Design Quickies: This is NOT My City (Album Cover)

My younger cousin is intelligent as hell, funny, witty, and 100% her own person. She has her BS (no jokes, please) in Architectural Preservation from TU (what, what) and is working on her MS in Library and Information Science at DU. She’s awesome.

With that said, she also has some of the most quotable one-liners known to man.

One Christmastime (I guarantee it was last year), my boyfriend, and two cousins took a trip out to Bethlehem, PA to visit the annual Christkindlmarkt over in Christmas City. On the way to and from, Yenny kept firing off these phrases that were responses to things we were talking, about, but totally left of center, yet completely on brand. It got so funny with what she was spewing out, I started a new page of notes on my phone just for those sentences.

I said aloud, “Yen, all of these sound like song titles. This can be an EP.” We all laughed about it, and of course she questioned me as she always does. To be fair, though, some of these titles are not things that have physically spilled out of her mouth, but are definitely things she wouldn’t hesitate to say or that relate to her quite well.

WELL, almost a year later, I finally got around to making it happen. Now, this is entirely an inside joke, and for Christmas, to celebrate the “one year anniversary” of these quotes, my boyfriend suggested we get the album cover printed as an LP and instead of a record inside, create a photo album just for her. I think it’s a smashing idea!

I sent a screenshot of the front and back covers to her older sister, who was in the car (she was driving!) when all of this took place and she got a kick out of it. Even told me she’d have to nudge her sister to pre-order it. ;)

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Elements:

  1. Photo of Yen - taken by me at 2018 Wawa Welcome America Party on the Parkway, Philadelphia, PA

  2. Alley stock photo found on Google

  3. Typefaces used: Rock Salt, Myriad

  4. FBI Anti-Piracy Warning logo (downloaded as SVG from Brands of the World)

  5. Republic Records logo (downloaded from Google)

  6. Parental Advisory logo (downloaded from Google)

Time taken: 2 hours

Programs: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop

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Design Quickies - Gotta Go Fast!

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Over the summer, I needed a creative kickstart. I felt like my portfolio was lacking and I was the only one who could do anything about it…but what?

So that’s when I got this idea—what if I, before I started my work day each morning, got on the computer and just opened a program, picked a skill to refine and spend 1-2 hours working on a quick project. I dubbed these “Design Quickies”.

These Design Quickies, or DQs for short, had three jobs: keep myself in practice or learn how to do something new, build up my portfolio, and keep my creative juices flowing. My job, at the time of this conception, allowed me more creative release than the last, but was not nearly enough to keep me happy as a designer.

I kept up with this for a little while, trying to add humor to my work. I experimented with size and scale (as shown in the two examples on the left), type treatment, color, and ideas. Each session, I’d do a web search for random things that popped into my head, gather the items I’d need and go to town. The only rule was each DQ could only be worked on during that session. Once the session was over, I would never touch the piece again.

Needless to say, a few pieces remain unfinished, like the family portrait I took form my personal photo library and attempted to replace everyone’s face, including my own, with Gary Busey’s.

I’ll pick DQs back up soon, as I have a few things I want to try out. They’ll be shared in the blog in the future and will possibly earn a spot in the portfolio if they really rock my socks.