A hectic few weeks

Hello!
I've been very absent from my blog for the last month because I've been super super busy travelling up and down the country between Carlisle and London, Carlisle and Bristol, and Carlisle and Leeds (plus lots of other journeys in between) for lots of exciting things which I'll go into properly in the rest of today's posts. There was also the small matter of my final hand in at university ever. EVER. As scary as that sounds it is an amazing feeling and after 4 years I finally don't have a tight ball of stress in my chest anymore (okay I lied, it's still there but it's definitely a lot smaller) I now finally have time to read!

On one of my many many many train journeys over the last few weeks I decided to tweak my icon slightly to make my hair look a little more realistic and less flat. The version I use as my Twitter icon can be seen at the top of this post, however for some reason Blogger has decided to give me an extreme tan which I don't have until I upload it which I find hilarious as I'm very pasty in real life and proud of it.

So from me and my fake tanned icon, we hope you enjoy this little catch up of what I've been doing for the last month or so which does actually include some work. Only some though.
I've been a very busy lady.
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You've got to sell yourself!

Tart card for a graphic designer.

I can honestly say I've never laughed so much whilst making a piece of work. I'm not sure what that says about me, and if it's good or not, but either way I had so much fun with it

"Create a business card for yourself as a graphic designer. Oh yes, you must also only use the visual language and vernacular of a tart card. Don’t forget to give yourself a juicy ‘stage name’!

Consider leaving your creation in strategic phone boxes around Shoreditch.."

 This was one of the optional Summer briefs from last year, which is going in my portfolio for Semester 2. It was a very quick project, maybe half a day or so (there was a LOT of puns and innuendos to think up and write down).  

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Let's talk business (cards)

(Apologies for the poor quality photos, they're from my Instagram account)

This week myself and Edwin attended a "networking event" at the uni, where we were able to talk to a range of people in the industry within Cumbria who could potentially open up a lot of opportunities for us. This would have been great if I wasn't so terrible at talking to people. I did speak to a few people though, and got possibly myself some work experience, so I can't have done too badly ey?

I'm getting off track here, but basically we needed business cards. I'd already made mine a few weeks ago, but never actually got round to having them printed. It wasn't ideal having to double-sided print at uni and cut out manually but I'd say they came out pretty good. For next time though, I'll be having them done professionally.

My design is an extension of my website and all of my personal branding, and feature 5 different faces to choose from – happy, happier, fangs, stressed and shocked. My favourite is the fangs, it seemed to prove popular on the night too! 

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Look how grubby my Macbook is

Now that I've brought attention to the fact my Macbook is covered in fingerprints etc because I spend too much time on it, let's forget it ever happened and move on. Please don't judge me.

I thought it would be nice to take some ~proper~ photos of derrianbradder.com as it displays on screen, accompanied as always by a brew.

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In with the new

Say hello to my brand spanking new website, shown to you through poor quality screenshots.
You can see it in action at derrianbradder.com – it still needs some work on phone display but works perfectly on desktop. I'm really pleased with it, it feels a lot more "me" (lame I know).

There's a lot more going on this time around, a lot more work went into it, and overall it's just better. There's colour changing rollovers, the blog opening up in a new tab, and tiny flags.

Dreamweaver knowledge originally taught and expanded upon by my trusty illustrator pal Edwin. You can see his work here : edwinburrow.com

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Out with the old

It's not you, it's me.
It was time to finally say goodbye to my first website and start again completely from scratch, with new branding and a ~fresh~ look. But that's not to say I didn't love my first website, it was very me at the time and fitted well with what I was doing.

Here it is in its entirety.
Home page and portfolio which uses a lightbox. 

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Face off

Sometimes I try to draw

These images were created using Illustrator to manipulate fineliner drawings I had done several months beforehand. I'm still pretty pleased with the result, drawing is definitely something I need to get into doing more of. My worst nightmare is becoming a slave to my Macbook.

I love brooches (trinkets, duh!), and digging through my Nana's collection I found this beauty. You can't beat a good Cameo, hopefully I'll have an extensive collection one day.  

And that's just a lolly.