Kristen Marie

Jun 16, 2013

Back on Flickr

Life is good when you can justify time for your hobbies & having fun. Between going to school and getting a job and starting my journey as a designer, it became easy for me to lose sight of little things like hobbies. I love film photography and have a ton of film cameras & film around the apartment and I think I abandoned it all for a little because I was so busy.

However, I’ve realized again how much fun it is and have also rediscovered flickr. I logged into flickr one day and realized the layout was totally different! Better, in my opinion.

I wanted to post about the new flickr, along with my excitement to take more REAL photographs.

Before: Flickr before had a little more white space, photos weren’t as big, and there was limited space, and you had to pay to have more than 200 photos up. All of the thumbnails were relatively the same size and they fit together in a grid. To be honest, it got kind of boring after a while!

Now: The layout has even spacing between photos, and they are gridded closer together and the size varies depending on the proportions, making it look more interesting & fluid. They give you a WHOLE TERABYTE of space for free and you can upload lovely, high resolution photos.

On top of that their mobile app functions a little bit more like instagram. You can take a photo directly form your phone, apply a filter if you’d like, and upload it (although I just use instagram for low-qual photos and my flickr gets filled with high res & scanned prints so I won’t really be using this fucntion…) You can scroll through posts of people you follow, and even double-tap to like!

I like flickr because it’s all simply centered around photographs. A direct way to see beauty that other people are harvesting via real cameras. I also really love that there is a terabyte of space now, making it a really easy way to store & share photos in one place online. I’m sure there are other new features that I am unaware of and thus, didn’t go over but from my perspective, the new interface makes me want to use it more. I only hope that it doesn’t turn too iphoney with the mobile features. (I made a pun!)

Above is a screen shot of the new interface, and below are some screen shots of the mobile app.

Jun 16, 2013

Photo

Colorpack Prints!

Steve & I had so much fun today taking pictures! We realized that we weren’t developing the colorpack prints long enough, so when we started to wait longer (sometimes twice as long as reccomended!) before pulling the print off, they turned out so awesome! I had to scan them immediately when we got home.. the double exposures are making me so happy.

Jun 12, 2013

Design

New Branding Projects

One of my favorite kind of projects are branding projects for independent / new /growing busineses. The following two are examples I’ve worked on lately and love the way they came out!

Chelsea was looking to re-brand her photography business with a new logo that has a timeless & simple feel. This one was super fun because I drew out the script and traced it in illustrator. I could not be happier with it! We thought it was strong enough with black & white, although she might explore colors later on.

Maia was looking for a logo that represents her profession as a community organizer & place maker, focusing on the connection between nature & cities. I loved taking this one from sketch to final. See the rest of the project here.

I’ve also been working on laying out branding projects to make them look presentable for my portfolio (which I also just separated by b&w and color. haha. Just a fun work update!!

Jun 06, 2013

Music

This is not a work mix

Hip hip hooray! I finally got on DesignersMX. I’ve been wanting to post on there for a while and I’m excited to have a place to post mixes and have yet another place to catalog design inspirations on. I really like this site. We will see how it goes!

I’ve been wanting to post this playlist for a while. I’ve been making a lot of Work Mixes lately with music to work to, but lately on spotify I’ve been favoriting tracks that are summery & jam-tastic so I made this anti-work mix in honor of good times.

There are some really solid & fun jams on here. I really hope you listen to it.

Stream it here, or find me on Spotify :)

Jun 03, 2013

Design, Insight

Sad type Happy type

Okay, I know this is my third post in one hour, but I haven’t posted in so long I just have to get it all out!

I love my little hexagon notepad. These two hexagonal friends balance each other out with their opposite attitudes.

I think that negativity is funny. Everyone experiences negative emotions, but not so often do we want to show it all off to everyone. There’s no point! I spend a lot of time thinking and drawing positive words and never really writing any negative thoughts down, so doodling some sarcastic negative exclamations was more fun than I originally thought.

Recommendation: Next time you’re frustrated and all of your normal & healthy coping mechanisms are somehow failing, try writing a bunch of crappy words on a nice shape and you might feel strangely soothed.

Jun 03, 2013

Design

Half off custom lettering

I’ve been obsessed with hand drawn type for as long as I can remember being interested in graphic design, and am constantly trying to educate myself more about it. I usually try to incorporate it into anything that requires words. I wrote in my last post about how I really want to start taking it to the next level, which means offering it as a specific design service and just being better at composing nice looking hand drawn letterforms in general.

There are so many designers that are inspiring me lately with their awesome type skills! It’s not easy to hand draw amazingly designed typography so I totally melt over beautiful type on the regular.I know for sure that practice makes perfect, so I want to kickstart my more focused lettering adventure with a promo for lettering! Ever wanted to borrow my hand writing? well now is your chance! I really want all of the experience I can get, and nothing says “experience” more than a challenge – so bring it on!

Keep in mind, lettering projects could be a variety of things! A logo, a greeting card, a post card, a tee shirt design, an art print, a stamp, a poster, a desktop background, a quote – anything. (Take a look at my portfolio to see examples).

I’m really looking forward to make this into something I really focus on. I’m excited to be attending a really awesome lettering workshop at the end of the month (for hand lettering and calligraphy!) and have been keeping my eyes on a whole lot of type books that I might finally get around to ordering. Hopefully my client work flow will continue to provide opportunities to help me along my journey to being the wonderful hand drawn type lady I want to be. ^_^

If you’re interested (I hope you are), contact me at kristen@warpaintstudio.com

Jun 03, 2013

Design

Do what you love

Oh my goodness, it’s been a month! I took a break from posting on my blog and have gotten a lot of things done & thought about for the last month. Lately I’ve really been thinking about my journey as a freelance designer & the things I love doing the most. I’m ready to take it up a notch.

