9 days in the life of
All I can say is, this summer has been non-stop. Bring it ON.
Like these? More to be found on my wonderful, if one dimensional, Flickr page.
1 comment August 3rd, 2010
Posts with the tag 'corin'
who wants to go swimming?!?!
ME!!!!!!!!!!!!
My new summer romance, the Sol Goldman Pool in Red Hook.
3 comments July 17th, 2010
homework #8
I’ve had lots of things I’ve been wanting to blog but very little time lately. So busy! Who knows, maybe I’ll have time when I’m in Vegas later this week….yeah, right. I guess I’ll just have to keep growing the list and wait until next week!
In the meantime, here is this weeks homework.
We had to redesign a 9×4 flier for a cheesy NYC tourist attraction. We chose blindly from a batch the teacher had and I chose the NY Skyride, which is apparently a virtual aerial tour of NYC that is on the second floor of the Empire State Building. Who knew?
The flier was terrible and cheesy and looks like I could have made it in MS Paint back in the 12th grade. I redid this one showing just the front of the flier and what the users of the Ny Skyride would have in store for them.
Here is the link to the NY Skyride website — you can kind of see what I am talking about!
April 19th, 2010
kokkina avga (red eggs to you!)
This Sunday is Greek Easter (and happens to be regular Easter, too) and we are hosting a slightly smaller version of our yearly Greek Easter (Greekster?) dinner party. As usual, I am stoked to get out the Badavas/Lianides family recipes and have a great reason to head over to the Greek neighborhood of Astoria to do some shopping!
This year may prove to be the year that I actually get the traditional Greek Easter Red Eggs right! The past few years have been plagued with light pink, hot pink (both from red dye packets), and reddish brown (red onion skins) eggs — but never truly the reds that my YiaYia always managed to pull off with little difficulty. I realized too late into the game last year that the homemade egg dye was supposed to be made with YELLOW onion skins, not RED, and ended up pretty close to the mark, but with a slightly brownish tint. This year I am quite determined to get the perfect red eggs, and have the giant bag of yellow onions at the ready!
And then of course, once you have the red eggs, you have the best part of Greek Easter, the part that all of our guests eagerly await, competition singing through their veins — the Greek Easter Egg Battle!! WHO’S EGG WILL REIGN SUPREME??
Wish me luck!
Here’s a good recipe if you feel like giving it a whirl.
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3 comments March 31st, 2010
homework #6
Assignment: Choose a movie from a page of untitled descriptions, decide on a title and a subtitle/tag line and then design a 11×17 movie poster to get the feel of the film without using actors or stills.
I chose a description of a movie about competitive hairdressing which was described as a “hokey comedy” about people taking themselves too seriously in regards to something the rest of us find ridiculous. I decided to name the movie ‘DO OR DIE.
March 22nd, 2010
homework #5
Investigation of form. Design a Safety Instructions insert that is more interesting than the single-space type sheet inserted into every home appliance purchased in New York State. The 3D of this is actually a cut-out on lightweight card stock.
1 comment March 15th, 2010
past present
There is an amazing Flickr group out there called Looking Into the Past that contains hundreds of photos like these, in various forms, comparing a present photo of a location with a past photo of the exact same spot. I am a total sucker for these types of pictures, as living in NYC has made me realize that I am a super nostalgic person.
I love seeing the history of places, and love it even more when the integrity of things are kept roughly intact, with modern changes applied, sort of like the tenement buildings in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Walking the streets there you can feel the history of the immigrants of New York, and that is worth more than any new blue-glass crappy condo with $1 million units they can ever build.
(found via sub-studio design blog)
1 comment March 3rd, 2010
chevre-ish
This weekend I made cheese for the first time ever. I like it. It was the easy goat cheese recipe that I found on Serious Eats, and we ended up with a little ball of goat cheese ricotta. There was only one dire moment, and it was when I realized that maybe I should have cut down the cheese cloth to a more manageable size, rather than leaving it in the 2 yard form it came in, “just in case.” Talk about unwieldy! However, it was pretty delicious, and I’m eager to try again and see if I can make it even better. Actually, I’m eager to try again and make a different cheese–however cool it is to make a quick and dirty ricotta cheese, ricotta is just inherently sort of bland to me. I prefer a snappier flavor to a creamier one. I should probably try this one a couple more times to get the hang of it, and try using a rennet, before I move on to bigger and better things. I’m SO impatient.
3 comments February 23rd, 2010
homework #3
The assignment: Take a CD that you think is badly designed and design new cover art for it. This art should be able to evoke the feeling that one gets when listening to the record or a song. Bring in the song to class to play along with your design.
