Here's a logo concept I'm working on for a friend's photography.

Infographics

So, I'm doing a LOT of infographics lately. My first ones were really bad, riddled with poorly spaced Helvetica, uninspired color schemes and a painful absence of hierarchy. However, now that I've discovered fonts, color, and pattern, I'm experiencing somewhat of a renaissance when it comes to design. I'm falling in love, and it is FUN!

Here's the most recent infographic I did for our annual report:

Baby steps!

Recent Artwork

Things about Boston:

1. People actually know how to drive!

2. People don't actually need to drive. Fact: The last time I filled up my gas tank was in Allentown, and I've been in Boston for 3 weeks. Also my PA license plate just fell off a couple weeks ago. Seriously, I just walked up to my car and noticed it was holding on by a single, very loose screw.

3. Folks talk weird.

4. EVERYONE has an iphone. Not in the sense that Boston's like really technologically advanced, it's just that the iphone is THE smartphone of choice here. Seriously, if you're on the T and you whip out a blackberry, everyone instantly judges you.

Other tidbits:

I've checked out a couple churches in the area, and am planning on another visit this weekend, but I'm pretty sure I'll be going to Fenway Church, which meets in a bar named "Church." It's awesome.

The job is amazing.

I really love Boston's public transportation. Yes, it may be true that I've never experienced good public transportation and the novelty hasn't worn off yet. But seriously, you meet some crazies on the T.

I could see myself becoming a Red Sox fan, but only as my AL team. I think Red Sox fans and Phillies fans might actually have quite a bit in common.

My house is OLD. And my roommates are awesome. One is engaged, the other soon to be so. And I moved in on Valentines day. So if we got through that awkwardness, I think we're gonna be just fine. :) We are the bottom floor of a 3-floor house with 4 ladies above us and a family of 4 (soon to be 5) on the third floor. John, the dad of said family, is far outnumbered as he is the only dude in the entire place. Our landlord, Angelo, is an extremely Greek gentleman who sends his various relatives to fix stuff when it breaks. Elderly Thomas came over to fix the oven the other day, and, needless to say, hilarity ensued.

So Boston is a pretty cool town, so far. I must say, it's nice to actually know someone here for once! And it's actually more of a hub for travelling friends, and easier for me to be able to go here and there for weddings and whatnot. So far, I have this to say: Nice going, Boston. Keep it up, and I might end up falling for you.

Infographic

This is an infographic I did for Park Street Church in Boston last month. They added a live voice-over during the church service, but it goes down in history as the absolute first piece of freelance that ever earned me a paycheck!

http://vimeo.com/16261043

Freelance

I've recently been blessed recently to get some freelance work from some organizations in Boston! I was first contacted by a good friend from college whose church was looking for someone to do an animated infographic for them. I did the video, and a week later got an email from the same friend whose boss, after seeing the video, wanted to hire me to do some work for them!

The organization is All Girls Allowed. Basically, they're a really cool organization that seeks to end gendercide in China. A big thing that they're about is empowering and enabling women to have and keep female children despite the higher value their society puts on males.

Anyways, here's some of what I'm working on:
I'll post a link to the video when it's done. But in the meantime, go to allgirlsallowed.org! :)

old and new!

I'm blogging from my old old OLD lappy today as I wait for a lovely insurance check to go towards replacing my new lappy which was stolen last Tuesday from my new home in Nashville!!! 

So there is some old stuff on here.  "TheFacebook.com" is one of my quick links on Safari.  wowza.  and going through my iTunes library is kinda like giving high-school Val a high five through time.  She was a pretty cool kid, I must say.

Also, I had to laugh at one of college senior Val's last Xanga posts (another quick link on Safari).  Here's an excerpt: 

So, today was a full work day for my thesis.  4.5 full hours of working.  i keyed out an entire scene.  hooray!  Well, close to keyed, anyway.  the program i need to time out my drawings is on the fritz.  in every single possible computer.  So, i ask the labbie what to do and she tells me to call bill, whose number i definitely do not have, and whose existence was previously completely unknown to me, or submit a complaint ticket to the helpdesk.  So, I go trudging up to the helpdesk, where they look at me like I'm crazy at the sound of my request.  So, they point me towards Bill's office (which, according to the guy, was close to ingle auditorium.  i rightly assumed he meant Webb.  engineers.), and i go, only to find that he is nowhere to be found.  I then spot a strategically placed poster advertising online helpdesk services, where i can submit a ticket to have a problem fixed.  oops.  so, now i wait for someone to read my online request and fix the problem.  chances are my class at 4 will come before a solution.

in other news, i have yet to pay real moneys for a meal this quarter, or go grocery shopping.  This is due mostly to Unzila, and largely to Matt Marsh, and partly to my Grammy.  I am eternally grateful for all three of them.

