...I Think The Lesson Of Today Is “Anger Spurs Me To Make A Lot Of Angry Typography...and Regular Typography

I decided to design business cards and a logo for my roommate’s corgi, because she’s absolutely precious, and I keep taking so many photos of that adorable corg that my roommate and I agreed to make her an Instagram and help run it in my spare time...because my design work doesn’t need to be clogged up by Truffles 24/7. (You can actually follow that corgi dog over here!)

While we haven’t bothered to print the cards yet (because Truffles the corgi isn’t popular enough to warrant printing business cards in the near future), I do have a print ready Adobe Illustrator file on hand for the event that her business cards ever get printed.

For now, I’m just going to keep the mockup version of her cards on hand. (BTW, I used a modified version of this mockup. After all, edge painted cards are a real thing, and that was something I modified myself.)

I was thinking about how I starting learning Adobe Photoshop stuff way back in 2007 when I was 15…and back when Adobe Photoshop CS2 was cutting edge, you had to pay for it. Which is unlike now, where CS2 is officially free from Adobe (sort of), but Creative Cloud subscriptions are a thing, but that’s even more expensive.

I also thought about the first album design I ever made back then as well, and my dad kindly posted it on Facebook and tagged me in it.

I forgot how bad it was. Dear lord, the back and front have no cohesion, warped text is terrible, there’s way too many fonts, and tilting text is generally a no-no unless you really know what you’re doing… but I actually appreciate looking at it, because I’m looking at it and going “Oh wow, I’ve improved a lot in the past 10 years.”

It’s also really interesting to see what’s stayed the same, because there’s a few things I can clearly pinpoint as consistent things. Firstly, I clearly like either A) bright colors, or B) dark and moody stuff. Secondly, I am clearly a nerd, considering that the first one has a modded amp tube diagram on the back, and the second one has a Sierpenski gasket. Thirdly, I always seem to have ridiculous ideas for song names.

It’s nice to have reminders of how far you’ve come. It really is. I was the kind of kid who got frustrated with a lot of my work and would just wantonly throw things I made out if I deemed it to be terrible for what I could do later. That hasn’t helped me too much nowadays.

(Also, I’m very, very tempted to redesign the old one. I could probably make something a lot better now.)

As a piece of advice to anyone who ever gets involved with clients from hell that attempt to stiff you on art work, design work, etc that I wish I had learned sooner instead of assuming that being too poor to afford copyright attorneys I know meant that I had to sit here and accept design theft...

...in the United States, you can take the aforementioned non-compliant client to small claims court, assuming it falls under that threshold. Different states have different thresholds for what constitutes a small claim, but overall, it should cover most artists on Tumblr. (I say this because even at my historic design rates and the extent of work I did, I manage to fall under Florida's $5000 threshold.)

Of course, I'm in this situation currently, so that's why I bring this up. Essentially, I wish someone told me that I didn't need an attorney while working as a lower-tier designer sooner.

I've noticed that I'm quite abysmal at keeping up drawing whenever I have a new partner in my life.

I love art and design, but I'm absolutely infatuated with my bae, and it's conflicting. because I don't know how to balance both loves at the same time, as well as my day job.

I don't know what to do with myself at the time, and advice would be lovely.

This was a quick and dirty typographic design I had in mind years ago, except that it was one of those ideas that I couldn’t execute to my liking at the time.

After a few years and a bit of spare time, and I’m more or less OK with what I can do for the sake of this particular design.

I want to make a New Year's resolution to stream art stuff every Thursday afternoon.

I wanted to get to it today, but I was overloaded with doctor's stuff

So, I made a bit of progress on the first comic page, and I made a little bit of progress on the logo stuff for the comic.

Also, @plaguenurse had a comment on Twitch that basically made me laugh maniacally for a good minute or so while working on the architecture on the top panel.

While fretting over what the bloody hell I’m doing for a freelance client I have on hand (because it’s teetering into Clients from Hell territory), I decided to go ahead and make this thing after working on a few tweaks to Truffle’s Instagram photos (because glowy eyes are not cool.)

I’ve been obsessed with Somebody That I Used To Know remixes. Particularly, I’ve been hooked on this 80s remix and the Tiesto remix.

I decided to go ahead and make a retro typgraphic thing for myself as a result.

So, I have a Tumblr on the side called @dandyreblogs now. I'll probably modify it to look like my current icon, but slightly different. I'm planning on using it as an aesthetic Tumblr exclusively.

I just realized that I could have easily made an MS Excel spreadsheet for the economic model I usually construct for quoting design, instead of doing everything by hand with a pen and paper.

It would even automatically calculate annual metro-area inflation discrepancies FOR ME if I structured it like that, so that I can just feed it yearly data without worrying about it.

Doing it all on paper is just punching myself in the face.