told them to go ahead with this logo? It's hideous and down right illegible!

Here their website expounds on the ideas of brand mastery. "Part science, part art," it begins. "Knowing the measure of each in the building of a brand is the key to mastery. Lean too far to the right and you get creative flair without a strategic perspective. But lean too far to the left and you get strategy without beautiful execution. So you need a healthy balance between the two sides—a dynamic tension that’s vital for building great brands."

Balance? Between two sides? They missed all their own key points. The logo does not have any creative flair or so called beautiful execution. Maybe they just went for tension.

Then for added vomit potential they hit you over the head with the idea, that yes, they ARE A GLOBAL BRAND.



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Brand Union website. Link.

Advertising Age article. Link.

Wow!

Tara over at graphicdesignblog.co.uk wrote a great article about the evolution of her portfolio. She gave me a nice link right in the middle of the paragraph on a print design portfolio, referring to this article I wrote. She has some great ideas about moving your portfolio forward as your design style changes and grows. Go check it out, here.

Thanks, Tara!