For the past few years, whenever someone talked about blogs, I used to reply with "I never really got into that." I was happy living a blog-free life and didn't see much value in reading blogs, much less creating my own. And now I have given in.
I just transitioned form College life into the working world, and find that I finally have occasional free time - what a novel thought! I absolutely love design, and it seems to permeate all aspects of my life. I can't walk around Georgetown without trying to figure out the typefaces the stores use, or pointing out kerning issues. Naturally, I love to read about design, learn about design and see other people's designs.
When I searched for just plain "design" online, I stumbled upon design*sponge (www.designspongeonline.com), a blog about all types of design, and started reading it daily. Over the past weeks I found more and more blogs that are great resources for designers (one of my favorites is Design Float www.designfloat.com), and I finally realized what value blogs hold - they are current. It seems like a trivial thing, but it took me a while to see it. Good design blogs/forums/websites provide designers with tons of up-to-date inspiration and information to add to their knowledge of design. Reading the posts seems like a good way to stay fresh and see what's going on in the design world today. It is easy for a designer to get stuck doing things a certain way, and while having your own, distinct style is great, it can also limit your creativity if you don't get out of your comfort zone.
Well, that's why I decided to start my own blog, as part of my online portfolio. I am still working on redesigning my current one (muweb.marymount.edu/~s0g60406), so that whole thing is still in the works for now...
I hope to contribute to the design community by making a conscious effort to be involved in today's design world. This blog will discuss and display design. While I am a graphic designer and deal a lot with print and web design in a professional sense, I also incorporate my design knowledge into my daily life. I enjoy decorating my apartment (a big reason why I love the design*sponge blog), putting together outfits and making food look pretty, I also love to paint and draw. Design can be found everywhere and I love making it part of everything I do.
Whew, it looks like I made it through my first post... Wasn't all that bad =) Check back for design inspiration and discussions, craft projects, design resources and new works of mine!