As if pot-luck fliers were the only things I had to do...

So as I said before, the last month was crazy busy. I think the problem was over the past six months (my DC internship and vacation at home) I got in a very laid back groove. There were things that needed done, but I was never stretched on deadline. Things changed in July. People left me alone in the office, we moved up a floor with EVERYTHING needing to be packed up, it was DEADLINE (which no one in our department understands), so it was also full of random assignments for me to do.

Anyway, at some point during this crazy time I was also freelancing for my mother to create fliers for the neighborhood pool. This all started during June, when I had nothing to do and was completely BORED so I told her I would design a sign for her tennis night, and soon there after the water aerobics class. I wouldn't brag about either one, I was pretty much using it as an opportunity to play with the Illustrator brushes that I can never justify using in any other situation. But my mom was of course blown away, which would lead to problems later on.

Enter the pot luck dinners. She wanted something for the Fourth of July, but I was at first completely uninspired. My first attempt was horrible, hardly worth publishing except to show you the transformation. My goal here was to 'tone it down' because honestly, what sort of artistic signs does someone expect at a neighborhood pool? If something looked professional, would this turn people away? I tried to dumb down the design, but my mom wasn't having any of it. She suggested something with (I quote) 'clip art flags' which pretty much sent me in a hissy about artistic standards. I responded with my 'modern flier' that I honestly didn't expect her to like at all:
My message here was something along the lines of 'You want patriotism? I'll give it to you in a modern abstract style you will hate, but at the same time feel uncultured if you want something else' . Except then she loved it. Or at least knew when to not argue any more with me about something as silly as a flier for a pot-luck dinner.

Anyway, I thought all of this was behind me, until she comes at me with another challenge: a SECOND pot-luck dinner! How do I create something a second time when this time I don't even have patriotic colors to fall back on? My answer was finding the right color pallet. I have been attached at the hip to this new web site that posts interesting color pallets (I promise another post more on this) and after finding colors I liked, I decided to play around with typography until something appeared. Enter my final flier for the Summer 2007 season:

I'm actually proud of this one, it looks wonderful and lining up all the letters in 'Pot Luck Dinner' was more complicated than it looks--there was a lot of kerning and fudging straight lines in there--I really enjoy looking at it. The subtle water at the bottom connects the flier to the event (a pool party) and the thin stars creates a wonderful retro feel. I think watching Mad Men has been rubbing off on me.

So what did I learn from this? Apparently if you do something enough times, eventually something exciting will pop out from it. You can learn new tricks from even the smallest assignment, all you have to do is go into it determined to use your new skills. I wanted to practice my typography and color, and this last flier helped me do that.