Tuesday, March 16, 2010

New Industrial Design Blog: "I.D.Mommy!"



I'd like to introduce my latest blog project, "I.D.Mommy.com!" Here I will write about how and where industrial design meets motherhood. Being a work-from-home industrial designer with 2 boys, I find that the two constantly intersect. You can expect to see honest product reviews with my unique perspective as a user and a designer, as well as other items like fellow "MOMtrepreneurs," recipes, personal stories, DIY projects, and more. So, swing on by and check it out when you get a chance!

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Portfolio Additions: Powerpoint Design and Personal Projects

While I did just have a baby 6 weeks ago, I've been back to work designing for my clients since 4 weeks ago! Things are definitely still hopping here as usual at the GF Design studio. Being that it's the weekend though, I thought I would put a little bit of time into updating my website, adding a few more items to my portfolio.

One is a project that I worked on last year, designing a powerpoint sales presentation for Acrylic Design Associates. Having seen many, many bad Powerpoint presentations given to me by vendors while working for Best Buy, I was really excited to see a vendor who realized the importance of presenting good design to designers, and couldn't wait to get started on this one.

So many salespeople overlook the design of their actual presentations, not realizing that something as small as a strange font, pixelated web image, or misaligned graphics can distract a designer's attention enough to cause them to miss the entire presentation. I know I have spent many presentations as a viewer with the only thoughts going through my head being, "why on earth did they use that font?," "Why did they use such small text and so little contrast on a Powerpoint?", or "why can't they find a higher resolution image of their own logo?"


So, as you can imagine, I was thrilled to be able to help design a sales presentation that would be clean and clear, and solve all of the issues that I knew distracted me from others' poor presentations in the past. Utilizing graphics, buttons, colors and contrast, the new design was able to present a wealth of information without overwhelming the audience, and let them know where in the presentation they were at any moment.

Along with this project, I also have added a couple more to my online portfolio: a space wall mural, and the space/robot-themed bedroom that it was created for...another fun design project done within my own home! While these were not done for "paying" clients, of course, they are fun examples of projects that I literally live with every day!