A long post about well everything in my mind at this very moment

So its been a while since I last penned a blog entry on here. I suppose I can relay my adventures of the last couple weeks - well what I can remember anyway. I guess I can start off by saying I finished my Creative Copywriting class. I really enjoyed the class and learned alot. If anyone is a SCAD student check out Art Novak's classes - good advertising teacher. I posted one of my projects earlier for the Spaldeen ball which I think turned out pretty well. I suppose I should post the completed comp for my final project. It was actually an ad campaign that we split between my partner and I. Our job was to settle on a local organization and create a poster, billboard, tv spot, and radio spot that solved a need they had. Our organization was the Savannah St. Patrick's Day Parade Committee. And for those of you that don't know but are keeping track - Savannah has a huge St. Patrick's day parade (like 3rd largest in the country). Therefore, we need our own committee to plan it. The need that we were solving was just to get people to come to the parade. But as a team we decided to not focus on the drunken bash and the people that idea attracts, but to focus on the other people. We chose a stance that was more focused on the history of the parade, a parade that has been part of the city for over 150 years. So all of our projects revolved around that idea. My completed comp for the poster:

for anyone that actually cares, the entire poster is done in photoshop. I took a couple pictures of some bricks outside my house...duped them a bunch and then found a picture of some clovers. The copy is original (hence a copywriting class). And logo is pulled from their website (don't bother with that, not very good). You might have to download it to get a decent view at the copy, for some reason I thought there used to be a full size display button in picasa. Well thats that. Hope you like it.

So that ended my class and I am back on the summer vacation. Which so far has entailed a boat load of work (heh boat load). I have been working with another designer, Brei Smith on a digital booklet/menu for Indulge Catering. She works with me and Indulge and is good designer and friend (check out her site: www.breismith.com). Basically my plan is to hand the menu out to different people instead of an actual menu. We can save money on printing menus and only make CDs for the people we want to give it to. I am using the CD holder template I created that fits on an 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper (love it) as the carrying case for it. And for those that saw the original designs for menu stuff you the style. One cool note about this is we actually had a professional photographer come in and shoot pictures for us. It took up a good bit of a day but I think we got some wonderful stuff to work with (always nice to have some good shots). Anyways everyone can check out a work in progress of the book at: Book

It might take a while to load because this is meant for a disc and not the web. The pictures are not processed for the web. I am using the book turn flash thing I have to create it then exporting as an exe in flash. Pretty cool stuff. Anyways you get the idea. Oh btw I would like to thank Dave for letting me host some test stuff on his site - if I haven't plugged his site enough check his site out at: Dave's Site and support his film Meet Dave with Eddie Murphy (skip the movie and just wait till the credits to see Dave's name woot!) I think that's rather awesome - having your name in the credits of a big screen. Alright where was I. Besides the menu I have been creating other stuff for Indulge also - menu cards, business cards, box lunch labels, and pretty much everything under the sun. Hopefully when I am through it will make a good corporate identity portfolio piece. I will try and post more stuff as I get it done for them.

While doing that I have also been working the catering gigs also. Tomorrow we have a 12 hour day of catering. I am bummed because Chelsea has the day off and I am working the entire time. It seems like this last week we have had opposite schedules. Although yesterday we were able to hang out and go down to Jalapenos (yum and awesome) then watch Lost Boys 2 - as she previously mentioned. Cut the review short on it, it was cheesy and felt like a made for video movie (cause it was). I suppose this weekend we will probably be doing some mall shopping considering the tax free weekend). Not that I particularly like the mall, I do enjoy hanging out with my girl. I digg her. I mean seriously, this blog wouldn't be so grand without her. Her book comes out this weekend (its like her equivalent to Harry Potter for you Harry Potter fans) and I hope its everything she hoped for. Just like Dark Knight was everything I hoped for. Yay for Dark Knight - go see it, now!

