I know this isn’t news for most of you, but I love design.
One day when I was in elementary school, I came home and my dad was on the computer. He was installing something, and soon enough he showed me this amazing new software he had purchased: Xara X. It was new, it was fresh, it has video tutorials and an easy interface. And from day one, I was sold.
I remember sitting in front of the screen dragging points everywhere, experimenting with bevels, pulling shadows to where I wanted them to be and so forth. I loved zooming in really far and still have perfect quality. There was just that ‘WOW’ factor about it. (Actually I still have the images from that era, and well, let’s just say you won’t EVER be seeing them.)
Then one day I found out about Photoshop. Someone (*cough* sister *cough*) had it sitting on the computer, and I tried opening it. But, unfortunately Photoshop wasn’t quite as easy to understand as the vector software young Kj had abused, and after a few days it was no longer in use. (The fact my sister found out I used her software and was quite offended might also have had something to do with it.)
However, even 8-year-olds know how to use Google, and soon I found websites dedicated to “graphics” as we called them at the time: Blog headers for celebrity fan sites, buddy icons of the same celebrities and whatnot. (Yes, that’s right! Your very own Kj started out as a common photo thief! :O) I got hold of a Paint Shop Pro (a software similar to Photoshop but simpler and not as powerful) trial and started experimenting. Then I told a friend of mine, who probably wouldn’t like me to drag her into this (since I’m a few notches above her on the geek scale), and soon we had a very own website where we posted things. In the end we were actually really good, too. Eventually my folks bought me Photoshop Elements, and we were spending every break at school discussing design and website concepts. Yeah, it was that bad.
Then one beautiful autumn day I found myself looking for photos of landmarks and famous places, to make buddy icons from. Then the thought struck me, hey, why not take go for a walk and take some pictures of your own! You can always find some tiny part of it that looks OK in 100x100 pixels. I found out about Flickr soon enough, and I had moved away from design altogether (apart from the raster techniques that also apply to photography, naturally).
The funny part is - all of this, and I mean ALL of this, happened on Saturdays. I started playing with vectors on a Saturday. Me and my friend built our site on a Saturday. I signed up to Flickr on a Saturday.
Today is another one of those Saturdays.
To get to the point here, I think I’m going back to vectors. I came across a how-to on t-shirt design today, which is something I’ve wanted to try for a while now, and it made me run downstairs and get my notebook. Of course I had no ideas, except from one that keeps coming back to me.. Which I won’t tell you about yet. Maybe in a few weeks, you’ll be able to purchase a t-shirt from me? Who knows!
PS: What do you think of the new theme?
