iPhoto Books

I don't know how many have made an iPhoto book. I've made and printed two - one for my brother and father's recent trip to Kilimanjaro, and one for my brother and friends about their recent show. A christmas present and a graduation present, respectively. They're really easy to make, and the book you hold in your hand is incredible. Everyone loves them. However, if you are in to inDesign and designing pages and stuff in that, you won't be happy with it. I finally got my indesign, and now the iPhoto books are too restricting to my creativity, so I can't deal with it. But if you're just trying to make someone a great present, or simply a coffee table book to save your memories, I highly recommend it.

grrr.

I was working on some vector art in illustrator, and my dad came over to see what I was doing (this was a couple days ago). I showed him my friend in his tigger outfit, and my dad thought it was great. "People could pay you to do this stuff," he said. Then he offered me 100$ to do vector art of my family, the four of us, so he could put it in his office. I've been working on it - I finished my brother, and I put a ton of work into it, but he doesn't seem to like it, he seems to be regreting offering me the money, maybe he was just kidding. But I honestly don't think he was, and I'd love to do this project, but I'm wondering if I should charge him as much (it'll actually take a lot more time than I would consider 100, but that's because I'm a beginner). So I don't know. Grrr.

Horrible.

I've never been good at keeping anything remotely like a blog, because I forget to update it. 

So I kind of have to force myself to get into the habit.

We go to a family psychiatrist. I bet he'd say this is good to get my feelings out, because I rarely talk at the sessions. That's because everything is about my brother and his screwed up life. I mean, it's not that bad, but the relationship he has with my parents really is. He was supposed to graduate high school in June, but he was missing a year and a half of english credits, due to dropping all his classes all his senior year. So he was taking classes during this summer to get his diploma. He started the first class, wasn't able to do any of the assignments due to his procrastination problem, and ended up just stopping going. He doesn't even know it it will show up on his transcript as a fail. He started the second english class on Tuesday. He has another class tomorrow. He had to do some reading in Romeo and Juliet. He knew this. So tonight, I was sitting watching TV, and he came in and sat down. I asked him and told him he should be doing his work, and he said he'd do it later. An hour later, I come downstairs to see him asleep on the living room couch, not having done any of his work. He said he'd get up in the morning and do it, but I doubt he will.

I'm worried I'll turn out like him. My parents are even more worried, which is really the only thing making me worried.

But I honestly don't think I will. I'm not like him at all. It won't happen.

Squirrel?!

So my brother came in here earlier and told me that there's a woman who lives in the street parallel to ours, and she raised a squirrel. First, he started with "I'm not sure if that was a dream, or if that actually happened...". Anyway. She raised a squirrel since he was a baby, but he ran away and now lives in the tree in our front yard. She's fine with that, because she wants him to be in the "wild" (I live in the middle of the town, think about that), but he's not yet fully independent. So she wants to bring him food once a day. While my brother was telling me all this, I was cracking up. It's so insane. I ask him if she looked a bit crazy, and he said "nothing like rat race." :) So I went outside and checked to see if the squirrel was there. I didn't see him, but I saw the food she had left for him.

So odd.

Yearbooks.

Just a bit of a rant that has been inside me and I've been needing to get out.

At my school, the yearbook is student made and run by a (!) history teacher. Anyone can be on the yearbook, do as many pages as they want, and they are only really edited for grammar issues.

You can tell by just that how absolutely horribly it comes out. You'll have pages that look like someone just threw pictures at the page, choose the first type they came to, or where the creator was color blind. This hurts me. Because, being on the yearbook staff, we ALL get this reputation has being horrible graphic artists with no skill whatsoever. We also just switched to using computer programs in the last couple of years, and my teacher (who has no knowledge of computers whatsoever) is hopelessly helpless. Now, I'll admit, my pages probably weren't the best pages last year. But this year I want to make a drastic change. Having just gotten my CS3 and been working on perfecting my skills with it (we do the yearbook in indesign and have all the adobe programs on our school computers), I hope to have some great pages to show next year. 

Last year, some of the pages had issues and I was asked to correct them.

