Records!

(Click to Enlarge)

Over the past week, I completed one of the most trying but also one of the most enjoyable design projects I have done to date. The above record sleeves were done for a school project where the goal was to design two record sleeves that shared the same grid. One sleeve was to be designed for a band/artist whose music you like, and the other was for one you didn't like. The catch was that you had to design both as though you love them equally.

I have been a fan of Tegan and Sara's music for awhile, and so, I chose to create a new design for their latest (2009) album 'Sainthood'. Seeing as I am not the biggest fan of Avril Lavigne's music, I chose her as the other end of the deal, and designed a record sleeve for her 2007 album 'The Best Damn Thing'.

I ran into quite a few hiccups when printing and assembling the albums... But in the end, all worked out and I am happy with the end product, and looking forward to what comes next.

Interwebs.

Is it time for a new website? ...Possibly! I've had my current website design (at rachelleletain.com) for over 6 months now. Taking into account my turn into the world graphic design, I have been thinking about updating my website to more accurately reflect my dual background in both illustration and design. While I still enjoy the layout of my current design, I think it'd be nice to freshen things up a little and create something that mirrors my current taste in web design.

Above are two pages of a rough website re-design that I came up with a few nights ago... It's was looking to create a portfolio website that was clean, modern, and wouldn't distract too much from my work itself. Feel free to let me know if you think it's working or not. Any and all feedback will be very much appreciated.

What are "charettes"?

For my second semester of 2nd year design school, I have Patricio Davila as my core design class professor. More often than not, Patricio gives us design excercises to complete during class (he calls them "charettes") while the class takes turns branching off into individual groups of 4 or 5 to review project progress.

This week, the charette we were assigned told us to pick four words, and with those four words - we were to do a Flickr search on each word, and choose imagery from that search to use in four final compositions. Our goal in designing the compositions was to explore a common grid, digital collage, photomontage and transparency layers using photos, typography and other elements - all the while still trying to communicate the words we had searched. The words I chose were: fluffy, nostalgia, playful, and obnoxious. The results are below, in that order. I hope you like them!

(Just so we're clear, none of the photos/illustrations used in the above designs are mine. They belong to several artists/photographers found on Flickr.)