...when you only have an hour...

As I get older, I'm getting worse at remembering to get people presents for fun occasions. It's terrible and I feel like a jerk. I should make a resolution to remind myself a month before each event/holiday. And I have less money, so I make more presents, which takes more time. So when I am forgetful and then I remember that I have to make someone a present in the next HOUR... these kinds of things occur.

This was make very quickly for my friend's kid's 1st birthday.  I didn't have time to scan it, so I took this low quality phone picture.

On the flip side of things, I'm making flyers for my job now. This one is just kind of cute. I'm trying to stretch the bounds at work to see how much time I really have to design and how much time I have to dedicate to admin work.  So I didn't spend too much time on this and it's not amazing, but it's a start to hopefully at beautifully hand-drawn aesthetic.

I also make things more along these lines:

I get immensely self-conscious about my design work. I'm an almost 100% self-taught designer. I don't know tricks to making type very interesting like "real" designers do. Every day I gather reference and inspiration to copy, twist, mimic, and learn from. My "inspiration and research" folder on my desktop has thousands of images in it from poster designs to website layouts to typographical tricks to email headers to everything else you could imagine. My mantra for years has been "ugh! i just need to get better at this!" as I spend hours and hours trying different layouts.

But then today I showed one of my co-workers a design I made for her and her jaw dropped and she told me that I make magic happen.  She is usually very generous in her compliments and doesn't know how to design herself, but it made me feel competent  in my work, which helps everyone once in a while, you know?

I'll get better at this.