Shake your head and laugh it off. I’ve been studying for my Greek Art History final (last one EVER) for about 4 solid hours now and I need a break, so I’m going to go on another rant. Please read only if you want to get to know me a little better, otherwise, stick to the pictures.

My name is Erin, I was born in Colorado in 1987. I grew up in a small, secluded house in McLean, Virginia. I lived in McLean from 1st grade until 7th grade and it was there that I spent many winters following my giant dog’s footprints through a bamboo forest behind the house, springs waiting for my miniature garden I planted to sprout again, summers sneaking into the model-house swimming pool, and autumns on a swing that hung from a giant maple tree. It was a unique situation to be in, to say the least.

While I lived in an 80 year old house hidden by bamboo and secluded far back on a gravel path, the rest of McLean lived in their respective mansions with elevators. As I got older I noticed this more, especially when friends would stop inviting me over after their parents had given me a ride home. By 6th grade I had just one friend who didn’t give a crap what kind of house I lived in and we were inseparable.

Thinking about McLean actually makes me feel a little sick inside to this day. I never understood how someone’s parent could forbid their small child to befriend someone just because they had less than them. I understand that not everyone in McLean is like this, but for me, it’s what I associate most of my experiences there with. Growing up there contributed a lot to who I am today.

I strive to do the best I can with what I love because I don’t like feeling rejected. My group of friends always remains small and close-knit, because trusting new people takes a long time for me. I tend to give lousy first-impressions because I often have my guard up. I’m usually worrying about how much greener the grass is on the other side. These are things about me that might not ever change.

What I love McLean for, and my parents for, is teaching me the value of respect. I respect other people’s opinions, property, values, and rights, to name a few. I don’t have a problem admitting that I’m wrong or I may have made a mistake, though sometimes it has to be brought to my attention first. I believe this mind-set also makes me a better designer. I’m 21 years old, fresh out of College, and completely willing to admit that I have so much more to learn. I can’t wait, actually. I hope I never think or act like I know it all, like I need no advice or criticism from a helpful eye. I know I will never treat someone like they are beneath me, scum on the bottom of my shoe. For this I am happy to say will never change.

I tend to get defensive when other people have a complete lack of respect, and for that I am not sorry. I’ve never tolerated those that have inflated egos nor those with a total lack of restraint when it comes to their judgments of others. It’s easy to strike a chord with me on issues like this. What I’m learning as I get older, especially after recent events, is that sometimes it’s just all I can do to shake my head and laugh it off.

As usual, the VCD crowd couldn’t think of much better to do than draw ridiculous pictures on dirty napkins when we went out on Thursday night. I somehow always manage to save them in my purse for a few days before I decide they should definitely be posted all over the internet for everyone to see… I’m sure I’ll regret this later, but for now it’s highly amusing. Lets just say I left out some of the truly disturbing ones.

Anyway, the artists for this set include: Jessica Harllee, Richard Miller, Kim Nguyen, Alex Sailer, Charles Wood, and myself. My favorite is the typography one - true skillz.

Along with some pretty outrageous napkin-art, the AIGA social last thursday night was host to a few awesome pictures and good times. It started with free pizza in VCD, moved to Rivermill, then Big Al’s, and ended at 2am in a clown car packed with 7 people (Richard was kind enough to be DD, thanks boy.) Apparently at one point in the night we decided all the cool kids wear black-rimmed glasses… take a look at Blacksburg’s 2008 design-whores:

I thought I would take some time to make a few comments about critiques of other people’s work. For anyone who is not aware, I created this site in a one-semester class called e-portfolio. It’s the first real website I’ve ever created in my life using strictly html and css, both of which validate on the w3c standards site. It has a working blog powered by wordpress with tags, categories, and archives. The portfolio page employs a light javascript called “slimbox” to bring up the pictures and each have a description. I have a working contact form and the about me section comes from the heart and isn’t meant to sound like I’m on some high-horse of mine.

I’d also like to point out a flaw. Yes, the navigation does change from the homepage to the rest of them. Neither my professor nor my classmates had anything to say about this during the initial design stages of our sites, and having never designed a website before, I overlooked this issue. I’ve never taken a user-experience class, and I’ve never interned at a web-design company. If I could go back in time I would probably have made a different choice for the homepage. Considering it’s the first website I’ve ever made, I find this to be a truly minute jab at what I’ve managed to create. If you look at the rest of the portfolios the class made, mine stands out as one of top ones.

The reason I mention this is because I just read one of my classmates high-and-mighty posts about User Experience. In his post, he writes at one point: “Changing where your navigation is located in my opinion is a huge no no. Having your homepage list the nav, say, on the right, left, or bottom, then when you eventually find the nav and then clicking what you want, then having the nav relocate to the top or somewhere else (I’m thinking mainly of changing to the top) is ridiculous.” It goes on. I can agree that it’s distracting to have the navigation change and as I said before it’s just something I happened to overlook, but will be attempting to fix in the next few weeks.

What he doesn’t mention in his post is anything about user experience of blogs, perhaps because his is lacking in that department. My friend made a comment about how he could improve his own user experience, but I noticed that he deleted it a few minutes later. When I read her comment I did not find it to be rude or bitchy, she was truly just trying to offer another designer’s honest critique. I guess only he’s allowed to make critical judgments about other people’s designs. I think any designer knows that critique is important, you can’t see all the flaws yourself because you get too used to what you’ve designed. A better designer would have said something like “hey, thanks for the info, i’ll consider those points.” An insecure designer would take offense and quickly delete the comment.

And that is hopefully the longest rant I will ever go on for this blog.

A few months ago I got bored (really bored) and thought it would be fun to empty out my purse and scan in all the items. Then I got an even better idea, not just scan them, but vector them! So here’s my next proposal: how cool would it be to have a book of 20+ purses and the junk inside them? Pictured, vectored, whatever. Maybe the picture of the purse on the left page and all its contents on the right page. Then they could be organized by chapter as small/medium/large etc.. think about it.

(original purse dump)

(after hours of hand-vectoring)