Soleiljlj Flikr Site
Soleil JLJ Flikr Site.

Thanks to Andrea, I am in love with old early 1900 poster art again from American Art Archives . Seriously, the hand-drawn, homemade aspect of advertising needs to make a return. In a way we’ve lost some aspect of human emotion and personalization through the use of vector art and computer-generated design. I think the book, Fingerprint, makes a great argument for this.

For this blog site I was just playing with simple shapes and color to create a fun, playful background for the site. I would like to keep playing with this and make it a bit more polished. The mouse would trigger the circular buttons to pop up and trigger different musical sounds from clicking on each one.

For this sit design I wanted to keep a simple format with an ornate pattern and lush color palette. To me the layout could use a bit of work to create a more interesing and less structured or traditional organization. At the same time, I think it’s a good challenge for me to use more of a structured, organized layout. At the same time, I want to have a fresh, calming feel that both relaxes and energizes the reader.

This is a collage of photos and daily observations that have become little inspirational treasures to me. Through documenting life and sharing photos with others I have learned to look not only at design but life in a new awe-inspiringly beautiful light. I often think of a scene in American Beauty when one of the characters recognizes the simple undiscovered beauty of a plastic bag and a a leaf swirling in the wind. I once worked for a man who told me that I was “just a f@$%ing leaf blowing in the wind” and stupid in “trying do artsy BS.” The day he said this to me, amongst other things, I made one of the best spontaneous decisions of my life: I quit. I came to the realization that I love the “artsy BS.” I want it. I want to create it and I want to inspire others with it. And contrary to popular belief, “artsy BS” has a profound effect on others and how we make decisions from the simplest things such as whether we buy a particular product to how we choose to live our lives. Making the decision to be “a leaf” and enter into new worlds of design and inspiration is something that I will always smile about.

Another route is a sort of Breakfast at Tiffany’s / interior design collage of textures, photos, objects and images that relate to different sections that can be clicked on to enter separate rooms of the site to give it the feel that you’re walking through a design house. I would like to stick with a clean, sharp black background with white or pale teal text and a small close-up of a textures or cropped image that represents each specific area.

Here is one direction for a new blog site. I really like the idea of collaging or creating somewhat of an organic or handmade look that also has a touch of chic. I particularly like the idea of making it look like a fashion or interior design mood board. Ideally, I would like to have cut paper images that would serve as buttons linking to different areas such as music, websites, books, quotes, inspirations, and writings.