website is up!

it still needs a lot of work, but you can see the first iteration for archetype design at http://atypedesign.com

i still have to get some good content up there and make some adjustments to color etc. but let me know what you think.

all hallow's eve

here is my halloween menu, as some of you may have seen from my twitter post. the zombie theme never fails. it's hard to capture in the digital version, but the document was folded in half, with the white block being a cutout. so the first page says "all hallow's eve," opening to the course list and the zombie picture. the back page lists thank yous.

hi res

hi res

i'm really pleased with the way these turned out. i'm grateful to be able to do work for entre and hope to continue producing menus in the future.

the more perceptive of you will note that i've finally settled on a name for my freelance work: archetype design (in reference to my namesake's contribution to psychology). what do you think?

halloween brainstorming

ok, so here are a couple of side projects i did while working on my menu ideas. one is my own strange, satirical view of things that scare me. it's a bit over the top...but what's not terrifying about a giant tv in a church?

hi-res

the other is an idea i had for the menu, but didn't think the zombies would work as well as some of my other ideas. it's a total rip off from the new dawn of the dead. but the image works so well, i couldn't resist.

hi-res

design work

at this point, this blog is beginning to feel anemic. i'm finally starting to debate whether to even bother with it anymore. but in the meantime, i'll post some work i've been doing for a friend's restaurant. i tried to simulate the paper we printed on. so it looks a little different than the original design, but at least you get an idea against a color background.

9.12.09

the venue was rustic italian, served in a cellar (circa early 19th century).

hi-res

10.3.09

this menu was asian-inspired (literally, by the entire continent!). we found this really cool salmon colored paper, with a nice wood texture. it looked really cool when the lines of the "grain" showed through the printer toner. unfortunately, some had trouble reading it. what looks interesting isn't always practical.

hi-res

i'm currently racking my brain for the nucleus of horror for their halloween menu. i've got a few ideas thrown together, but i'd love to hear any of your suggestions. it's a competition between myself and a printing company who actually knows what they're doing, so i don't have much hope. regardless, i'm pretty excited to compete.

drama

i was looking through old emails the other day and came across and something i'd written to myself over three years ago. i had just started my first job after college. now, it seems dramatic , miserable and verbose. but because i just found out i'll continue to work at that same job for the foreseeable future, it seems fitting to put it up here. i cringed re-reading it at times--fill free to ridicule me, but in some strange way, i'm also proud of myself for actually writing it when i did. my nature is to keep things bottled up and outwardly complain as little as possible. which is obviously not the healthiest way to live life. maybe i should be writing my thoughts more often as a way of processing my life. don't worry, this blog is not about to turn into a cyber-emotion vomit session.

here it is in all it's unedited glory.

It's the sitting that eventually wears me down, day by day. Sitting in the same place all day long, yet somehow still unable to make my body stand and walk around the office. Surely at the very least I could convince myself I needed to go to the bathroom.

No.

I sit. By the slight adjustment of my left foot, I can swing the swivel chair in quick, short motions—right to left. I instinctively twist my right index finger until it pops. This is perhaps the 22 ^nd time I have performed this procedure or ritual today.

Like I said, it's the sitting that eventually makes me feel numb. My body feels as if it were asleep but its not. Unfortunately, the same can be said of my brain. Though it's more asleep than any other portion of me now. My fingers tap keys with relative precision. I only use the delete key sparingly, which usually isn't a good thing. Editing is a good thing. But that's how I got here in the first place. Editing.

Trying to type up my thoughts to a best friend, I found myself editing every word I said. For every argument I made, the counter-argument came to my mind. It was not that these 'counter-arguments' were exceptional. My primary ones were probably no better. It was that they were there. There is nothing quite so staggering as having two converse thoughts in your mind. It forces you to tiredness.

Tiredness. The phrase that seems to always be with me, making me drag my own feet below me. Why is that? i don't stay up well into the night. I walk somewhat regularly. I don't smoke that much. Barely any at all. Yet I feel like I'm missing out on something. That, by being so tired, I have succumbed to some external force applying unrelenting pressure. I can't understand it other than by association. At this moment, I associate this feeling with my current occupation.

Unfortunately, they haven't come up with a word for what I do. 'Office lackey,' is my personal term for it. I suppose like any job, it has its moments. I've found that I simply enjoy completing a task and doing it well, if I can. This is what scares me.

If I enjoy the completion of a task, regardless of the task itself, why the sluggish feeling?

I know it's not necessarily this job that continues to grind me down--though I have hoped for so long that is was this job. It is just having a job. That freedom ripped from me and hidden forever. The monotony of a daily routine so endlessly unchanging, clinked into place. Its very presence pressing out with unrelenting vigor the joys of my previous life into an afterthought. Work must now become my life.

But wait. This is normal. Everyone in the middle to upper echelon experiences this transformation, both abrupt and total, right? Had we not known that moment (most will call this higher education) free of major responsibility and time constraint, we should, in fact, be enjoying our employment all the more. Had we not known a time of plenty, the want would not seem so wanton.

I suppose.

But how much of my current job is to do with me and how much is to do with it?

This is the moment the confusion and sometimes discouragement begins to set in. What if its my own laziness? What if its the fact that I'm not being motivated? And then the inevitable question that is yet further down the path of confusion, what if its both?

