Wonderland Design Update!

Well hello there! It’s been a little bit, hasn’t it?

I’ve been a little AWOL from the blog lately, and part of that is just the craziness of life, but the other part is a lot of fun design side projects I’ve been working on! I’ve been having so much fun using my summer free time to play with words, images, and Photoshop in general, so I thought it would be fun to share some of the things I’ve been working hard on with you!

First of all, I have some super-duper fun and exciting news—one of my designs is going to be made into a patch for the Crybaby Club online store! The “UGH, so many feelings” design you see above scored second place in their patch design contest, and I can’t begin to express how happy this made me! Even seeing it as a finalist felt like such amazing validation for my ever-growing love of design, and I can barely wait until I get those patches in person. I’ll be sure to let you know when they are for sale, so you can express your overwhelming feelings too! And by the way, The Crybaby Club blog and Instagram is one to follow if you have a lot of feelings but are still a badass (aka you are human).

Next up, you may have noticed that I added a little flair to this blog’s layout with a new header, bio picture border, social media icons, and quick content links. All the elements have either a doodle or watercolor theme, which takes my original blog design plan and, in my humble opinion, elevates it a little bit. I also love how much using content tags and those new labels in the sidebar cleans up my blog’s appearance. These little additions were so much simpler than my huge html layout edit earlier this year, but arguably make a much bigger difference in your first impression of my blog! From here, site design wise, I plan to update all my bio photos with some that are better branded to Wonderland, so stay tuned for a silly photoshoot behind-the-scenes!

Another project that is still in the works but already looking great is a set of phone cases designed by me through Casetify! I was contacted by a partnerships rep about joining their “Artist’s Collection” and have been having a blast getting creative with designs I sure hope people will love to proudly display on their phones. As soon as I stop agonizing over the details, I will upload even more of these custom designs to their website to my own phone case “store,” from which I earn a small incentive for every case purchased. The program is open for other designers too, so if you are interested, check out their website and shoot them an email! You can hop on over to my Casetify collection right now, but I have a few more designs to add before it gets its own post!

Brandon's YouTube Channel // Rey's YouTube Channel

In addition to all this, I’ve designed a couple of logos for friends lately, which is an entirely new and exciting design challenge for me. I obviously have a lot of creative area to explore regarding logo designs, but it’s an interesting exercise to combine another person’s style and brand aesthetic with their brand name! In addition, since both these logos were designed for YouTube channels, this gave me a chance to play around with Premiere Elements a little bit to animate the logos! (Of course, now I’m dying to get an Adobe Cloud subscription so that I may uncover the world of Adobe After Effects, but time will tell what silly things I choose to spend my money on!) Speaking of, I’ve been considering creating a YouTube channel for myself and my blog—any thoughts or recommendations on videos you might like to see?

Last, but definitely not least, as a part of Aggie Fish Camp, I’ve turned into my camp’s token Photoshop gal! This “design” role involves generating designs that are projected onto bed sheets then painted as banners to decorate our camp room. The banner designs I created and included here are definitely a composite of various artists’ work, mostly thanks to the magic wand tool, but I consider this to be an exercise in composition and color more than anything. (These are totally non-commercial creations, or otherwise I would never dare use the work of another artist in my designs!) Working on these banner designs has also been a great tool for me to learn the ropes of Photoshop, as I work with layers, distortions, and fonts to imitate iconic logos and images with our own camp name.

Phew! When I write it all out, I have been having quite a time with creating this summer! Design is primarily a hobby at this point, but if you happen to love the type of things I am making, leave me a comment or send me an email and maybe I can look at making something for your website, YouTube channel, or brand! ! I am quickly falling more and more in love with creating of this type, and can’t wait to see the possibilities this hobby of mine presents.

Do you have a creative hobby that you are currently passionate about? I’d love to see what you are making!

Stay lovely,