When I saw them, I couldn't let them be. I completely redid one page with all new pictures, background, the whole shebang. If the original girl noticed, she didn't say anything. But I don't care if she did. She likes to think she has this really amazing eye for the arts, and it's complete bull. She has no eye, and she only spent about 5 minutes on both pages and never came to the yearbook meetings.

We need a theme for a yearbook. My teacher insists on them - last year it was superhero. Ick. She told me that my assignment over the summer was to think of one for next year. Due to the lack of experience our team has (the superhero theme didn't work at all, it was only incorporated on a couple pages) I was thinking something simple. School spirit. I know it sounds lame. But it would mean using our colors - blue, silver, black and white - on the pages. It would give it a more uniform feel, I think. It would also mean that our new mascot would be featured! (griffin. I didn't choose it. stupid.) 

If anyone is reading this at all, I'd appreciate thoughts on this or other suggestions for a theme. My teacher won't like this one.

Blogging..wait, what?

Yeah. That's right. I'm new to blogging. Weird.

I'd never really been a fan of it. I always found it kind of weird to be letting out my feelings on the internet - or even just letting out feelings. But I decided, it's a necessary thing in this world to express yourself, so what better way to do so than a blog which you can share, not share, kinda share, or just do aboslutely nothing with. 

I like to babble, so I will, and maybe it will get boring. But I'm not forcing you to be here. I don't even know if there's anyone reading this, and I kind of doubt it, seeing as I'm a no one and probably won't share this with any real world people I know. 

I rather use it as a way to express myself, especially in the form of design. Make comments on what's coming along in my world of design, what I want to do, what I plan on doing, etc. 

My big word of the month is "inspire." I love that word, and I don't really know why. The ability to inspire someone, I suppose, is an amazing one. I'd love to think that I could do that - inspire people to do what they love, to help the world, achieve their life's goals. Because that's what I'm trying to do. 

I'm not an artist. Well, not in the typical sense. I got a B+ in art (my lowest grade :( ) and I have to admit that was justified. When it comes to putting my thoughts out on paper, I'm not so skilled. I prefer photography and working from that, but I'm slowly learning how to draw myself. I've started sketching and looking for inspiration everywhere I go. So my recent obsession with the graphic world is to enhance my world. I've always had a nice eye, according to most people, but I've never really thought so. I've always loved the world of art and creating, but never really thought I could do it. I decided to change my mind.

I got my CS3 about two weeks ago now. I absolutely love it. Photoshop isn't all it's cracked up to be - I prefer Illy and vectors and everything having to do with them. Simpler. Cleaner lines. Wonderful. I've started doing vector portraits off of pictures I've taken - friends who were in interesting positions or costumes, to challenge myself a bit more. It's wonderful. And so fun. And some people really like them. My dad, for one, offered me $100 to do a family portrait vector art that he could hang on his wall at work. I'm so taking him up on that - now I just need to find a picture. 

Something I really want to do to help my design is to do a summer program in graphic design somewhere - a precollege type thing - next summer. I'm going to be a junior this coming year, so next summer is a very important summer for me. One I'm looking at is Carnegie Mellon pre-college program in design - it looks amazing, and it you look at any feedback, it sounds amazing, too. Another is this one up in Oakland that my friend did recently - she loved it. But I don't know of all the programs. OH! I was also considering RISD, as it's an amazing design school (though I'd prefer to go to a school with a lot more to offer, as I would prefer to double major in graphic design or commercial art AND something to fall back on if I fail - business, or something of that sort). Even though it's only design, it would still be great for any portfolio I wanted to do for any school! The only problem with that one is that if you want to go, you have to sign up, and if you sign up and there's no room in your class, you're put in to another class automatically. So I could try and go for graphic design and end up in fashion design (which I suppose wouldn't be horrible, but it's not exactly how I'd want to spend my last summer). You can't even get your 500$ deposit back if you decide to go elsewhere. And CMU, it's a really hard program to get into - 16/80. And they don't seem to require a portfolio - so I wonder how they choose. 

Whatever.

Basically. If you didn't want to read all that (though if you're here, you probably did. my apologies). I'm new to blogging and graphic design, want to enhance my skills, will use this to get out anger, inspiration, and just random random stuff.

Yeah.

Pickles.