BAHAHA!!  4.5 hours is a full day of work???  Oh man, reading this was like college senior Val reaching through time to slap present Val in the face with her lethargy and moochiness!  And can I just say that I went through the rest of the year largely mooching off the freshies in my small group for debits.  ;)  ahh, those were the days.

Nashville

Last Saturday, I said goodbye to beautiful Madison and set out for the great wide unknown. Tim Johnson (my new/old subaru legacy) made the trip beautifully! I met up with a friend from Samaritan's Purse in New Johnsonville, TN before making my way into Nashville itself. We had some good gab time, went to church and then to a bbq place before I left. Then I met up with Janna, an IV staff that I met through the last intern to come to 2100.

So, I decided to stay at 2100 an extra month than I had originally planned. This meant that I stayed after the summer interns left, which was sad, but I also got to meet the fall intern that came in September. It so happens that he graduated from Vanderbilt, which is in Nashville!! So again, the Lord provided in a way I hadn't foreseen and answered my prayers for housing!

I'm living in west Nashville now, until I can find a job or freelance regularly enough to support myself.

So far things look pretty good on the freelance side of things, I'm learning a lot about the city and growing to love it the more I see of it! There is a lot of need and a lot of christian complacency here. Nashville has the most churches per capita than any other city in the nation. It's an interesting dynamic with all the refugees, poor, and prostitution that is present here. More on that later.

All of my work from my internship is up on my website now, so take a peek if you've got the notion!

Drumroll, please!

The piece I've been actively working on since the start of my internship in March was FINALLY completed today!!!!

Check it out here!

Hipsters

There was a recent article in Christianity Today that has the office (especially the 2100 studio peeps) all in a tizzy about "hipster faith" and what that's all about. At first, I was content just to be really amused at all the old people trying to understand hipsters. There's a list of authors, directors, and music that hipsters supposedly like at the bottom of the article in the actual magazine, and it got passed around so everyone in 2100 could put their own symbol next to the ones they liked. We need to ferret out the hipster christians among us, apparently (yes, I am one, according to my office mates and this article. heck, I'm wearing a superfluous scarf right now!). So I finally actually read the article, and it made me laugh and also made me a little angry. At first, it sounded to me like someone at NPR reporting on my generation as a whole, and of course I didn't like that! What kind of "millennial" would I be if I did? But it turns out that the same guy wrote an article for Relevant magazine that sort of made me like both articles. See if you agree.

But the thing is, neither article is really written to the people it's written about, who I think are the college or post-college aged christians who are filling the churches he's referring to. They're in Christian magazines, which I'm pretty sure were among the first Christian-y things to be thrown out by the new "hipster christian" generation, as defined by Mr. McCracken. This alone is what amused me when I first heard about (and appropriately didn't bother reading) the article.

Maybe Relevant might have a larger readership. I know I wouldn't have been caught dead with a copy when I was in HS, but I saw the demographic who might when I was at"LiFest," the huge christian music concert/conference thing they have in Wisconsin. (us interns got free tickets! I saw Newsboys and Skillet! yeah.....) Basically, lots of high schoolers in skinny jeans, plaid, and tats.

Yeah, so a friend in the office (a fellow hipster, you might say) and I have been talking about this at length. I'm not sure why "hipsterism" is such a big deal to folks right about now, other than the older generation might not understand it, but the articles made me look at how and why I do what I do when it comes to the church and my own faith. For me, I take it kind of as a warning not to take myself too seriously, not to cling to my "cool" factor, and not to outright reject things like contact evangelism and praying for random people on the bus. I really don't care if I'm a hipster or not, but I do have a tendency to let my personal image or what people might think of me get in the way of obedience to God.

Interesting stuff.