Another Custom Family Calendar

Another very very very custom calendar - see this post for the 2010 version.  Again designed with full bleed tabloid-sized sheets and different layouts for every page.  Again printed and distributed to all adult members of the family for less than what it would have cost to make a template-based calendar of a smaller size.

(There are more than twelve pages in the montage because several February variations were considered, including one featuring a picture of a trilobite I found over the summer near Delta, Utah.)

Clean and Simple Calendars (2011)

Annual update.  As detailed in the post for the 2010 set, I started making these when I couldn't find anything suitable online (most blank calendars on the web are formatted one month to a page, and nothing that I could find with a full year on a page was as simple and straightforward as what I wanted).

As always, federal holidays and paydays are shown, useful for planning and budgeting, especially if you're paid every other week on Thursdays.

Web Graphics for Novatek, Inc.

I started working for Novatek in June of 2010 doing engineering research and analysis.  In September I was internally recruited/promoted into the Information Systems department.  One of my first assignments involved prepping for a soon-to-launch website redesign.  The majority of the effort was focused on updating dozens of placeholder images, but there was also a fair deal of copy work (production and editing), and even some tweaking of the site design.

All of the material is available on the site itself, so clicking on the image set below will take you directly to the Novatek domain.  Note that I did not take the pictures or do the rendering or the modeling – what I did was sort through the available images, pick the best ones, improve them as needed, and then give all the different labs and projects a consistent look.  Note also that Novatek owns the copyright for these images.

Pancuts (old pans + water jet cutter)

 In progress - will be updated when finished. 

I made my first set of pancuts while still in college.  The project started with a sketch and a cabinet full of very beat-up frying pans.  They were useless for cooking, which was why I had the thought of using them as blank canvases.

After scanning and vectorizing my sketch, I was able to use the school's water jet cutter to slice the design into the pans.  The final product turned out great, and for a few years I didn't pursue the idea further. (These first pancuts are now in storage, but a rendering of the design is here.)

In 2009, I had another thought: what about cutting a pan to make it look like a clock face?  This idea expanded out to the twenty designs shown to the right, with many more on the drawing board.

The bad news is that I'm not sure how much longer this will be an in-progress project.  I've made a few visits to second-hand stores and stocked up on old pans, but getting a new full-time job has put a damper on side projects.  Additionally, finding a local job shop with the right equipment and an interest in doing art parts has been surprisingly hard.

I'm planning to sell these once they are made, so I'm very interested in knowing if anyone out there would consider buying something like this.  Please let me know if you want to reserve a copy of one of the designs shown and/or would like to request some other design and/or have any other thoughts on the subject.  You can either write direct or use the contact form found here.  

Simple Heritage Chart

 In progress. 

A quick layout showing four generations for each half of a recently married couple.  A little too simple or basic to stand alone, but I'm not sure what I'll do to complete it.  Maybe add ancestor pictures, maybe add a map, maybe add another generation... Note that the names are not blurred on the original.

Family Reunion Invitation

An invitation printed two-to-a-page for a biennial reunion, with a "historic photo" of the root family at the top.  In the original photo, the family was arranged in more of a tall pyramid shape, so it took some masking and cloning work to get the result shown.

Also including a screen capture from within the program used to make the invite (Fireworks CS4), to give an idea of the number of elements used to create the finished product.

  

Vacation Picture Collages

San Diego!  I didn't take all the photos, but did do all the mixing and matching into the groupings shown (and just to be clear, all the photos did come from our one-week trip to California).  There are a few more collages after the break; all told about half of the sets made for the post-trip family show and tell.

  

Monthly Newsletter

This is an ongoing volunteer effort that I produce for the ward (the congregation) where I attend church.  Each issue contains:

• A short message from the leadership of the ward.
• Photos and spotlights for at least seven youth and adults.
• Updates from the dozen or so locals that are serving as missionaries around the world.

I do not do all the writing or photography, but I do take care of all the coordination and bring all the elements together to produce a finished product (this includes making adjustments to the photos and doing all the editing, layout, and formatting).  We print 150 copies of each issue and one copy is distributed to each household in the ward.

Family Calendar, etc.

Tabloid-sized print with all birthday information on one side and a montage of all family members on the other.  I also produced a single-sheet summary of all family contact info as part of the project.

This was commissioned for a great-grandmother with 17 biological and adopted children and nearly three dozen grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  Copies were sent to all the adult children in the family.

Completing the project required extensive collaboration in order to collect and organize four generations worth of names, dates, and photos.

This Site

After deciding that an online portfolio was a must,  I sketched out my ideal all-singing all-dancing solution, but realized that it was beyond my programming capacity and well beyond my budget.  I also researched the ready-made template options without finding any that fit my needs.

So I've done the next best thing by customizing an existing template.   Some of the adaptations in place or planned:

• Many modifications to the standard layout and CSS.
• Hosting at a custom domain.
• Live header links allowing for sorting by topic.
• Google Docs integration (here).
• Google Analytics integration.
• Customized version of Lightbox integration (planned).
• In-blog storefront with Google Checkout (planned).

First, second, and third versions of the header graphic (colors and copyright date updated each January).

Before and After Photographs

Photos I took of a relative and the modifications I made to them. The pictures were taken between October of 2009 and March of 2010 with a Nikon D40, and I used Fireworks CS4 to make the changes. More details on each image.

      

Family Cards

Forty laminated credit card-sized pictures with initials and color-coordinated backgrounds (more on the color scheme below).

These were made to help keep track of who's who on both sides of the family, but they have been used in many other ways, too.  The letters are good for learning the alphabet, the family groupings allow games of Go Fish, and there are many different ways to rearrange by type (to see which side of the family has more members, to see if there are more boys than girls overall, to see how many people wear glasses, etc.).

Colors indicate relationships (all cousins have a blue background, for example), and the letters are placed to show maternal or paternal relationship (letters for people on the father's side are on the left, those for the mother's side on the right, as below).

Family Contact Info Sheet

A single-sheet summary of the addresses, phone numbers, and birthdays of 18 people in six households.  The overall dimensions are just right for printing on 8 by 10 photo paper, making it easy to get a high-quality hard copy from the digital file.

Note that the information shown has been scrambled and fictionalized (even images are not of the people that appear in the original).

Cemetery Guidebook

A 52-page guide to the burial places of four generations of client's ancestry. Project included researching burial locations, on-site photography, creating a comprehensive organizational system, and of course the layout and formatting of all materials.

Significant features:

• Full-bleed maps of the region in which each cemetery is located (with addresses, hours, and contact information for regional resources such as museums and family history centers).
• Full-bleed aerials of each cemetery (with GPS coordinates and burial sites markers).
• Ground-level photographs of each gravesite, accompanied by map and portrait insets.
• Life outlines for each ancestor.