My Resources

Since I’ve launched my new website, I’ve been wanting to share some of the resources and tools that I used during the creation & development stages of the site. Hope they come in handy for you!

Background Patterns from Subtlepatterns.com
This is a great site to view, download and use background patterns, of all shapes, textures and sizes. Can you figure out which ones I used? :)

Web Fonts from Typechart.com
They display all the fonts & sizes that look great on the web! Very useful!

@font-face from Fontsquirrel.com
This came in very handy! They package all the files up for you to make sure that the font you want is available in all browsers.

jQuery Slider from Codecanyon.com
Cheap and easy to use slider that I used on my homepage!

Social Icon Set from Lifetreecreative.com
I use these everywhere! They came in extremely handy, I love them!

Contact Form from Bellonline.co.uk
Free and easy to use contact form!

“favico” Photoshop Plugin
http://www.telegraphics.com.au/svn/icoformat/trunk/dist/README.html

Job Hunting?

Within the last 24 hours I’ve had so many people ask me about where to look for Graphic Design jobs. So here’s a couple that I have uncovered over the last year or so. The higher up on the list they are, the more helpful I find them to be!

Infopresse on Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/infopressejobs

Grenier aux Emplois on Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/Grenier.Emplois

Jobboom
http://www.jobboom.com/

Isarta (don’t forget to choose which category to search in!)
http://emplois.isarta.com/jobs/offers.shtml

Design Edge Canada
http://www.designedgecanada.com/

Monster
http://www.monster.ca/

Workopolis
http://www.workopolis.com

WowJobs
http://www.wowjobs.ca/

SimplyHired
http://www.simplyhired.ca/

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February 7, 2012 by in Useful Information
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“Summer Love” – Up close and personal

It’s about time I took photos of my project! I picked it up from school at the end of August since the school was only open 9-5 during the summer, and because I had a full-time job.. well, you know… Anyways, it’s here!

Just to re-explain the project a little bit, the objective of the project was to create an artist book in a non-codex format. At that time, we recently had a giant snow-storm so I decided to base my project on how much I love and miss the summer and beach. With this, I created a beach bag filled with items that we would bring to the beach with us: sunscreen, shorts, a bikini, sunglasses, sandals and a book (which all my classmates signed and wrote what they love about summer in it!).

For each item I came up with quotes that were somehow related to that item, for example, on one of the sandals it says “Running aimlessly on the grass frees my mind from reality,” while the other sandal says “The warmth of the sand beneath my feet makes me feel alive again.”

So here’s some more detailed photos of my project. If you’d like to find out more about it, you can check out my other post that I wrote a couple months back about it. Enjoy!

Summer Love - Whole Bag

Summer Love - Sandals

Summer Love - Shorts & Bikini

Summer Love - Shorts, Sunglasses & Sunscreen

Summer Love - Bag Tag

Summer Love - Book

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November 8, 2011 by in School Work

New Logo

Hey! I know what you’re thinking.. why haven’t I written, right? It’s literally been since school ended, and I feel like a part of me has disappeared and now is finally back. As some of you may know, I worked at Aldo as a Junior Web Designer over the entire summer, and now I’m back in school! I just finished most of my midterms and had some time to catch you up on what you’ve missed. Well, at least one thing.. My new logo!

All summer I’ve been wanting to redesign & renew my look. I mean, it’s only been about a year and a half since I’ve updated my portfolio. And I think I’m ready to move past ‘bdesigned’ and more into Beckii. I looked around and found that the colorful/rainbow styles of logos attracted my eye the most. So while researching possibilities of how I could put Beckii into a symbol of form, I kind of went back into my roots, and while cleaning out my room, I found a dream catcher that I made with my mom when I was really young (maybe 5 or 6 years old). I thought this would be the perfect way to describe myself, after all, I am a big dreamer.

So I started off by finding a photo of a dream catcher form that attracted me. Then I traced one piece of it and duplicated it. This where I wound up:

As you can see, it was very lopsided since it was handmade and clearly isn’t perfectly symmetrical. From here, I created a symmetrical shape and then made a couple different versions of dream catchers, each with the shape repeated at a different angle, thus created a more or less intricate design.

My favorite was the 40 degree angled dream catcher, so I decided to take it to the next step and add colors to each piece of it. Once it was filled, I played around with the background and separation options. My favorite is hands-down the top right option, and maybe the bottom left (with the black background) could also be used for specific places. A gray scale option was also created once I decided what version I would end up using.

Next, the typography. Oh my gosh, this part take my the longest… My knowledge in typography isn’t the greatest, but I’m working on it! So I went through my six thousand fonts on my computer and sampled many many different styles of fonts. First I wanted a script, but none of them did the dream catcher any justice. I got some good feedback from my friends and co-workers at Aldo, and one in particular who mentioned the typography I originally chose wasn’t industrial looking enough. So with that, I moved into the sans-serif category of type. I tried (what felt like) another 1 million fonts and finally chose Slate Std. This humanistic font is great on-screen, as well as print.

