Over a year’s worth of planning finally came to fruition last month, as I traveled to west to gear up for an Alaskan cruise out of Vancouver. Spent a day before and after the cruise enjoying the lovely city of Seattle. The highlight of the cruise was definitely Juneau, Alaska.

It’s definitely interesting being on the other side of the job application. Searching for a job can be quite an arduous task. For starters, there is no standard online application form; each employer has their own format, making online applications quite cumbersome. Some forms ask for a cover letter, others have questions for you to answer in essay form. It can be downright scary!

But folks, these things are included in the application for a reason. A stellar portfolio is worthless if you don’t get pass the application review. And those application questions are a fantastic way of weeding you out.

As University of Baltimore’s 2010 Ampersand Award winner, I was tasked with designing the 2011 seminar and portfolio reception invitation. I debated about posting the result (and restarting this blog) due to all the conversation generated with 2010′s invitation. But, inquries into what I came up with rolled in, so without further discussion, here it is. Click the image to see a larger view.

I hope I’ve done the class of 2011 (and my own fellow 2010 graduates) proud!

I strolled through the library last week looking for possible, “coffee table”-worthy books that were in need of a redesign. Since my aim for my book design class is to have three, portfolio-ready pieces, I think the coffee table test is a good indicator of what can be achieved. I checked out  three books from the library, but as I started scanning them in, I eliminated one from the project possibilities. The first book that made the cut (or failed my own, arbitrary design litmus test, as it were), was Melcher Media’s Sex and the City: The Movie photo book.

It’s been a long time coming, but I finally have a moment to post images of the finished layout of The Elephant’s Child, Book Design’s first project. Once I’ve gotten the fully assembled book back, I’ll post a picture of that as well. But for now, JPEGs extracted from the PDF file will have to do. Let me know what you think.

This summer, I’ve enrolled in the book design class at the University of Baltimore. Since UB’s summer session is a short eight weeks, the class instruction (and time to complete a project) is a whirlwind. The first project is to design a book for the Rudyard Kipling short story, “The Elephant’s Child”. After several revisions, I feel I’m close to being happy with my cover design.

Since I am not an illustrator by any stretch of the imagination, obtaining art for a project is always a challenge for me. Especially when there is no client to bill for the work. I found some exceptional paintings from artist Aria Eden which I used to create a rough mock-up to present to class. After attempting the first cover, I was told that artwork created for the story itself could not be used-even unpublished artwork. D’oh!

Obviously, I’ve totally neglected my  blog! Which, looking back, is actually a good thing. Life happens. That, and I’m slowly weening myself off the dependency of the Internet. I took my first trip with no laptop packed in many, many years. I’m proud of myself. All that being said, I am going to give this another shot. We’ll see how it goes. I’ll have to do some clean up, but let’s see how things shake out, shall we?

Class is finally done. Hoorah! Pat yourself on the back, boys and girls, because we’ve made it. Enjoy your holiday and winter break. Before you know it, it will be January and the start of a new semester. I hope  we’ll all keep in touch. For those of you going to the Sketch Crawl, I’ll see you out in the cold!

As I work on the revision for the instructional booklet, I’m testing out various colors for the hands in the instructions. Below are three options. What are your thoughts?

No Color Option

25% Black Option

25% PMS 4535 Option

Here are some of my favorite spreads from the next issue of Marinalife. I am pleased with how the Florida Keys layout turned out, and the San Diego layout started to grow on me.