If my last question, prying and unrelenting is correct, then simply getting a different line of work would have varying degrees of success--in the light of finding joy in my employment.

where HAVE i been?

i'll just skip over any apology to my readers. i know i've talked to the two of you in the months intervening my posts anyway. at this point, this blog seems to be really for myself and i can't even keep it up with that in mind. 

a couple months ago, i got a call from my boss. given to pessimism, at least internally, i'd imagined a call like this before. it was still a big shock. "we're going to have to move you to part time." to be honest, it was not as bad as i feared. but i was not getting a raise, either. so i began again my uncertain search for a new job, either part or full time. 

i had about a month from that phone call until my pay went to part time. i don't remember exactly how many applications i submitted. i don't want to exaggerate and claim it was in the hundreds, but 50 is safe number. the month began to wind down and i had no real leads. i'm not naturally inclined towards stress, but that last week, i felt like some giant thing was grinding mercilessly towards me and would certainly crush me. that's bit melodramatic, but it felt that way. 

providentially, i received two calls back later that week. one landed me a job interviewing teenagers for a study with a university here in town. it was supposed to last until this summer. it ended this week instead. while i'm grateful for the work, it got old. really fast. for the past month i was cruising malls, creepily asking teenagers for their opinion. recruiting anyone for a survey can be draining work. getting turned down by pre-teens was excruciating at times.

but, like i said, it was work. now, i'm back to the drawing board. i've got a couple more leads that will hopefully materialize into some manual labor soon. after a few years of white collar boredom, it'll be nice to get paid for using my hands again. 

i'm also hoping to branch out in my regular work. though only a hobby, i have always enjoyed graphic design (new logo, above). i'm going to begin tutorial in adobe's latest creative suite sometime next month. i hope i can develop this an additional skill. depending on my success, i may even go back to school. but i'm not willing to think about that too much right now. so if you're in need of a little design work, let me know. i'm completely fine learning on the job.

so there's my explanation for the past few months. look for another post sometime around july.

worthless foray into second rate photo editing

i've been playing around with images of my family members (and myself) on picnik. if you don't have a design degree/don't want spend 85 hours learning photoshop, it's a great, cheap way to edit photos, all from the comfort of your web browser.

i'm thinking of making a t-shirt of the image of my grandfather: paterfamilias. my fear is that he will see it and say, "what the hell kind of drugs has that fool been taking." that's a probably more of an excuse than a fear.

charred paper, fractured plaster

for the past week, i've been forging my resume into a titanic juggernaut that thwart the most stubborn receptionist. or, for an entire week, i've been staring at the past three years of my employed life boiled down to 3 bullet points, fighting back tears and feelings of inadequacy.

why is i'm judged by merits my resume writing capabilities over what i have or haven't done? it just seems to encouraged embellishment. to be honest, this works to my advantage. i haven't actually been working that long. it still drives me crazy.

to spice things up, we decided to hang pictures, shelves, and maps in our apartment this week. mostly, this went according to plan. we generally bickered about the placement of items, moved them around, moved them back, and settled for something neither of us really loved. hanging on plaster is painful as well, but we figured out where we needed to drill pilot holes and where we did not and moved on.

the one piece we didn't argue too much about was our cheap, target "wine rack and glass holder." we both thought the most natural place was next to the refrigerator in the kitchen. dutifully, i pulled out the appropriate tools, measured, and marked the holes and began to drill.

about halfway toward the required anchor depth, i hit and impenetrable barrier. like any man, i assumed i just didn't have to right drill bit, accepted the excuse to go to home depot, and bought a masonry bit--fire wall be damned!

but this trick also failed. after several hours of sweat, tears, degenerate speech and foul oaths i managed to get the thing on the wall--crooked. which is where it sits now.

work at home

out of pity or boredom, a few of you have asked me what it's like working at home. today i decided to do a little documentation. by documentation, i mean that i took a few random pictures of myself and my desk.

working at home has pros and cons. you don't have to shower every morning, but then you stink most of the time. you get to see your wife most of the day, but that reminds her how annoying you are. you don't have to commute, but you find yourself staring at the neighbor's window wondering why they leave the their blinds closed all day long. you start going over scenarios in your mind: meth lab, video game addict, closet goose-stepper. then you realize that you've been staring at their window suspiciously for 45 minutes. you're the reason the blinds are drawn. so, with that problem settled you can go back to doing whatever it is you want to do--i mean, err...work.

then there is the co-worker arrangement. i do miss being in the office because i miss out out the everyday interactions with my co-workers. the squirrel who habitually hangs out on the roof just outside out stairwell has helped me knock around a few new ideas, but squirrels are so unreliable. there one day, gone the next. so that remains a pretty large negative.



the best part about working at home is that you get to one-up your friends about how gas-efficient and 'green' you are. i'm still trying to iron out the exact words, but i'm thinking my line to drop at parties will be something like this.

when it came to my occupation, i took a hard look at the world. gas prices, global politics, and climate change being what they are, i truly believe i have a moral imperative to work from home. and now that i've made the switch, i just sleep better at night. to be honest, i don't know how you could otherwise.

i've been looking for a good angle in making new friendships for a long time. i think this should do the trick.