“Eschewing an ‘engineered’ look by forgoing any noticeable design gimmicks or devices, the Slate font is reminiscent of early American sans, like News Gothic. The medium weight has the feel of Akzidenz Grotesk, and the black functions much like the bold weights of Futura or Franklin.”
http://www.fonts.com/fontpackages/superfamilies/slate.htm

Once a font was chosen, I played around with the weights, the size/proportions and my tagline.

For a designer to design something for themselves and be happy with it for more than a couple weeks, is almost a miracle. It’s been 2 months since I’ve looked at the logo, and I have to admit, I’m still happy with the outcome!

Thanks for reading! Much more to come! Now, I’m going to take pictures of my beach project that I finally was able to pick up from school.

BTW – Soon (probably during Christmas break) I’ll be moving my portfolio to beckii.com, and revamping the look of my portfolio :) Maybe even make my own WordPress theme! We’ll see…

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October 30, 2011 by in Personal

Taking a closer look

When we had the reception for the exhibition, I managed to get the key to open up the case and fix the placement of my project! So here’s an updated photo of my book ‘Summer Love’. You can finally see a bit of each piece, which includes the sunglasses, suntan lotion, sandals, shorts, bikini, book, pen and of course the bag. You can also see some of the sea shells that I placed in there!

Once I get the book back and into my own hands, I’ll update this post with pictures of each piece of the book :)

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May 5, 2011 by in School Work

“Summer Love”

With hard work, came a project that I couldn’t have ever envisioned without inspiration. My thoughts of summer is what got me through our long and cold winter. With these thoughts, and the will to do something I’ve never done before, I was able to create “Summer Love”. Unfortunately I haven’t held my project in my hands since I handed it in about a month and a half ago, and because I was so drained out of energy after completing the project, I don’t have any official pictures of each piece to show you just yet – I’ll be taking some as soon as I get it back though!

This project was created for my DART 280 class, where we needed to create an “artist book” with any subject we wanted, but we also needed to stray away from the typical codex book. My initial idea was to create a BigMac, but once I heard that someone else was making one also, I immediately changed my topic. I didn’t know what topic to do until about a week before the final project was due, where I found my inspiration at Chapters, while looking through some journaling magazines. The bright colors, textures and materials really caught my eye. This is when I got the idea of making a very hand-made ‘book’ with lots of layers of paper, paint and materials. I ran the idea by my teacher, and she suggested to stay away from the mess, and do it all on the computer. I made the endless layers of paint, papers, and materials in Photoshop. With the style settled, I needed to figure out my topic! What was I absolutely craving during Spring Break? SUN! Duhhh! So, that’s what I did.

I made a beach bag, sandals, sun screen, sunglasses, shorts, a bikini, book and pen, all from scratch! One each item I included a quote about what I loved about summer. Nothing cheesy, much more poetic quotes that I made up myself. Each item is made out of different materials, and the textures of the graphic designs are varied types of paint strokes, splatters, and styles. The font I used is called Reklame Script. Also, I put a piece of coconut air freshner inside it, so it smells like summer! And also some sea shells :)

Once I get my book back, I’ll upload pictures of each of the items, and the bag all together. For the mean-time, if you find yourself downtown and at the Webster Concordia Library, go check out my book! The exhibition is called “Booked” and it’s running from April 14 to May 6. Here’s the invitation!

I passed by a day before the exhibition started to take some pictures with my phone to post up, so here they are! Although I wish they would have placed the pieces a little better… It kinda looks like a big mess at the moment.

The description for my piece in the exhibition reads:

Summer Love
By Beckii Adel
Reminiscing that perfect summer; a collection of essentials from a sensuous day under the sun.
Enjoy!

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April 14, 2011 by in School Work
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Indulge Yourself – Book Project

So here it is, the full version to my book project! It’s not perfect, in the future I’d like to work on the typography in the intro and the conclusion a bit more.

Just to recap, the book is about self-gifting and how women spend their money on material items. From start to finish, I talk about our need for jewelry, nail polish, perfume, clothes, makeup, handbags, shoes, lingerie, cupcakes, coffee, chocolate and beauty products. All the photography was done by yours truly! I worked really hard while creating this book, and I really hope everyone likes it!

Special thanks to all my girls on Facebook for giving me ideas for subjects; Veronique, Rita, Taline, Sam, Daniele, Mariel, Jess, Jana, Steph, Kelsy, Sebrina and Andrea. Also, my boyfriend Mike for lending me his amazing camera & accessories, Kayla & Carmen for letting me borrow your stuff, my gorgeous best friend Gabi for being my model, Lucas & Sam for critiquing my work, Fariba & Arvin at Click Imprimerie for having so much patience with me and last but not least, my teacher Pata Macedo for letting me run with the wind for this project.

