I can’t believe i actually won a competition! BittBox (an amazing site that I must have mentioned before, because it’s one of my favourite sites, with loads of great tutorials and awesome free vectors and brushes) had a reader competition sponsored by Flashloaded (specialized in cutting edge Flash components) and the prize was a choice of flash components from their site for a value of $100 USD! Yay!! My websites will be awesome in the future :-)  

Phu! Since I started my new job (and I still freelance a bit on the side) I simply haven’t had time to blog! Hopefully, things will slow down a bit soon. There’s also lots of fun stuff going on - lots of my friends turn 30 this year (so do I in April… and R already on Wednesday!) and many are getting married (including us), meaning lots of parties and hen nights to plan. But with a new job and plans to redecorate the kitchen (including knocking down a wall), there’s not much time left to relax and blog!

Anywho, I just wanted to say hello, and show you some really cool posters on the topic “What is Graphic Design?“. If you’re a designer or webdesigner I’m sure you’ve already discovered Veerle’s blog - lots of graphic design inspiration and great tutorials in Illustrator, Photoshop and css. Her recent reader competition produced some amazing posters - here are some of my favourites:

(pictures from Veerle’s reader competition)

So, I’ve just started my new job and there’s a lot of new stuff to take in and people to meet. I’m hoping to be able to continue updating the blog, but I’ll probably not have time to do it every day. Well, I’ll do my best. 

This is a cool lamp with a suitable name - Titanic. From Hidden Art Shop. They have lots of quirky, fun stuff! 

I love the work of Brazilian artist Eduardo Recife. It’s so much fun to make grungy and distressed collages (too bad that you don’t get many clients asking you for a grungy looking brochure…). Check out his website, where he also gives away lots of goodies - like the awesome fonts below.

Yesterday I had an important meeting that went very well, so I rewarded myself with a pair of shoes (really suitable for winter, ehm…) from Oasis (sale! 75% off!) and a bright orange calendar for 2008 from Ordning & Reda. Hooray! Money has been a bit tight lately, but there seems to be better times ahead. Just what I needed to be able to save up for the wedding in September. It means lots of work and no holiday for 7 months, but it will be worth it!

I’ve had such a relaxing weekend.  We’ve been out walking (it’s supposed to be winter here, but it’s not that cold, around +-0 degrees Celsius) and spent all Saturday evening in front of the fireplace reading books and drinking good red wine. We kept saying to each other that we should spend more nights reading instead of just watching TV or renting a dvd. I must be the last person in Sweden to read Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, but I blame it on having been out of the country for a couple of years. The books have been hyped in Scandinavia to a degree where even a crime-fiction sceptic like myself have to surrender and buy the books just to see what all the fuss is about. Actually, I haven’t started reading them yet, but I will as soon as I finish John Ajvide Lindqvist’s  vampire books (yep, sounds really weird, but at least the first one is actually really good!). Reviews are coming up, watch this space.

I’ve just been out running in the park and it hit me that since I discovered the joy of podcasts it’s not such a big deal to go out for a run anymore. I actually look forward to it, even if it’s raining and I have to run through slushy mud and breathe in icy cold air (like today). I thank Hamish & Andy for all the weird looks I get from people when I run around laughing and smiling to myself. How did I ever manage to run before? It must have been so boring.

I find the hardest thing is to design for yourself. Nothing feels quite right and you really want to represent yourself in the best way possible, since you’re a designer and all. Well, I designed our save the date-invites a couple of weeks ago, and it was fun - but hard. I don’t know why I put so much time and effort into it, since most people we send it to probably wouldn’t care or even realise the difference between designed ones and a Times New Roman text made in Word with some free clip-art. But it’s still nice to have something you’ve designed and that you like. Anywho, this is the result (actually, this is what they would have looked like, had I printed them out, but we got lazy and sent them via e-mail, hehe. The real invitations will be printed out and posted, so we didn’t think it was necessary to do it twice. I Photoshopped this one

I have this craving for red shoes at the moment. I love red shoes, yet I only own one single pair (and they’re four years old and have gold stitching on top). I simply need a pair (or two) of red shoes!

(I also need a new camera, to take gourgeous pictures like the one above by princess-of-dream at Deviant Art, or the one below by ultraviolett at Flickr…) 

This is pretty interesting (from a designer’s perspective). I mean, change must be exactly what the American people are after. Which of the logos of the presidential candidates convey that message? To me, Barack Obama’s logo clearly stands out as new, fresh and contemporary. Out with the old, in with the new. John Edwards is also a bit more interesting, while all the others scream old, boring and afraid of change (to me). I’m a bit disappointed with Hillary…
(ugh, and I hate the larger R in RUDY! Why?)

Check out what type designers say about the logos here.

(via Swissmiss) 

Oooh, how did I miss this? Type Selector from Thames and Hudson - like a Pantone colour guide, but with fonts! I was so excited when I found this, but then I remembered all the extra fonts that I’ve downloaded and bought through the years (which is quite a lot, since I LOVE fonts and typography)… They’re probably not in there. Those 226 fonts must be pretty standard ones. Which is good, but not GREAT

Oh, but it would be so convenient to have a guide with all the fonts on your computer, to be able to browse through. I’ve tried printing out examples of all fonts, but it’s such a mess (and extremely time consuming).