Living the Creative Life

In no particular order... Walking around downtown Portland Watching iPod commericals My cat, Carlita Rain Going to the movies alone Figuring out a new trick in CSS via: puglypixel Watching a new episode of Grimm w/ my family Eating Cheetos Going to the Oregon coast Starbucks Christmas coffees

Day 5 of the Blog Every Day in May challenge is to declare how great one of my blogging friends is! I have "met" many great women over the years, all who share a love of blogging, but one great blogger I've more recently gotten to know is Kristen from KV's Confessions . She's a very sweet girl from Utah who recently graduated from graphic design school! I've enjoyed our chats about the design world, being an introvert, and other such things we have in common, and it's been inspiring to see my near future in the design world lived out through her (no pressure, Kristen!) Kristen writes a great blog , where she talks about blog designs she's recently finished, illustrations she's working on, or just general life adventures with her husband! So if you're looking for a great, friendly, graphic designer to follow, hop on over to Kristen's blog and subscribe!

Here's a beautiful video of a fabulous artist. I love how her joy and love of life shines through so much in this video. It really makes me want to paint and draw and daydream. :) { Site } { Blog } { Etsy } New Orleans Artists – Rebecca Rebouché from Anthropologie on Vimeo . {Linking up with Kristen Victoria }

I stumbled across a completely fascinating artist today, Stephanie Kubo . Her portfolio doesn't state if she's a working designer, illustrator, etc, but her work is exquisite so I think she fits the bill for including in my Meet a Designer series. Enjoy! (Linking up with Kristen Victoria ).

Monina Velarde is a graphic designer based out of Chicago. She calls herself an "optimistic graphic designer" and I'd have to agree! Her specialities lie in branding, interactive, and package design. Overall, I just love Monina's work! So clean and colorful. I really could learn a lot from her about effective and minimal way of designing. { Portfolio } { Blog } ***** {I'm so happy to be joined this month by Kristen Victoria, with her new Designer Spotlight series! Check back with both of us periodically to meet more designers!}

I ran across  this guy  somewhere on the interwebs this spring and really admire his work.  Chris Piascik has such a cool style of illustration; it's really inspiring! I am still trying to figure out how to make hand-drawn typography look decent, but he seems to have no problem with it. Chris has been posting an illustration a day for nearly 4 years. I just started following him a month ago, but so far it's been fascinating to see what he comes up with. What a good way to keep your skills sharp, too, don't you think? His topics are quite broad, ranging from  Mad Men quotes  and  politics , to  bicycles  and  random doodles , but they always end up being pretty interesting illustrations.  Chris has also just finished a book of his  first 1000 daily illustrations , and he also sells prints on  Society6  (which is how I first heard of Society6 myself). Some artists/designers that I've seen seem to have this i...

Okay, so I'm a liiiiitle bit behind on my February sponsor interviews. I didn't want you to miss out on any awesome people though, so here's a great interview from Amie over at Completely Unfinished !  { Blog } { Twitter } Q. You're a graphic/web designer! Is this something you went to school for or are you self-taught? How do you go about finding clients? Is it hard to find clients? I'm currently in school for graphic design and am very interested in how these skills translate into the real world. A. I went to school for design but a big chunk of my learning was teaching myself. I took a web design class in high school & I knew most everything that was being taught, so I helped out a lot of my classmates. I used to check out design books from the library and read them while everyone was eating lunch and paying attention in classes! hah. I guess that's when I realized I loved design and wanted to pursue it in college. I'm pretty new to t...

I recently found this interesting video on Netflix called Milton Glaser: To Inform and Delight . It's about the guy who designed the I <3 NY logo. Milton Glaser been a graphic designer since the 70's, I believe, and has designed everything from magazine covers to supermarkets. He's also taught design in NYC and has his own design studio. I'm clearly still brand new to this business, so it was really fascinating to see just how many different options there are for graphic designers out there! Practically everything you see in this modern world was designed by someone... your t-shirt, the prints on your wall, the fabric pattern for your couch. It's truly exciting to imagine the possibilities of what I could contribute to this industry! Here are some of Milton Glaser's designs. Many more can be found on his website .

Last week I got a wonderful surprise in the mail... a print from the new shop Scenic Glory ! I had ordered one just as soon as I heard her shop had opened and was so excited to see it arrive! Lindsay's style is simple, inspiring, and so creative. I would love to own all her prints! :) Check out Lindsay's blog and shop for more inspiring and creative things. Here are a few more of her prints that I would love to own!