As of March, I have not had an in-house position. I've been working purely freelance. I'm starting to realize that taking a break from constant "fire-putting-outing" has been great for my creativity. I have lots and lots of new ideas brewing in the old noggin. I haven't done anything with them yetand I may never.

But that's not the point, the point is that I feel renewed and refreshed mentally. I've defocused and took on several really geeky projects lately. And it's been great for me. I know that going forward, I'm going to be pressing much less to come up with new ideas. I'll simply let them come to me.

So, unless you're really just hurting for money (and I understand, trust me) and have the time, take a step back, defocus, work on your own geeky project or whatever makes you happy and that's not purely graphic design.

I think you'll find yourself less likely in the position of trying to fit a square peg in a round hole on the next design project you take on.

With Facebook, Twitter and various other microblogging sites, I'm wondering if blogs are viable anymoreor even needed. I can't remember the last time I actual read a blog post. I can get the gist of the story from a simple tweet most times.

It's been months since I've updated this one. Who has the time? Between Twitter and Facebook, I feel like I do all the writing I can do.

Agree or disagree? I bet I don't see many comments on this post, which will just reinforce the argument for me.

Who knows though? Maybe this will get me writing in my own blog more often...if only for myself.

It's important, you know? It doesn't matter how cool that poster design is or how creative that brochure is if it's not presented well.

I think I've almost seen it all; stacks of crinkled paper, projects mounted horribly crooked on matte boards and scrap books with food stained projects inside plastic sleeves.

If you have no respect for your own work, why should anyone else?

You might as well show up to the interview wearing greasy overalls and no shoes. You might be a great designerand a more than worthy hirebut, typically, would you expect to get a job dressed like that?

The same goes for the presentation of your work. It needs to be sharp. it needs great craftsmanship.

And it's not about spending a lot of money on a fancy aluminum case or a box made out of Lucite; there are an unlimited number of creative optionspurchased and/or handmadethat you can implement to present your work with the dignity it deserves.

But for God's sake, before you go to that interview or client meeting, take a hard look at how you're presenting your work.

Stacks of wrinkled up, food stained photocopier paper ain't gonna cut it. Not unless your last name is Sagmeister or Chantry anyway.

Simple. Beautiful. Click to embiggen.

At times, It's amazing what you can find in a small town. XWA? Xtreame Wrestling Association?

On second thought, I'm not surprised...not surprised at all.

Certainly a recognizable logotype...with an appropriate usage of Copperplate. I took this one in Boston in 2008.

The workshop on type from the 2010 HOW Conference was a great little exercise thanks to the people from typecamp.org.

We all had to come up with a word that describes something that type does. These words then had to relate to the words the people directly on either side of us had come up with. First we drew the type spelling out the word. Next, we drew a version of it that describes the word itself.Finally, we drew a version that was somewhere in between the other 2.

At the end, the instructor collected all of our type specimens and combined them into a video that you can see below.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5RDWZs-mgI

I thought mine was kind of lame (what can I say? I'm not a morning person.) but there are some great ones in this. See if you can guess which was mine.

I was fortunate enough to get into the portfolio review that's held at the HOW conference every year. It fills up fast and I think some even got turned away that were registered.

Nevertheless, I wanted to challenge myself by putting my work up against the work of others working in my field, and also under the scrutiny of some of our professions best. I have to say I was pretty damn nervous about the whole affair (ie ready to hurl).

I made it to the review though, and had overwhelmingly positive feedback. It was a great experience and I recommend it to anyone who ever gets the chance to attend a HOW conference.

Anyway, I thought I would share a PDF copy of what I put together. So, here it is. It's as small as I could compress it; so I hope you have a decent connection.

DOWNLOAD PORTFOLIO (PDF 9.9 MB)

Look for my post later in the week about my overall experiences at this year's conference. It was a great one.

More later this week...

A while back, I did a Photoshop restoration of a distant relative for another distant relative of mine (how do these people find me?). As you can see below, it was in pretty bad shape. The man was also, apparently, a Freemason. Conspiracy theorists converge!

Anyway, It took a lot of clone brush, healing brush and just plain old extrapolation of what this man looked like for which, I had no reference. Basically, I had to guess.

Also, the original photo was only 2 inches wide to begin with. I scanned it in at 600 dpi, but there is always going to be some data extrapolation (there's that big word again).

Here is how the original photo lookednote the extensive damage.

The Original Photo

After many hours of working on it, I finally had to give up. The client was demanding the photo. If only there had been more time.

The Photo After

For the amount of time I was given, I don't think it's a terrible restoration. My relatives remarked that it's how they remembered him; so, I guess I wasn't too far off.