Lately since I have been working a lot for Erik's school, I keep forgetting about the bad bosses and the unreasonable deadlines and all the other opinions that come with projects and was considering contacting my old boss at CB Richard Ellis to see if she had anything part-time. The office is about 10 minutes from my house and I miss some of those people and the challenges. Then I thought of putting my babies in daycare for even a couple hours and stopped the email before it started.
That is why when I have been asked to do a few projects for Erik's school its has felt good. Design is a muscle that needs to be stretched but once I get going I like doing it and don't like to stop. This being the end of the year, there have been so many design projects and opportunities and I always make them better than what they need to be.
For example, in Erik's preschool I am room parent. All this really means is that I send out emails occasionally, collect money if we are doing a group gift and I needed to coordinate the artwork from the kids and make the end of the year present for our teachers. The concept is simple, there are binders that hold the artwork the children made, and the room parent had to make a sheet to put in the clear plastic cover so it didn't just look like a binder. Being a print designer, not just web, for so many years this was right up my alley.
At first I was going to do something with all the kids pictures, but the other room parent had created a photobook with all the pictures and I decided one book with pictures was enough, but I still wanted to do something to incorporate all the names. So I came up with the idea of an apple tree and put all the names of the students in apples along with the year they were in class. I really liked how it turned out. I did a different color for each teacher, and printed it out on my new high end printer and they looked fabulous. I wish I could show you the printout because that is just as big of a deal, it looks almost like an offset print I was that happy with it.
This project took maybe an hour or 1.5 hours total with print time. It was fun to put in the effort to make something creative yet professional looking. Oh yeah and make something for the teachers. I am sad that I won't get to see their reactions or anyones reaction when they see this, but such is life sometimes. I am proud of it regardless.
The other MAJOR project I did was for Erik's mommy & me class. For the last couple years I have created a photo yearbook from images that I have collected of the kids throughout the year. This year I knew I was going to create this book so I actually took a ton of the pictures myself throughout the year. I probably brought my camera to class four different times, but on the last day before I created the book I made sure to get images of those who were missing.
Photobooks are fun and I of course make them my own personal challenge. I create them using InDesign and then I export each page as a JPG and then upload it in Shutterfly. I am insanely anal and organized, years of practice in the industry and handling hundreds of image files have made me this way. So this project might take someone hours and hours, and I will confess it took me three hours to finish it. I did it on a Friday and Saturday night and was done.
In order to get all the images for a project this size, I have the philosophy that people can email me or give me a cd over the course of the week and that's it. Give people more time than they they forget. It seems like the less time I give people the faster they respond because they knew they have to do it now. Sometimes this backfires, but I think people forget when they have too long to do a project I know I do with my two kids and everything else going on.
Here is the photobook. I am not too proud of the design. I couldn't think of anything creative that day so I just went with similar colored backgrounds and a small theme. It worked and the parents loved it. Again I didn't get to see the teacher's reactions since Elliot was sick and I couldn't bring the boys to school, but I heard they cried and loved them. So worth it, and Erik and I will look at this book and talk about it for ages. Maybe next year I'll offer to create one for Elliot's 2 year old class too.
The other MAJOR project I did was for Erik's mommy & me class. For the last couple years I have created a photo yearbook from images that I have collected of the kids throughout the year. This year I knew I was going to create this book so I actually took a ton of the pictures myself throughout the year. I probably brought my camera to class four different times, but on the last day before I created the book I made sure to get images of those who were missing.
Photobooks are fun and I of course make them my own personal challenge. I create them using InDesign and then I export each page as a JPG and then upload it in Shutterfly. I am insanely anal and organized, years of practice in the industry and handling hundreds of image files have made me this way. So this project might take someone hours and hours, and I will confess it took me three hours to finish it. I did it on a Friday and Saturday night and was done.
In order to get all the images for a project this size, I have the philosophy that people can email me or give me a cd over the course of the week and that's it. Give people more time than they they forget. It seems like the less time I give people the faster they respond because they knew they have to do it now. Sometimes this backfires, but I think people forget when they have too long to do a project I know I do with my two kids and everything else going on.
Here is the photobook. I am not too proud of the design. I couldn't think of anything creative that day so I just went with similar colored backgrounds and a small theme. It worked and the parents loved it. Again I didn't get to see the teacher's reactions since Elliot was sick and I couldn't bring the boys to school, but I heard they cried and loved them. So worth it, and Erik and I will look at this book and talk about it for ages. Maybe next year I'll offer to create one for Elliot's 2 year old class too.
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