I don't think we ever mentioned what we did on 4th of July (yeah I have alot of catching up to do) - hopefully this isn't too long. On the 3rd of July we headed over to Blaine and Ginger's house for a party they had. They picked up some great outside furniture for World Market and really made a great outdoor living area. Blaine was at the grill and I downed a few burgers and hotdogs (my favorite, if you couldn't guess.) They had a keg for the beer drinkers and wine for the wine drinkers. The party was mostly SCAD workers but we got to hang out with all the Hansens and just have a good time. We hadn't seen Nicky and Jim for a while so it, well it was awesome. Of course the party couldn't be complete without a hand selected 4th of July themed ipod play list courtesy of Blaine. To top the night off, fireworks were shot off from the park just a block away. So really we celebrated our 4th on the 3rd - thanks to Blaine and Ginger and their great party hosting skills.

Oh also, Richard's site finally went live last month. I had completed his site uh before I left for Savannah and its finally up and live (slow slow man). Richard's site. He was looking for a simple and clean site. His style is mostly modern so I tried to stay in that vein. I made all the animations moved fairly fast and didn't have any extras. Almost a bare essential type of site. It is also very easy for him to edit, so when he actually gets his pictures processed, he can put them straight to the web. This gallery programming is basically what I have been working on since my first site with The Metal Garden. The scripting has been beefed up to help with people that have no idea how to program a website. I have tried making it as easy as possible. Its the stuff you don't see on the site, the backbone that has changed really. Its actually funny because Jon from the Metal Garden has contacted me to hopefully redo his site. Sort of a full circle in web design for me. I have always wanted to redo the site because being my first site, its not very good. The Metal Garden. Check it out for yourself.

So yeah, I can't remember what else I was going to talk about. Not that this post isn't already long enough. I mean I even threw shout outs to pretty much everyone. Well not everyone. Andrea and Taylor! What Up, we miss you! Deedee, congrats on finally getting a computer. Anyone else I fail to mention, sorry - maybe in the next book, right after when Dumbledore dies (sorry to ruin it for you)! Good night.

how awesome is GA?!

well let me tell ya just how rad this new state of mine is.

for the whole weekend (july 31- aug 3) there is no sales tax. yeah, i know, that sounds lame, but think of all the random money we spend every day because of tax. the odd couple bucks here and there, BUT it has to add up eventually! well this weekend, im taking myself shopping. and if i had any friends in this state, i'd take them too! haha

my mom swears its cause of back to school shopping. i don't really care why they are doing this, i just think its super awesome!! so im buying myself some sperry topsiders. they are boat shoes, and im pretty sure im not getting a boat anytime soon, but everyone around here wears them and they look spiffy... and im a local now! so it makes perfect sense to me :)

on a side note, we just watched "lost boys 2: the tribe". i had high hopes for this film, really, i did. i loved the first one when i was a kid (and thats saying a lot cause i am a big chicken about scary movies). this one was totally predictable. not one thing happened that was surprising or unexpected. the main bad guy is exactly who you think it's going to be (no, not rory's grampa). it was just pathetic. BUT the corey's were both in it, so really im not going to complain. but im also not going to recommend it.

on another side note, we've been watching "rome" which is really good. those romans sure are horny! haha

-chels

An ad filled with Frustration

So two weeks ago I started my Creative Copywriting class. And after a bit of success on my first ad, We are on our second assignment. The class is all about the actual writing rather then the creation of the ad. So for the first assignment we didn't take it to completion. However this assignment he asked us to go a bit further and finish the ad. He gave us the product, the Spalding Hi-Bounce Ball. After a bit of research, we found it that its this famous ball that was discontinued in 1979 (that popular huh?) and has just recently been reintroduced. The main game this ball is used in is stick ball. I personally decided to center my ad around this sport and also the nostalgia of the ball. I started off coming off with headlines and was all over the place. The first one I really came up with was "The Original Urban Playground." - based off stick ball being played in big cities like New York. Then I started thinking about how this ball was popular in the 50s and 60s and moved to the popular cars of that day. I looked at old car ads and basically absorbed everything they had. I came across one ad that had the headline, "Straight out of Tomorrow." Which I thought was a great headline, so I took it and applied it to the ball which resulted in "Straight out of yesterday." I feel it worked. And compared to some of my other ideas felt well, right. I sort of had this vision for the ad as a picture of the downtown streets of a city. I really like the visual of stick ball in the city. I ran with that idea and a bit of copy about the history and came up with the comp of the ad.
As far as the frustration goes, it was all in the printing of the ad. For some reason, my printer decided to go crazy and actually rip my prints up. Then as I was trying to fix it, it ran out of ink. One printer down I moved on to Chelsea's printer, which in turn was also out of ink. So I was off to Walgreen's for a refill, and 45 minutes later I am told that the color cartridge cannot be refilled. So finally I am off to Wal-mart to buy a new color cartridge and to my luck, they only have the two cartridge package in stock, meaning I have to buy a black cartridge also. But it is printed out, on the semi-gloss side of my photo paper because it wasn't taking the black on the gloss side. But nonetheless, its done and not too shabby. Its bed time for me, so aidos and peace out.

