I am no longer unemployed!

Joy to the world, I finally landed my first design gig! Just a week ago, I had an interview with a small business called Stuffitts Shoe Saver here in Georgia and GOT ACCEPTED. I am working as their design intern doing various designs for them and their side business Booth Outfitters. I also designed a business card for the owner of ASAP Sewing Service right next door to Stuffitts. Basically, it has been a very busy, but exciting week. I am very excited to be working and putting my design skills and knowledge to good use. Stay tune for more samples of my works for these companies and more. 

Below is a design I just completed on Thursday. It is a new hangtag design for Stuffitts. Unlike most hangtag out there, the aim here is to instruct clearly and quickly at a glance. If you are interested in these Stuffitts, visit the site and order a pair! My boss will thank you and so will I. My hangtag design will be in production soon so be on the look-out!

 

hangtag design for Stuffitts Shoe Saver

Hello, hello!

Yes, I realized I didn’t follow through with my a portrait a week thing. After my last portrait of Kenneth Branagh, I started working on my business card and stationary to print out and start promoting myself. Unfortunately, I kept changing my design and then I didn’t like my old logo so I redesigned that too.

However, I have finished with the business card design and will have it printed soon. Next, I will start working on the stationary sets for myself, but I will start on a portrait soon too. I’ve been keeping busy with designing for my friend who is making his own animation show! Stay tune for that.

Lastly, I re-organized everything AGAIN. I think I’m liking this set-up the best, but we’ll see. At least now everything has it’s own categories and not so general like “Design” and “Typography.”

Well, that’s all for now. I need sleep.

New Portrait: Kenneth Branagh

Another week, another portrait. I saw Kenneth Branagh on Wallander, a detective series on PBS, and found his character to be quite interesting. I later found out he also played Professor Lockhart on the movie Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

This is my first time drawing a Westerner so I had a rough time with the new facial features and facial hair of Westerner. I have to say this portrait is similar and not exact by any means to his real picture. I kept his green eyes because it’s a great color and contrast well with his dark suit.

Summer Project

Hello, everyone. So this summer I am planning to be artistically productive. I am doing a new project where I will draw a portrait a week. I started last week and will probably do this until August. The first portrait is of me since I haven’t done a self-portrait in awhile. I have to say I have the weirdest lips, it took many tries to get it to look right. Take a look by clicking here.

Another try at organization

Okay, so I got rid of all the Gallery pages and divided everything up as “design,” “typography,” and “illustrations.” I think it’s more convenient this way for me and anyone checking out my stuffs.

So in the previous post I was saying how I will be working on my designs with some guidance from design books I got from the library. I recently redid my poster design. Take a look:

Old design:

New design:

Huh? It’s more simple, but much more cohesive. I sketched and turned the ink swatches all over the place to finally realize…I can make the lines make a face so it’s like it’s saying something. The title “Design Talks” is italicize to contrast the lines angle. The ink spots on the bottom is converted to the information.

Critique

Met with my History of Graphic Design teacher today to go over my portfolio (what you see here), and I definitely have a lot to work on. Don’t be shock to come back and what you saw a couple of weeks ago is looking a bit different or worse unrecognizable. In the meantime, this is my summer reading list:

• The Graphic Designer’s Guide to Better Business Writing
  by: Barbara Janoff and Ruth Cash-Smith
• Forms, Folds, Sizes
  by: Poppy Evans
• Design Career
  by: Steven Heller and Lita TAlarico
• The Graphic Design Portfolio: How to Make a Good One
  by: Paula Scher
• The Ultimate Portfolio
  by: Martha Metzdorf
• Inside | Outside: From the Basics to the Practice of Design
  by: Malcolm Grear
• The Art of Typography
  by: Martin Solomon

Uh…wow, I didn’t realize I borrowed so many books from the library.

New Updates

Thank you to everyone who visited my design blog so far. I just made some new changes to the site: 1) Comments are off on the Gallery pages because it’s basically my portfolio and while critique are welcome, those designs are more or less final as is. You can still comments here on the home page. 2) My resume is now up replacing the contact page for any future client or employer out there.

I will be fixing up the gallery soon too because it’s just too mess up right now. That’s all for now!

Welcome!

Hello there, Loc Lam here and this is my design blog. Here I will post my designs from class and (hopefully) real-life. If you like what you see, feel free to contact me for commissions!