So here it is! If you’d like to download a web version (with low resolution images) of the book, click here.

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April 9, 2011 by in School Work
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Sneak Peek!

Alrighty, so I have a week and a half left of school, and I just finished my book project which is due tomorrow! So I’m just going to post up a couple of pictures as a sneak peek before the class critique and then handing it in. Once handed in, I’m going to upload a web PDF for all to see :)

So this book is about self-gifting, but more specifically how women spend their money on materialistic items. I did all the designing (obviously), photography of the photos uploaded, as well as the photos of the items in the book. I am so unbelievably happy about the outcome of the book and the packaging. This is definitely going into my portfolio.

Enjoy!

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April 4, 2011 by in School Work
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Updates on previous projects

Hey heyyy! So I’ve been working on school projects all day long, so I figured I’d put a little time tonight to update you on some projects that I’ve completed a while ago, but I’m made updates to.

First, the Krazy Balloons website! The designing and coding has been done for a while, but the site was finally launched a couple days ago to the public, so I figured I’d write a post about it. For the design, it had to be fun, colorful, young and friendly. The navigation took a while to get organized, but it’s finally all working! It’s my first fully designed and coded e-commerce site using Ecwid. Here’s a small preview of the site, but you can see and browse through the site live.

 

Also, about a month or so ago I wrote about the Bohemia labels that I created, which were sold in Mexico. Well now, they are being sold here in Montreal! Well, more specifically Val David at an organic boutique called “Vivre en Vrac”. It will soon be sold even closer to home, which I will definitely keep you posted on :) Here’s a preview of the most recent labels:

A lot of changes were made to this version, compared to the last. For example, the colors are so much brighter and really stand out a lot more, as well as the background design which was made to be more prominent. The most obvious, is that it was translated, and is now in French and English, instead of Spanish. A 6th label was added, and other than that, tiny little details were changed.

Here’s a professionally taken photo of the previous versions of the labels:

I am so happy with the result of this project, and as soon as school is over, I’ll be updating my portfolio, and this will definitely be on it.

I’ve also been playing with a couple new projects for client that I’ve never done before, such as Facebook marketing, and wedding invitations! I love the new projects that are brought to me, they’re so diverse that they open my eyes to a whole new world and I keep expanding my knowledge in web and print design.

On another note, I haven’t had too much time lately to work on other client jobs because of my dedication to my schooling. Right now, school is my number 1 priority and I’m so lucky to have such understanding and loyal clients, who wait for me throughout my semester. But don’t worry, I have 3 weeks left! :D I can’t wait to be done just so I can get back into designing for my clients for as many hours as possible.

By the end of these next 3 weeks, I will be posting up manyyyy pictures of projects that I worked on this semester – All graphic design related too! I cant wait to show you guys :)

That’s it for now, thanks for reading!

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March 17, 2011 by in Client Work
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Ashton Wellness

After a couple months of waiting for the old batch of business cards, Ashton Wellness was finally able to order their new business cards with a design that I created for them over the summer. Here it is! I also reprinted a batch of their brochures, with a couple of little adjustments, which I also originally designed for them during the summer.

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February 19, 2011 by in Client Work
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Bohemia Labels

So here are the very long awaited photos of the labels that I’ve been mentioning for the last couple posts! I designed them at the beginning of January, as a rush job before the hype in school began. Something happened with the previous design so the client had to get these designs done before printing them and shipping them off to Mexico for sales the week after. So yes, if you go to Mexico, look out for these bottles! They will be on the shelves, ready to be purchased :)

Here’s some photos of the labels on the actual bottles that my client took for me:

Unfortunately the background design on the green, yellow and orange bottles didn’t show as much as they were supposed to.. but I’ll be fixing the files for the next round :)

Here’s what they looked like digitally, but the colors are supposed to be much brighter, I just took a quick screen shot to show you.

Design wise, I was able to go free with it, as long as I stuck with the bohemian feel. I created the flower symbol in Illustrator, and worked with it throughout the design. I used the font Reklame for the name of the product and “100% natual”, and Helvetica (obviously) for the rest of the text. I stuck with Helvetica for the rest simply because it’s a clean and readable font, even when used at 5pts.

In the end, I’ve very happy with the final result, as is the client. I will definitely be putting these labels in my portfolio. Now the only thing is, when will I be able to find the time to update my portfolio? It’s been almost a year since it’s been updated.. One thing at a time! School is my number 1 priority right now.

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January 31, 2011 by in Client Work
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