Bar Mitzvah Invitation

One day I might be more concerned with the level of refinery that I show on this blog, however as a student I am way too amused with the silliness of what I've been creating that I just can't help myself!

This week I was assigned to create a concept for a bar mitzvah invitation.  Having never been to one myself, I did some research and found that most people nowadays have themes to their mitzvahs.  Putting myself in the shoes of a 13-year-old boy, I decided that I would have a guitar-themed mitzvah.  Hence, the invitation:

Front View of Invitation

Inside of Invitation

If I were a 13-year-old boy I would love this! I mean, I'm a 29-year-old girl and love it! It's a total party! Yeah!!!

Baltimore: Place to Place

Hey all! I'm extremely honored and excited to announce that I have a photo appearing in a photography show tomorrow night at Wind Up Space! Here's the link to the event info:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=172489556169932

If you're in the area, come out to support the local arts and local music (there will be bands and food and some readings by participating photographers as well).  

I guess I could just post the photo up here so you all could see it but then you wouldn't have as much reason to come so...you'll just have to come see it, huh?

Mid-semester freak out! Gah!!!

I had a plan and I think it might have failed.  As many people know, this hasn't been the easiest semester for me--in fact it's been the hardest in many ways.  Coming into my selection of classes, I was extremely excited to embark on a semester where the highest priority was developing my creative voice as a designer and illustrator and focus on the ideas behind the work, not the work itself. As we all know, it doesn't take a genius to make things look good, but it takes a special kind of mind to think of good creative ideas. 

However, I hit a road block during the first week of classes as I and many close friends of mine suffered two giant losses in our lives.  Needless to say, September was not the most creatively productive month, although I have been able to tap into some surprising sources of inspiration since then.  Afterwards, I needed to thankfully switch gears from somber to celebratory as two of my best friends were getting married!! And I was in their weddings!! And it took up a ton of my time (an upside down exclamation point could be appropriate here).  But I had a plan of action.  My POA was to get through October the best I could and put off everything I could until afterwards (meaning I totally blew off my independent illustration study and all the many, many revisions I have to do until now).

Of course, now my plan has been thwarted as I found out last night that I have four (four!) additional projects to do for my Creative Concepts class AND all of our revisions are due by November 30th.  As well as these extra projects.  Gah!!!!

New plan of attack: good-bye, sleep! It was nice knowing you... 

New beginnings

I finally did it!! bethharperdesign.com is mine!! You can also e-mail me from now on at bethharper@bethharperdesign.com!!! Hopefully getting a full blown website of my own won't be too terribly difficult... cheers!

YETI

I may have missed the mark with this one:
For my Design Principles and Strategies class, we were assigned to make a CD cover for a band (of which the band name is one word) illustrating the name of the band typographically while also exploring the use of color.  We started out working in black and white last week and then added color this week, utilizing the kuler palette website (which I think is *awesome* http://kuler.adobe.com).  I picked the band name "Yeti" and had a pretty hard time at first.  Then when I added my original color palette things got even tougher.  I went back and re-designed the palette for brighter colors (I'm thinking this band might be kind of a hard-rocking electronic type band) and started liking things more. Here's what I've come up with so far:

Color Palette #1:

 Pretty blah, right?

Here's Color Palette #2:

What do you all think? Suggestions appreciated!!!

Mary Blair

  Thank you, Google.  You introduced me to one of my favorite illustrators whose name I didn't even know--Mary Blair.  Today's Google-Doodle is a tribute to this prolific artist on her 100th Birthday.  She is most well known for her work with Disney, especially her Alice and Wonderland illustrations.  Definitely someone I'm going to have to get to know better; here are some examples of her work:

Tofu Man!!!

I think I finally came up with a good concept for tofu package design! Introducing....Tofu Man!!! In three varieties of firmness!

Tofu Robot

In doing research for my tofu package design concept, I stumbled across this gem:

Can someone tell me where to find this? A tofu army in my fridge would be the best thing ever!!!

Bride and Groom Illustration

So after my Beatles project in which I dove into the realm of vector illustration, I've seemed to have gotten a knack for it.  At least enough of a knack that my good friend Laura asked me to create some vector illustrations of her and her groom-to-be.  Here they are in vector-illustrated holy matrimony:

Comp-town

Over the past few weeks my favorite class this semester, Design Principles and Strategies, has taught me perhaps the most important lesson that I've learned about design thus-far: create many, many, many, and still many more different options.  Every professor I've had prior to this has really just focused on revising, revising, revising.  This time around it's more like how many ideas can you come up with for the same project? Ok, now comp up twice that many, and revise, and now comp up more, revise, and comp up some more.  In the end you should have a piece that's pretty phenomenal once you weed out all the crap. Initially, I was pretty nervous about all of this since I'm not exactly the most prolific designer I've ever met however, this process has taught me that there really are limitless ideas and limitless ways to communicate the same message.

Here is what I've come up with so far for a black and white poster advertising the BSO production of Gershwin's "An American in Paris" (phase 3 of 4):

Turns out, I really do work better under pressure!

Did it really just happen? Did I really just put off working on a final project until the very last day? Did I really just pull an infographic poster out of my conceptual thinking ass? I did.  And it doesn't suck. 

To be fair, I did do all the research weeks before hand for the research paper that this poster accompanies.  But I did have to write it all over again in a completely new way and design it.  And I thought about doing it for days and days.  Until the last day, when I couldn't think anymore--it had to get done!

Anyway, here it is--my last minute infographic poster on Saul Bass, master of film titles and the New York style:

Successful use of Rabbit!

Last semester when I was doing my re-design of Bust magazine I discovered a great typeface named "rabbit".  Kind of retro, kind of cute, and very stylized, I was informed by my professor that rabbit is very hard to use.  I was able to successfully incorporate it into my design, however knowing that I'll probably get a handful of opportunities to use it, I'm always excited when I see it out in the world.  The last time I saw it was when I purchased veggie hot dogs in the grocery store:

An excellent use of rabbit, however, a poor use of soy. Lesson learned: good design does not equal good food.

Another place I've noticed rabbit being used is in the title credits of my favorite 90's sitcom, Dharma & Greg:

So cute, so 90's, can't wait to use it again!

What I Did This Semester/ Writing and Design for Digital Platforms

Website/ Charm City Vegan (click on the screenshot to see the live webpage)

Blog/ Vinyl Kisses (click on logo to go to live blog)

HTML E-mail Advertisement and Landing Page

Promotional E-mail

What I Did This Semester/ Beat Magazine

Magazine Design: Beat Magazine (Rolling Stone re-design)

Cover #1

Cover #2

Table of Contents

Department #1

Department #2

Feature

What I Did This Semester/ Bust Magazine

These posts have been a long time coming but better late than never, right?

Here's what I did this semester in Magazine Design:


Magazine Re-design: Bust Magazine

Cover #1

Cover #2

Table of Contents

Table of Contents (continued)

Department #1

Department #2