Well here we go again! Facebook’s friendly “look what’s new!” notification it popping up to tell us it has made some changes. I don’t know about you, but sometimes my immediate reaction is not always joyous. As soon as we get used to one thing something changes or we feel they are trying to fix something that wasn’t broken! Facebook is always evolving and usually for the better, but because of the few times it wasn’t, we are left a bit nervous. Well Let me calm your nerves!

In the case of yesterday’s launch of the reply and commenting thread feature we are being graced with something that will bring much needed organization to Facebook commenting conversations. It’s a great and long overdue addition. The sad news is that this new feature is not for every Facebook page. This roll out of replies and threaded comments is only for pages used by brands and businesses and public profiles for individuals with more than 10,000 followers.

We all know how crazy confusing commenting can get, especially on high volume profiles. It’s hard to keep track of who is commenting on what and where, not to mention the spam. We can find ourselves spending lots of time when we are totally sucked into a particular commenting string. The time spent scrolling up and down to make heads or tails of the conversations can be maddening! Believe it or not this reply and comment threading feature it meant to keep your viewers on your page longer by allowing them to spend that time efficiently engaged with much less frustration. This is valuable!

Another major plus to this addition is that it allows the most-commented-on or liked replies and those closest to your network to gravitate to the top, while those marked spam sink to the bottom! Get out the way spam!

You will see that a lot of consideration has been put into this feature as it has been in testing since November 2012. Thank you Facebook for bringing some organization to the chaos that could easily be found in commenting.

Now its time for us to remember the importance of engaging with our audience with relevant and helpful comments and content. Facebook is trying to help reduce the noise, and so should we!

A while back I created these fun little guys for personal promotions and to offer various sports teams or businesses to use on their websites or blogs. They have become quite popular and been featured on numerous blogs and collections all over the interwebs.

On the side I occasionally will put personal work for sale online through istockphoto.com as I am an illustration contributor there. These guys are a part of my collection on istock. If you are interested in purchasing them click on the links below. There are 3 different sets as you can see. You will be purchasing vector (.EPS / Adobe Illustrator) files. With vector software you have the freedom to customize their their uniforms to the appropriate colors of your team or business.

I am always looking to work with clients within the sports industry offering my logo and branding services. If you are interested in a fresh look for your sports team or business lets talk!

Enjoy!

Traditional Sports Set 1

Traditional Sports Set 2

Action Sports Set

For the past six weeks I have been filling in as an instructor at the School of Advertising Art, a design school in the Dayton area. I was instructing 1st year student in a digital illustration class. It was a great time of getting to know some creative students, instructors, staff, and just witnessing why this school has such a great reputation. SAA truly offers so much to aspiring creatives.

In this class the students were instructed to design an appropriate advertising character for a brand, company, or organization. This project was right up my alley! As always the “pencil pusher” in me came out to try and communicate the importance of spending adequate time in the sketching and exploration phase of their character design (or for any design project). Most of these baby designers were chomping at the bit to rush onto the computer with their very first ideas, thus not spending much time exploring and sketching. With their process sketches being a sizable percent of their grade, I did my best to remind them to not be hasty! Taking adequate time and pushing further with plenty of sketching and exploring almost always results in better idea generation. On occasion you may fall back on some of those first ideas, but it’s never worth trusting in that always happening. Push, push, push further even when you think your done!

I say all of this not talking down about the students, but it’s honestly a part of the growing / learning process as a designer, which I remember experiencing myself. Sometimes it just takes time, experience, and a few bites in the butt to force one to really appreciate the importance of the process.

I am sad to be finished with teaching at SAA for now, but looking forward to future opportunities of working with students there. It’s a great school and I can tell you after being in the halls and classrooms that there are many reasons they excel in job placement. The knowledge, creativity, and community there is strong, giving the students excellent opportunities to learn, grow, and discover themselves as designers.

I remembered the little wooden stool in my son Kallin’s room. It already had some wood burnt type on it that I … was not a big fan of. While I can appreciate the innocent humor of the quote, I was not sure it was a motto I wanted Kallin to adopt. Each generation seems to be plagued with laziness and entitlement. I’d rather avoid any risk of contributing. Moreover, it was a perfect wood burning project so I grabbed it up to get to work! With my husband’s planer and sander I easily removed that ugly uninspiring text.

I knew I just wanted to do something simple with his name. His room is a general sports theme so I quickly sketched out a traditional baseball script with a tail. Once I had that completed I traced/refined it to a piece of tracing paper, scribbled some graphite on the back and did a simple old school trace transfer to the wood.

After a little practice on a scrap piece of wood, I was wood burning away. Having ultimate control with a close grip is not an option with a wood burner so it took a bit of time to get comfortable and find a flow. Also, working over the varying wood grain posed challenges in keeping things steady as well.

After finishing up the letter burning it was on to three coats of polyurethane to make it pop!

While I am still working on teaching a 17 month old how to clean up after himself, I guess he at least has a nice little seat with his name on it to rest on after working so hard at making a mess.

Most designers have been taught and learned from experience that not following a thoughtful process behind your work determines whether your project will be an admirable success or a thoughtlessly slapped together failure. It is such an important part of what we do, but so easily overlooked and under appreciated by most obviously, ammature designers, but unfortunately also the occasional client. This can be for various reasons both intentional or unintentional. Either way, I want to use this post to highlight the importance of the thoughtful steps a good designer will and should take for you the client.

What exactly does the process behind good design look like? Every designer is going to have slightly different approaches that suit their personal workflow and style ,but I would say there is a general set of steps in the processes that are important to follow.

Here is a list of steps I find most critical, especially in my logo and identity design process.

1.Brief

The brief is thorough communication with the client to collect important information about not only the specific project at hand, but also the company or organization’s background, self perception, target markets / audience, competition, expectations, limitations, and any existing branding guidelines that need to be adhered to. I make sure they share any and all information that will influence the project in any way.

2. Research

With all the information collected from the client above used as my guide, I dig deeper into each of those details listed above. This begins to provide a collection of valuable resources to aid the next step.

3. Brainstorming

The two steps above have served well in filling my mind with what matters and where goals lie. Here is where the creative juices start to flow. Anything goes! For me the goal here is to let all ideas come to me good and bad. Obviously the bad will get purged,but you’d be surprised how not so good ideas lead to the great ideas. The mind works in wondrous ways! Multiple very rough sketching is usually a big part of this step.

4. Sketch exploring

In this step I’m still working with my mind, but starting to get those ideas onto paper with pencil or pen. Some designers like to jump in the computer quick, but not this girl. I will do most all of my idea exploring and refining with good old pencil and paper until I narrow things down to the solution I am confident in finalizing in the computer.

5. Build and finalize

Now that we have our well thought out idea or concepts, it’s time to bring them to life in the computer. This is where all that hard work above pays off. My goal is to have thought things through so thoroughly in the steps above that all I am doing here is icing the idea cake.

I have referred to myself in the past as a “pencil pusher”. This is because as I mentioned above I am a firm believer in pushing out most all of your ideas in the “pencil” stage of the game. Some might call it old fashioned, but I find it creatively freeing.