Quite Strong

About a month or two ago, I was invited to join Quite Strong, a website that promotes creatives of the female variety. Although I did not get my information to the group of gals right away (tsk tsk), I did eventually and am proud to return the favor by promoting their site to you all.

Quite Strong is run and organized by a posse of five friendly chicas. When I was first invited to collaborate, I did not know any of them, but coincidentally after a few weeks of finding out about it, my office hired one of them as a freelancer, so when they threw their site's launch party, I had a direct connection to one of the hosts. Score!

If you have a minute or two check out my personal portfolio page. Who knows, you may learn something secret about me! Although I haven't received work inquiries just yet, I have enjoyed perusing my peers' work and advocate all fellow female creatives to join because Quite Strong is another way to get your name out there (ahem, ahem, I am talking to you!). Heck, you don't have to be in the Chicago area to be added to the lust list, just send in a request to be added.

So, to repay the favor, thanks Quite Strong and by association, the leading ladies behind the curtain of this awesomely fabulous site!

Brand New

Today's post is brought to you by the letters B and N, as in Brand New, a blog written by designer Armin Vit. Armin created and uses Brand New as an outlet for him to expresses his "opinions on corporate and brand identity work".

I believe most of my graphic designer friends are probably thinking "I've known about Brand New for a while, why is Jessi writing a post on it? It's not new to me." I think this blog is extremely interesting and I think non-designers will find value in the information posted on it, even though it is opinion based.

Armin writes about and posts logos that have been recently redesigned or are new to the industry. His experience in identity work equips him with a credible stance for critiquing a logo's success. The logos he posts are brands we will see and be bombarded with every day of our life, so it's useful to know what will be changing and when the change might occur. Some that I have personally benefitted from were keeping an eye out for the new sweetener, Truvia,

and the new packaging design of Bounce.

When Pepsi Co. released the new look of Tropicana there was a huge negative response to it and since, it has been pulled. Fortunately, Brand New was one of the first blogs to write about it so for those of us who knew of it early, we were ready to look out for it before it was long gone. (It's not every day a major corporation pays tons of money for a rebrand and it bombs.)

In fact, just yesterday, Armin posted the new logo for the Wembley Stadium located in London. Not exactly something you would run into everyday, but for me, currently visiting London, this was great to see. In fact, I may try to go on a tour of the stadium.

So, that is what Brand New is all about. I hope you can see why this blog is in my top 5 and I hope you might find something useful checking in on it too. Cheers!

What's your color personality?

I found another quiz for you to take! This one, by Real Simple magazine, quizzes you on various aspects of your personal life (i.e. how you would like to spend your free time, what type of flower arrangement you prefer, etc.) to determine what color represents your personality the best. They call it What's Your Color Personality?.

After answering the mandatory questions, apparently I am an Air personality and represented by the color yellow. If you can't read the description below, Air personalities are "warmhearted, lively, and cheerful" but "can be perceived as a bit flighty, unserious".

I'm not one to categorize myself with ALL of those adjectives (ahem, flighty!?), but I wonder if you think it fits. Also, I want to know what color personality you are, please share!

As a side note, these results seem far off from HGTV's What color is your personality? quiz, which I posted about in May.

Inheriting Style

A few months ago, Justin's grandma moved in to a mother-in-law suite which had been added on to Justin's aunt's house specifically for Grandma. It was a bittersweet time for many family members and one of the hardest parts was choosing what to keep and what to get rid of. This was no easy task for Justin's aunt, who coaxed Grandma into discarding as much as she could, but even when Justin and I showed up to help on moving day, there were many items that still had a big question mark as to where they were going to end up.

After moving some of the big things out of Grandma's house, Justin's aunt said to us, "if there's anything you want, let me know, because otherwise it's going in the trash." As an advocate of recycling, reusing, or repurposing, I wasn't thrilled with the thought that the excess furniture and belongings would end in a landfill. Therefore, when we saw something we thought could function in our home, we asked Justin's aunt if that was something we could have and almost every single time she responded with Yes! One of these pieces was this really cool mid-century (from the actual mid-century, not a look-a-like), glass-doored, two-shelf bookcase.

I must admit that at first I wasn't sure where we could use it. I thought it might work well in the office (and it still may), but when we brought it home it sat in our front entry for a short time while I pondered it's future placement. Then one day, as I was walking upstairs I found the perfect spot.

The table we had put in our second floor hallway had been there since we moved in. It was a great piece, but it provided no function in the space and I thought it was a lost opportunity since our hallway is quite large and acts more as a landing or foyer for that floor. In a quick 15 minutes, I swapped the table out for our "new" bookshelf and packed it with all of my books that had been hiding out in boxes.

The "staging" of my shelf isn't pretty but I don't care because now this space is functional and looks a bit more lived-in. I love the shelf and I love that all of my books are on display. The best part of this quick change was as I filled it up, I came across books I forgot I owned and enjoyed flipping through them again. (I should really make the task of rearranging or organizing my books a frequent chore because I'm sure I would use them way more.) Nonetheless, now the real question is whether I should refresh the bookshelf with a coat of paint...

Happy Blogiversary #1

Happy 1st Blogiversary to us!