Bridgette Goes to College

  Stormchaser is the second book in a series called The Edge Chronicles. I may or may not have been obsessed with this series as a kid. Ok, I absolutely was obsessed. It was weird, imaginative, fun, and no one else I knew was reading them so my Inner Hipster Demon felt really Cool and Special. I did a book cover analysis of The Two Towers a while back and I wanted to try another one. I only have a copy of the first cover I’m going to show you (It’s a first American edition, printed in 2004, so it’s not the first cover ever), but I remembered having Thoughts about this second cover when it was released. I’m going to take another look and give a Designer’s Opinion on it and on another, newer version of the cover. Here is the first cover of Stormchaser: Iconic. Maybe that’s the nostalgia talking, but I really do love this cover. The fake distressing on the edges, the swirly cloud background that looks like old, stained paper, the fluttery scroll of the title. The hard cover is tex...

I’m doing something different this week. This isn’t your regular “what I’ve learned this week about Graphic Design” post. It’s more like… “ what I’ve been learning about myself over the last two years.” I’ve been meaning to talk about Imposter Syndrome.  It was brought up in our very first week of class this month and I’ve been sitting on this blog post ever since. Hoo, boy. I’m familiar with it, but probably not in the way that you think. Imposter Syndrome, to put it simply is when you feel you aren’t as good at something as people say or seem to think you are and one day they’re going to find out you’re a big liar who’s been tricking them all this time and you’re actually a bog mummy in disguise. Lots of people feel this way. I feel this way. But not about my design skills, or my intelligence, or my ability to perform a task. I keep proving to myself that I’m capable enough. I’ve had straight A’s the entire time I’ve been in college. I got an A in algebra for math’s sake, and I...

              I’m supposed to write a cover letter for a job listing of my choice as a homework exercise. I haven’t quite worked up to it yet, because first I have to pick the job I’m fake applying to, and then I have to…you know…write it. It shouldn’t be an impossible task because I believe I have a certain amount of skill when it comes to writing, but it will take twice as much energy and brain power as this blog post here because it’s supposed to be purposeful and good and professional , or whatever.               Not that this blog isn’t supposed to be those things, but this is supposed to be “heyo here’s my personality. Let me tell you a fun thing” and not “Hello, yes, I am uniquely qualified for this position because of xyz reasons – but interesting.”               I can make excuses left and right about how I i...

One of the things that is so interesting about Graphic Design is that it is everywhere, and it is so everywhere that most people don’t even think about how everywhere it is. Not only that, but there are so many different specific kinds of Graphic Designers that most people who are hiring Graphic Designers (which is more people than you think) don’t even call them Graphic Designers. A designer who is animating graphics for a video game does not do the same kind of work as a designer who formats books for print. So, that makes sense. Why call both jobs Graphic Design jobs when the work is completely different? They might be called a Graphic Blandisher and a Layout Artist. Ok, Graphic Blandisher is a joke from Peanuts cartoons, because apparently Charles M. Schulz hated animation or something and all the animation on stuff like A Charlie Brown Christmas is called Graphic Blandishment in the credits.  Photo credit https://peanuts.fandom.com/wiki/Peanuts_Wiki  So, the j...

              Ah, the elegant form of a…form.               Ok, there really is nothing elegant or “high art” about paperwork, but efficient and concise forms are necessary. How many times have you had to fill out a form and you take one look and are completely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff on it? To be fair there are a lot of things that are unavoidable, and I don’t know if it’s more intimidating to be confronted with one over-crowded piece of paper or a stack of less-crowded papers.               I deal with a lot of paperwork at my job. I work at a theatre and we have forms for all kinds of things. Season ticket orders, auditions, class registration, waivers upon waivers…all to keep track of contact info for our patrons and volunteers and to make sure our volunteers won’t bully other cast members or sue us...

“Make me wonder, make me understand. Spark the light of doubt and a newborn mind. Bring the vast unthinkable down to earth,”               These are lyrics from a song by my favorite band, Nightwish. It’s called Sagan, after the famous astronomer Carl Sagan. I was going to make that blog post about designing forms today, but seeing as it’s Carl Sagan Day apparently, I thought it would be more fitting to talk about last week’s project. The project was to turn a song into a poster based on feelings. Not the title, not the lyrics, but the feeling of the song and how it makes me feel. I regularly belt this song in the car and prance around the house while it plays, either in my head or on my phone. I regularly do this with a number of Nightwish songs.               I was, at first, overwhelmed by the possibilities. There are so many songs that would have bee...

The tale continues! See part one if you’ve missed it: Bortbyting Part 1 I had a lot of fun writing and illustrating this story, and then piecing all of it together in InDesign. When I think about all the different kinds of careers and jobs I could have pertaining to Graphic Design, working with page layout and books still holds my interest more than anything else. Not even necessarily illustrating or designing covers, just putting the pieces together and arranging it so that it makes sense. At least it’s vaguely more interesting than designing forms, which I will get into at a later date. I feel like that seems too mundane for the vibes I give off (ah, yes, the person with the bright red and orange hair, who listens to metal, and has an ever-growing doll collection likes designing forms of all things), but maybe I’m just too interesting to be doing interesting things all of the time. “It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish.” J. R. R. Tolkien