I’ve been putting a lot of my work-time into the new Warpaint site – which is looking SO awesome! I’m really proud of myself that I’ve got it to this point already. You should check it out! Also, if you’re new to web site making, please do yourself a favor and check out squarespace. It is everything you would ever want to make a website (thanks, Rachel!).

Here’s a preview:

Anywho, I’m excited to share that the new approach for Warpaint involves a more dynamic website, and the presentation of a collective of designers (as opposed to an annonymous group type of feel). We’re aiming to have way more individual promotion within, since each of us all have our own things going on design-wise. Other new things include our “featured friends” series and a page dedicated to tutorials. If you check it out, don’t forget to join the snail mail list! (SQUEEK!! Yeah you heard me right, I said snail mail list! My dream of having a list of real life people to send real life printed goodies to is finally coming true. please be a part of my dream).

Now that this website is out, I feel like I can focus on myself! (Wait a minute, what?!) I’ve built Warpaint to be a design community & resource that promotes each designer as the individual, so it dawned on me that now I get to focus on Kristen and what I want to work towards personally with my career as a freelance designer. With that being said, I’ve had a lot of time to think about what I want my freelance design career to take shape of . I realize that no matter what, if I’m getting paid to make someone’s business/band/event/anything look nice & make someone happy, it’s more than good enough for me! However, I really want to feel like I specialize in something. So, I’ve boiled it down to TWO of my favorite things do: (YES, ONLY TWO. IT WAS HARD TRUST ME).

Hand Lettering & Branding for small businesses. These are the two things I really really want to be awesome at. The things I love doing the most.

The good thing about those two things is that they both not only involve each other, but they involve a PLETHORA of things that make me happy to design! Logos, business cards, typographic illustrations, poster designs, shirts, promotional items, everything under the sun, no joke.

I will be elaborating on my new adventures with these things soon!

May 02, 2013

Photo

Polaroid Colorpack III

I got this polaroid camera at the reuse & recycle center about 3 years ago. It was only three dollars! I didn’t know if it worked, but I got it anyway. (It worked! Beautifully, actually.) Well, spring/summer is here and that means I bust out all of my cameras including this one. I bought 5 packs of film on amazon for super cheap (it takes 100 style pack peel-apart instant film, which FUJI still manufactures!) and I can’t wait to start accidentally wasting half and making really pretty thing with the other half of the 50 total photos.

The excitement of the peel apart instant film!!! Yee! This marks the start of lots of picture taking. I forgot how much I love experimenting with film. I either wanted to become a professional film photographer or a professional lady extraordinaire specializing in getting excited about handwriting and doodles. I obviously didn’t pick photographer but either way, it’s my second favorite hobby <3

If you’re looking for a polaroid camera that isn’t going to cost you mad cash, you can find these color pack cameras really easily for cheap! Etsy & Ebay are STOCKED. The only thing that matters is if the battery compartment on the inside doesn’t have corrosion.

I recently learned how to take it apart & fix it if it breaks so I have no anxiety anymore.

It is also really awesome for double exposures. Real life photos soon.

May 02, 2013

Design, Inspiration, Life & Nature

Creative Crest 2.0

I’ve been doing a lot of drawing lately! I feel like sometimes when I just sit down and draw whatever I feel like, I come up with my favorite things. Maybe it’s a “no pressure” kind of thing. A while back I posted a Friendly Reminder to Create with Love with a little crest drawing of some of my favorite things. I found the original and traced over it nicer, make it more symmetrical, re-did the text, etc. and the result is that little drawing above, which I formally title my “creative crest”. It’s basically a doodle that sums it all up! I wanted to make a post about explaining it.

A lot of the elements in my creative crest are pretty trendy and resonate with a lot of people, but they are just all things that I love. Simple as that.

+ Moons: the moon is the perfect symbol for cycles, and aids in the creation of, well, mostly everything on earth. I could go deeper into why I love the moon but I’ll keep in short. In short, I feel that the moon has a strong effect on all life and it is also beautiful.

+ Feathers, arrows: Aside from being maybe one of the most trendiest of imagery, feathers in real life are simply just pretty. Finding them in the yard and cleaning them to keep. There is a lively feather and a more stringy dead-ish one for contrast.

+ Gems/crystals: Naturally occurring treasures of the earth. Vibrations. Shiny.

+ Ammonite: I love patterns that just occur in nature like the fractal swirl. And I think that fossils are astounding.

+ Leaves, nature elements: being outside & away from the computer is always such a good refresher for creative inspiration.

+ The sun: makes us all happy.

+ The chopped off hand with the heart on it: we usually create with our hands.Using our hands so much that they might fall off. Or more-so, I think it’s funny that what I just said sounds like something either a mom or an old man would say.

+ eyes: vision. self explanatory. Actually, all of these things are self-explanitory but oh well, I’m having fun!

+ hearts: The whole point of it is to remind me to create with love. I’m guilty of trying to make certain kinds of “Art” out of fear, or expectations, or “what other people are doing” but I know that the best things come from the heart & your true self and not some false projection. It’s a tough thing to remember when I’m all wrapped up in my head!

+ The whole thing is symmetrical and the object in the center is a heart cave. <3

And now that I wrote that all out it sounds sort of ridiculous but oh well. I like it! I want everyone to make a personal crest.

Apr 29, 2013

Design

Coupons for Happiness

Everyone is invited!

FROM THE PAST >>>

Back on Flickr

Colorpack Prints!

New Branding Projects

This is not a work mix

Sad type Happy type

Half off custom lettering

Do what you love

Polaroid Colorpack III

Creative Crest 2.0

Coupons for Happiness

Hello!

XO

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