BTW, this entry was written totally on the fly here so mistakes, grammar, and boring parts are left well enough alone.

Something I've been playing with as of late...

How do you represent the hardest thing a person can possibly represent, themselves? The problem is, I want to make myself a website that is sort of a collection of my own work...weather it be because I want to use as a resume site, personal site, or something else entirely (I think I just want a piece of real estate in this world with my name on it, virtual or not.) I have tried many designs over the past what I would say nine years if you included the ones thought up with Taylor..All of them were scrapped save one which ended up as the idea for Dave's site ( www.davidgroseclose.com ) And again I am plagued with the question of how I should represent myself. I have to say that I am sort of digging my logo, which was on here before and can be seen in the SCAD work folder. So this summer I have been playing around with yet another idea. I am not going to show you the entire thing, just a little sample of it. A few details on the site is that it would be completely done in Flash, inspired by Rauschenberg (probably way off on spelling of that), and consist of the idea, "me, in some form." The following image is just a clip (scrap, piece, fragment) from the final still of the opening keyframe. Again this, like the others, would probably hit the cutting room floor...But I figure hell, might as well share what has been floating around my brain.

hate to admit it...

but, here goes...

i just watched "camp rock". and i kind of liked it.

it wasn't hsm, but it couldve been a hellofalot worse! haha

anywho, speaking of disney (it's a stretch, but you see where i'm comin from) im going this weekend! i'm called it a "girls weekend"- me and my gay husband steven are meeting there! AH! i havent seen him in three years and ive missed him so much. we don't keep in touch as often as i'd like, but i have a feeling we'll pick up right where we left off.

funny story for those who don't know- the first time i met him we were on the dynamic bus heading back to the college program apartments after our first day of "traditions class" at disney university. he offered me a disney fruit snack pack, and i totally thought he was hitting on me (i have terrible gaydar, ask anyone). i ended up pretty much living at his apartment.

words cannot express how excited i am to see my long lost husband! it's been far too long.

oh, and i got my car fixed. the check engine light had been on for about 8 months, and my dad pretty much grounded me until i got it fixed. seriously, he grounded me. someone needs to explain to ME how i let myself get grounded by a dude who's 3000 miles away from me. obviously he won, since $300 later, my car is fine, and i'm "allowed" to go now. i would've gone anyways, i might have just commit grand theft auto (is that even the term, or just a game?) and taken rylan's car. but no felonies were commited and im going to disneyworld!

adios.

growing up, some of my favorite movies were "blue hawaii", "south pacific", and "beach blanket bingo" so naturally i felt like i would be the ultimate beach bum when i was older. but let us not forget that i was born and raised in a desert, and spent 23 years of my life in said desert. i feel like a fraud admitting this, but i, chelsea parks, am not a good beach person.

well thats not true, but yesterday was just not my favorite day at the beach. it was hot, there were bugs, and god help me there was a crying baby about 20 feet from us who would not shut up. we only spent about an hour there, then we went to get some really good pizza.

then we went to sam's club and got a membership. we're card carrying members of adult society now! so i went a little nuts and bought an iTouch. if i could figure it out, i guess technically i could be updating this from that, but well, im not. haha

more news from our kitchen. we bought an ice cream maker! we've made peach ice cream (which was more like soup... but still yummy) and vanilla. that turned out much better than our first attempt. we bought a ben and jerry's ice cream recipe book, so hopefully deliciousness will ensue!

tonight we have steak. it's been a very long time since we've had it, due to lack of funding on the grocery front, but my god it was so good. even the dog benefitted from this- her bowl was overflowing with the scraps.

and now there's orangecicles in the freezer!