Made Grate Design

Portfolio review event

allison — Wed, 16 May 2012 06:52:15 +0000

I had a really fun and inspiring time at the Behance Portfolio Review event hosted by Autobahn last night in Utrecht. Fantastic lectures from Jeroen Disch from Lava, Martin Pyper from Me Studio, and several other cool speakers. My favorite learnings included “enthusiasm is a virus”, “don’t ever wear a suit”, “your work from your first two years is what people will judge you on” and “portfolios should be 99% image, 1% text”. At least I’m pretty sure that’s what they were saying…. Most of it was in Dutch and I was trying to keep up with my Google Translate app. Now to redo my portfolio and website.

Dik Bleek

allison — Mon, 14 May 2012 19:49:05 +0000

Ahahaha! Look what passes for household bleach in The Netherlands! You crazy kids!

Juice cleanse!

allison — Sun, 13 May 2012 16:58:10 +0000

For reasons that now seem very small and far away, I have decided to do a four day juice cleanse, supported by most excellent family members in the US who are doing it with me.

Well. It’s a lot harder than I imagined to eat nothing but fruit and veggie juice. Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to seeing the difference in my waistline. Here’s the before picture:

Just kidding. That’s a cool statue from “The Weighty Body”, an exhibition on body image on at Museum Boerhaave in Leiden right now. It was great fun seeing representations of grossly skinny and obese people throughout history – right before I started this juice fasting mission.

Right now all I want is a big fat cheeseburger. Only one more day of juice to go, thank heaven.

Rood fruit

allison — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:21:55 +0000

I don’t know… I liked it.

In Fashion event program

allison — Sun, 06 May 2012 19:00:43 +0000

A recently created event program (during internship with Autobahn) for a one-day fashion event in Utrecht, The Netherlands. The diamond-shaped event logo on the front (created by Rob and Maarten, Autobahn co-founders) lent itself really well to this fun “squash fold”. It was easy to open and close and also had the nice benefit of being able to condense a lot of information into a small pocket-sized square. Ahh, a well-designed brochure is a thing of beauty.

Also the word “programma” is set in ITC American Typewriter – italic. Who knew that nasty common typewriter font has such a beautiful italic version? The things you pick up in Holland!

More marketing-speak

allison — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 02:23:26 +0000

Even though the wording on THIS marketing speak is pretty similar… It’s from a J. Peterman catalog, so it knows it sounds ridiculous, thereby making itself awesome. United, take notes.

The marketing team had a free hand on this one

allison — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 16:26:52 +0000

I appreciated this ridiculous in-flight napkin from United. Although printing the nauseating marketing-speak on the airsickness bags might be slightly more appropriate.

The difference between how Dutch and American people go to the airport

allison — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 21:22:15 +0000

Yes I took this picture while riding a bike, like a boss.

Fancy!

allison — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 20:41:50 +0000

Yes. Vanity Fair sells pajamas in a color called ‘Dita Von Teal’. Sounds to me like an aspiring author is trying to get fired from his or her copywriting day job.

Lille is tres bien

allison — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 08:08:13 +0000

Whoa! A museum in an old swimming pool! The Piscine art museum in Roubaix was so beautiful- one of the nicest museums I’ve ever seen. Pictures don’t do it justice at all.

Lille is smashing! Beautiful restaurants and shops are everywhere. The old city center is gorgeous… Even for Europe!!

On Friday we saw Feist and M. Ward perform at Place Sebastopol. We had the best seats in the house. An incredible show! I don’t see how a city could get much better than Lille!