On the redesign

For those of you that visit my blog (instead of RSSing my stuff away), you probably noticed the recent redesign. I'm trying to revamp the look of my blog, while kind of emphasizing that it is design-oriented. I'm still working out some kinks and trying to figure out what looks best. Bear with me, as I am doing this in my spare time, which is very limited nowadays

Back in the swing of things

Here's the Quartet from Amanda's wedding.
More photos are available from my Facebook page.

Life is slowly getting back to normal. It's been knocked out of whack for a while now because of staffing, life events (see above) and the holidays. We're hiring people at work. We'd be doing it faster, but corporations move a little slower than the people working for them.

For my first real-life job, it has sure been a roller coaster. I've gone through major employment shifts and multiple hiring procedures/candidates. I've seen someone be hired and fired. I've been given a ton of responsibility, and I have seen people really come to the rescue when the copy desk was struggling. We're still not at full staff, but we're getting there. I'm learning a lot from the experience.

And in the middle of all this chaos, I still get to do some pretty cool things. I designed the front page for President Barack Obama's State of the Union address, and it was the first page in a while that I was really proud of. I worked with the wire editor (who knows EVERYTHING) to come up with how we were going to piece together everything from the speech. Considering we did this all basically from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m., the finished product is kind of awesome. So awesome, in fact, that Newseum actually picked it up for its "Top Ten" front pages. I took a screen shot for evidence:

Mine is the bottom left thumbnail. In retrospect, I should have taken a better screen shot.

I have the PDF of the page saved on my computer at work, so I will add it to the blog when I'm there next. Even though the theme of that day's "Top Ten" was papers that used a specific quote from the speech as a headline, I feel honored that mine was picked! That means people actually looked at it, you know?

A lot of information -- pretty easy to follow.

New year, new me

Hello Internet folk! It has been a while hasn't it? Well, I have been fairly bogged down with work-related businesses. Sadly, they haven't been any cool projects or things I'd like to share here. Essentially, we've been down a designer for several months, as the person that was hired never really progressed from "beginner." Now, we're going to be down two designers for a while until we hire some new people. But this is not what I wanted to talk about.

I am leaving on a plane in about an hour to head back home to Missouri, where one of my best friends is getting married. I've been excited about this for a long time, but it never really hit me until last night how big of a step this is (if only on paper — they've practically been married for years). She's going to be a wife with a husband.

Sure, they're just titles, but I think this marriage also marks the beginning of a new chapter for a lot of the people involved. I know it means something to me. We're grown-ups now. Some of us have grown-up jobs, are in grown-up relationships and are becoming useful in the world. We aren't the rowdy high schoolers at Steak 'n' Shake at 3 in the morning or the clever college kids who throw "Prom" parties just to be able to dress up again. We are actual adults contributing to society.

What is going to be fun about this wedding is that it will be a mesh of all three beloved chapters of my, and Amanda's, lives coming together. If I'm getting nostalgic, I can't even imagine what it's got to be like for her right now. It's a good thing I am getting on a plane to see/help her with preparations right now!

It's all got me thinking though, where am I headed this year and beyond? What's in store for me in this new chapter of my life? The beauty of it all is that it's all an unknown. I like it that way.