A day full of creating…

…but at work not at home, so no project tonight. Instead, how about I tell you about work?

I work for a company in the solar industry as Marketing Director. We are a startup, so we try to keep operations lean, which means I have to wear a lot of hats. Strategist, cranky process person, graphic designer, IT desk, office manager, executive assistant, to name a few.

Most of today I was graphic designer Katy…redesigning a product label and designing a new background for our trade show display. I’m hoping to get a quick turnaround on the new background for a show next week that we just added to our schedule. So I was at work until almost 8pm working on the graphics.

It is times like this that I’m so thankful for discovering this hobby of paper crafting. Most of the time it is my stress reliever, but it also has helped me get a better grasp for layout and design. What I was doing today isn’t too different from scrapbooking actually.

Here is the sketch I made of the banner background over the weekend on Chalk by 37 Signals, a great website for jotting down thoughts if you have an iPad

A title at the top and then alternating boxes of text and photos below. Once I laid it out in Illustrator, I wasn’t so sure about the alternating boxes; instead I’ve rearranged them to be a row of pictures under the title, then alternating boxes below that.

The funny thing about designing the background for a trade show booth is that I need to consider the different ways my salespeople may set it up. Lots of questions to ask. What are my most important messages? What areas could be covered up? Will they look stupid covered up? Should I add a QR code to it, and if so where? The top? Middle? I’ll be sure to share what I come up with tomorrow.

Thanks for listening to the work jabber!