Poetry book project

 Excited to share my latest book design project: a self-published volume of poetry by Marilyn Morrison. 

This project literally fell into my lap! Sandra, the editor I worked with on Joseph Rossano's Vanity book for Museum of Glass, emailed that her friend Marilyn wanted to publish a volume of poems she had been writing over many decades. Sandra wondered if I knew anyone who could work with Marilyn to accomplish her dream. I was happy to offer my services, and Marilyn and I clicked from our first phone call. 

Sandra had helped her with an initial edit and preliminary format. I then did an in-depth proofread/edit and realized that there are no hard and fast rules for poetry! Punctuation can follow "traditional" rules, or be left out completely. I went with an intuitive reading of each poem; some did indeed need no punctuation, some I added/edited punctuation as it seemed to fit. After Marilyn's final proof of the manuscript, I then created page layouts and style sheets in InDesign, flowing the document into the layout and adjusting line spacing as needed to create logical page breaks (again, a little different in poetry vs. prose!) 

Then for the fun part: the cover! Marilyn had mentioned that she did various types of artwork, so I suggested that she might want to use some of her original art for the cover(s). She sent a number of candidates and I really gravitated towards her "nebula" series; the image I selected for the front cover really seemed appropriate for a poetry volume. I mocked up several different images for the back cover, and Marilyn made the final decision there. Interestingly, her author bio fit perfectly into the available image space!  

The Trilogy is now available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1792348347?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860

Maha Reiki manuals

SO exciting to see the final published Maha Reiki manuals! What started as rather plain, comb-bound, self-printed manuals have now become real books, available through Amazon: https://mahamethods.com/maha-methods-manuals/. When I started this project, it was simply to offer my editing and proofreading skills to my friend and Reiki teacher, Donna. From there, she asked me to also create graphic illustrations and a professional design for all the books.

What a journey it has been--this project started in December 2017 and stretched through February 2019 (balanced with my full-time job and Donna and Ron's writing schedule). After proofreading and editing hard copies of each manual, I corrected the .doc files, then created an InDesign template and stylesheets, flowing in the chapter files and editing and adjusting photos. Once each level manual was complete, she had them printed and comb-bound for her classes. After the Master level was finished in September 2018, she and Ron took a well-deserved break! From November 2018 to February 2019, we worked on adapting the covers for paperback binding and the addition of author bios on the back covers.

I was reminded from the beginning of the project that book design and layout is something that I really enjoy. The design aspect is always a lot of fun, and the layout and production of the pages is very satisfying. You can see it taking shape before your eyes and it is a real thrill to hold the finished product in your hands!

Image featured on BECU September Update email!

I was excited to see one of my images featured as the header image for BECU's September Update email. I had entered several images in their 2016 Calendar Contest, so didn't expect to see them used in this capacity (and still hoping one got chosen for the calendar!) I was thrilled to see my image, even if they don't use photo credits on their email images...believe me, I asked about it! This is one of my macro flower images, featuring a metallic "bee" (?)

I'm passionate about nature images, usually up-close macros of flowers, I've probably got hundreds now! My portfolio features another interesting floral/insect image, in the Animation category. I animated a background for a fascinating white crab spider sitting on a lavender bloom. We watched that guy all summer, and saw him catching bees.

Thanks, BECU, for featuring my photography! (Below is the original, uncropped image.)

MOG Vanity exhibit digital assets and book design

What an exciting project this has been! Vanity is a current exhibit at Museum of Glass by artist Joe Rossano. It's an intricate and involving statement piece addressing extinction and human domination and destruction of the natural world, specific to eleven extinct species. Joe comes from a scientific as well as artistic background, so much of the accompanying information touches on DNA codes, historical accounts of each animal, and academic documentation of how they were driven to extinction by destruction of habitat or hunting/over-harvesting.

First up for me was creating digital assets (HTML pages of the historical accounts) in Dreamweaver to accompany each animal in the exhibit, accessible through QR codes attached to the inside of each individual "DNA cabinet."

Human DNA code was used to visually overlay and obscure the scientific name of each animal, signifying the manner in which humans have dominated and destroyed much of nature. A link was included at the end of each HTML page to view or download the entire matching PDF file, containing all the reference material as well.

The most exciting and challenging part of the project was the accompanying book of the exhibit. I love book design, so the opportunity to work on this project for the museum was a dream come true! It was a long and involved process, but I really enjoy the photo editing and placement process, as well as the typography and  stylesheet creation. It's very satisfying to see a completed, tangible end result that you can hold in your hands. I'm looking forward to that when we receive the finished proof copy of the printed book later this week! Until then, check out this link to a PDF "sampler" of Vanity, the book.

Latest MOG project

My latest project for Museum of Glass: two text panels for the upcoming Mosaic Show. I really enjoyed putting these together; I think the best part was editing the images. There are some amazing pieces and it was fascinating to review them all and decide which to use. I had more leeway on the Materials panel, as there were more materials than images! I decided on a charcoal header bar, just to go a little softer than black, then pulled in the green from a logo used by the mosaic artists society. I opted to use that green on the image header captions as well. Can't wait to see this show when it opens!

FIRE sign

Another fun project--FIRE, FIRE!!! The unit requesting this project provided only a .ppt file with the soldier, fire, and smoke image (see original image below). They wanted a 2x6 foot finished sign.

I saved a pdf of the ppt file, brought it into Photoshop, deleted the text and background, resampled it a little larger, then saved as a .png for transparency. I placed it into a new Photoshop file over a black gradient background, extended the ground using the clone stamp, varying sections so it didn't look too repetitive. I then smudged areas to blend and alter the ground and smudge flame areas upward. I found a GREAT set of fire brushes and patterns online (thank you Obsidian Dawn!) along with a tutorial on how to use them (highly recommended). Then it was add lotsa fire and smoke; I also softened the hard edges of the original smoke cloud using the eraser and a smoke brush, in addition to adding more smoke here and there. I'm really happy with how it turned out, although I wish I had had more time to fine-tune it! Definitely want to play with FIRE brushes some more...

Another Poster Design

I always get a little excited when I get any kind of design project at work, since so much of what we do is outputting run-of-the-mill signage. This is my take on the photo collage look that is so popular with many of our military customers: flag, Rainier, c-17,  plus more specific elements such as the computer-related stock images I used to convey the 627th CS mission. I wanted to do something a little different than the standard, which seems to have been a border with "blah" Times font--ugh! I updated to a more modern font and decided to tie the logo into the header with a bold bar treatment. Originally, I had a skinnier red bar and smaller CS logo at the bottom to echo the top. When they requested the JBLM logo be added, I played around with various options for keeping the bottom bar, but it just didn't look right, so I removed it. I ultimately added the subtle black gradient to "anchor" the bottom of the piece. This poster is now displayed just down the hall from our office, outside the 627th CS offices, so I get to see it every day!