Medium is a fantastic site for designers, writers, etc. to share thoughts, advice, and discoveries. It is characterized by a simple, beautiful layout that allows for straightforward and uncluttered interaction. Most of the articles published on this site are insightful, well-written, and professional.

It's been over a year since I concluded my personal blog. I now use this blog as documentation for my involvements in projects and analysis of story, but as a writer, there are many other topics to traverse and consider. I lacked a space to express them. 

Yesterday, I began work on a short post about the silly things people will do for love because of an instance I experienced with my sister and her new Lego set. As I've shared it, I've gotten a positive response to its quirky, hopeful tone. 

As a result, I think I will continue to use Medium as place for publishing extraneous thoughts such as these. The possibilities with a new platform in such a well-designed space is exciting.

Yesterday, I had a bit of free time and decided to spend it using Illustrator to created textured typography and Photoshop to make a quick poster for the film Interstellar. 

As I'd never created "fan art" (for lack of a better term) before, I simply picked a few elements I deemed important about the dimensions of the film and threw them together in under an hour. The exercise, though not for quality, was a test to see how I could compile someone else's story into a still visual format. There is more to be learned, and if I try this exercise again, I think I will attempt to generate some of my own graphics instead of using images from Google. 

Below are a few of the texture/typography combinations I created. It was quick and simple and started with a question: How can I make metallic fills for elements of my designs? I found several wonderful tutorials on how to go about painting metallic effects from scratch as well as the ability to bring textures into fonts (as seen below). I think this technique will prove incredibly effective in future work. 

I continue my Illustrator adventures. This was a practice design I created for some friends. It was an attempt for a softer concept and execution. After my recent work on logos, this was a lovely change of pace and concept. 

I spent the night playing with 2 dimensional shapes and coloring/lining them to make them have a texture that gives an illusion of three dimensions. I did something similar on my purple eagle which I finished at the beginning of the semester (shown below). The above are more simple projects, but Isill find them an interesting exercise in facets. 

I had the opportunity to test an LED panel with the 5DMkII, 50mm, and 100mm. We used a gold foil makeup to react off the light. The results were fascinating. The metallic surface accentuated how the light naturally wrapped the model's face.