Soooo, I had a hard time finding a badly designed album cover that I could actually come up with a design for. I decided to go with The Lonesome Crowded West by Modest Mouse because even though I personally find the original art iconic (since it was one of my favorite albums ever), it’s still pretty basic and there was room for more interpretation. I am going to use Trailer Trash as my song for the redesign. I think it evokes what I need it to.
Here’s the original:
2 comments February 22nd, 2010
homework #2
The assignment: Come up with ideas for 3 book covers, each focusing on different copy as the priority: the title, the subtitle and the authors (Magic with Cards, 113 Easy to Perform Miracles with an Ordinary Deck, Garcia and Schindler).
The biggest problem I am having is not necessarily coming up with the ideas (rudimentary as they are), but is graphically representing them the way I see them in my mind. Since this class is primarily about ideas and not about layout, I guess basic layout works, but I really wish I could make what I imagine. I need to spend some serious hours with the Abobe Creative Suite this week…
February 15th, 2010
busy beeeeeeeeeeee
Tonight is my second class of the Basic Graphic Design Class that I am taking at SVA (School of Visual Arts). This class is pretty awesome because it specifically deals with issues I’ve had forever–mainly, how to come up with new, interesting and good ideas to solve graphic design problems. OK, so I haven’t always had specific graphic design problems to solve, but I feel like I easily fall into visual idea ruts, and this class is designed to help you break through those.
I’ve decided that I will post my completed homework assignment up here before class every Monday to help keep me accountable, and to keep me from doing it half-way. No judgments, please–I am no pro with the Abobe Creative Suite–YET!
The assignment: design 3 bank brochure front covers using some of the basic ideas introduced in the first class
I primarily used symbols, unity and primary colors to represent the basic building blocks these loans are.
The second thing that is keeping me so busy is the start of an online course that I registered for:
This course is made for business owners and entrepreneurs to help to get them organized and grow their businesses online. I am super excited about it, and the class group already seems like an amazing, inspiring bunch. The course is run by Jaime Derringer, of Design Milk fame, and Erin Loechner of Design for Mankind, who also together run Bakery. These ladies are impressive, and I hope to learn tons over the next 6 weeks!
2 comments February 1st, 2010
dreamlining
Fine, I’ll admit it. I am reading The 4-Hour Workweek. I like the idea of automating income and taking mini-retirements throughout my life, what can I say? Doesn’t sound too sucky at all.
One of main things the book teaches you (well, so far–just started reading it yesterday) is to think big–outlandishly, even–in terms of your goals and the things you want to experience in life. Like how there is less competition for the big stuff, because people assume they can’t do it/have it, and lower their expectations to the same level as everyone else–leaving fewer to battle it out at the high end. Anyhow, it suggests you make a 6 month timeline and include as many far reaching experiential goals you can, then narrow it down to about 4, then actually price out those 4, and then write down the 1st steps to accomplishing each one of those 4, and do it TODAY.
I got to brain-storming and I realized that I have been talking about going to Greece for the past, oh, 10 years and still haven’t managed to do it. I have been LOTS of other places in the world, but have avoided this one for some particular reason. I can’t tell if my expectations are too high for it, or I have some weird anxiety surrounding my heritage background, and my complete lack of speaking the language at all, or SOMETHING. Who knows? All I know is that I want this to happen, and I want it to happen soon. Now I just need to figure out how.
What would you do if you felt you had no restrictions on your life? Where would you go?
4 comments January 28th, 2010
sorry, tokyo garden
We have done the un-doable–made homemade Seattle-style chicken teriyaki that is JUST AS GOOD as our beloved Tokyo Garden in the U District, from 3,000 miles away. We got insanely lucky that the recipe the NY Times just happened to include in it’s article about the beloved Teriyaki joints of Seattle is from our go-to, absolute favorite spot. Which is pretty crazy, considering there are approximately 3,000 teriyaki joints in the Metro Seattle area. So happy.
This was a 2 day process, but every hour of waiting was well worth it. Chicken thighs from Fairway, ginger and garlic from the veg stand around the corner, and the ever-present Kikkoman soy sauce from the fridge = pure teriyaki bliss.
With this fail-safe recipe in our hands, we can now put our money where our teriyaki is and move to Mexico and open a teriyaki joint to cater to all those gringos from the PacNW who get tired of tacos down in Sayulita.
2 comments January 12th, 2010
breakfast pizzzzzzzaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
original photo by benjamin l haas
I am pretty excited for our 2nd annual Breakfast Pizza brunch tomorrow. We are prepping today, and feasting tomorrow.
Who wants in?
(ben takes other good pics, too)
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January 8th, 2010
