Brain juice

It's a little daunting that my graduate school career will be over in a few months! The last year and a half has flown by so fast. To keep myself somewhat sane through this whole process, I've been tinkering around with some design and photography just for fun. I take quite a few photos for this blog, and a lot of them don't get used because they don't necessarily make sense for a post. Sometimes I revisit my archives and repurpose the photos for design stuff. 

Below are a couple based on some of my favorite pop culture things!

I've mentioned my love of "Game of Thrones" quite a bit on this blog, and I decided to take it to the next level by making a pretend book title for the series. The inspiration was a photo I took over the summer of a lion door decoration I found downtown. 

This next one was inspired by a quote from "No Country for Old Men," one of my favorite movies. I took the original photo in north Georgia, and just transformed it in Photoshop and InDesign. The fonts I used for these are "Clumsy" and "Mexcellent" (both recommendations from Pugly Pixel, a great design resource). 

I'll try to share more of my extra design/photography stuff here in the future! 

Thoughts from the Sidewalk

Happy Friday! Just a fun illustration I  made from some music I've been listening to lately. Have a good weekend!

Outfits, illustrated

Since I had a lot of fun trying my hand at sketching with my vintage costume design book, here are a few more illustrations of past outfits. Instead of doing 1950s-style illustrations like last time, I modified the sketches to look more like me. The first sketch is based off this outfit. Here are the rest: 

Pickin' me a bouquet of wildwood flowers:

No whimpers, just bangs: 

The laughing tree | In the flickering light

Thoughts from the Sidewalk

from "Sunrise" by Norah Jones. A song that's often on my mind when I'm taking photos in the morning.

The past reaches out and extends its hand

Just experimenting with layers (in nail polish and Photoshop). The color on my nails is Sally Hansen Sonic Bloom. Remember my couch cushion from this post? It's been serving as a pretty nice photo backdrop!

Lately

From lemons to lemonade

I'm usually a purist when it comes to post-processing -- I normally do very minimal edits to my photos, as I feel that all the heavy-lifting should be done when I'm on location with attention to lighting, focus and composition. My philosophy is that great photography can be accomplished without fancy cameras or editing software, and I work really hard toward that goal (hence the hundreds of photos I take every week for outfits and landscapes).

However, I've recently loosened up a bit, and have cast a second look on some of my old work, especially photos that I normally would discard. In an attempt to better sort out my online photography account, I went through some recent photos that didn't make the original cut in my photography posts and reworked them by tinkering in Photoshop and Pixlr. The umbrella ones are my favorites, as that was a really fun shoot and I'm glad I was able to rework some of the leftover shots. 

If my outfits were 1950s costume illustrations

  

The other day when I found my 1950s costume textbook, I thought I'd try my hand at sketching some of my outfits onto the silhouettes. I have always loved to draw and sketch, but I've found it difficult in the past to do   outfit drawings (because hands and facial expressions are hard to get right consistently). With the silhouettes, it was easy to nail down a pose for the figures and just worry about the details. So here they are, my outfits imagined as 1950s costume illustrations. I took some liberties with the hair and dress lengths to make them decade-authentic, but I like how some of them turned out!

The top one is based on this outfit. Here are the rest:

I know I am but summer to your heart:

 

It blows away with the changing winds:

 

And here are some from the archives:

You're a new morning | The morning foxtrot

 

The redcoats are coming | A host of golden daffodils

A blog history through headers

When I was re-designing my blog last week, I went deep into my archives to revisit old photos and headers to get some inspiration for the new look. I thought it'd be fun to share the old headers here, and show how the aesthetics of this blog have changed since I began blogging in 2009. And away we go:

june 2012 - present: 

This is the newest iteration that you see above. When I was re-designing this site, I really reflected on the name, 'Sidewalk Chic,' and how I wanted my tagline to reflect my three main themes: personal style, photography (not just landscape anymore), and a deep love for my town. I used a photo from downtown Athens that I took for another project, and converted it to a paint style in Photoshop. The header has had a trickle-down effect on the rest of the blog, as its color scheme is reflected in links and headlines. I used Futura Condensed Medium as my font, which has been a favorite for years because of its bold, neat minimalism. I may tinker with the layout a bit more on this one: while I like the tagline "personal style & the great outdoors," I'm not sure about the placement of outdoors just yet. I did construct the tagline to look like a band name on a flyer.

february 2012 - june 2012:

This header is the first one where I used both Photoshop and InDesign to create it. As you can see, Futura is represented here for the first time (and it probably won't be the last). A photo of one of the parks I visit is represented in the font's background and in the swirls. I used blue and green in the fonts to match the landscape photo, but I didn't think the color scheme was bold enough for me, since they didn't match the many saturated tones I often wear.

february 2011 - january 2012:

This header is the longest one that's been on the blog because I thought it captured what this blog was about: personal style and the outdoors. This was a very basic design -- in fact, the font used was from the free photo program Picnik. I eventually got tired of seeing my face at the top of my site everyday, hence the change.

november 2011 - january 2012:

Before this blog was re-branded and renamed as "Sidewalk Chic" to better reflect my interests, it was known as "Sidewalk Chalk." My sister and I began it in October 2009 to share our daily outfits and things we loved from childhood. In early 2010, the blog was under my sole control so I played around with its design as I tried to figure out what I  wanted to blog about. This is the first header since I made the name change; I really liked the fall leaves. 

october 2010:

Here is the last header before the name change. I really felt my header needed to reflect this site's photography, and so much of it was based around showing me in a landscape setting. I wasn't completely sold on it because it was too large and I felt I was too prominently displayed in the header. Notice the free picnik fonts again. Picnik is the main program used for the early headers' designs.

may 2010 - september 2010: 

This is the first header that was used after my sister stopped blogging to focus on her other interests, so I felt it really needed to reflect my sole authorship and style. The photo was taken at the farm park near my old home in Gwinnett, and it's the first time a landscape is prominently featured. Jeremiah took the photo, back when I actually had him take my photos (I started doing self-photography in June 2010). 

december 2009 - april 2010: 

 Ahh, feet photos -- so ubiquitous in fashion blogging! This is a photo of my sister Nikki (right) and me (left) because we wanted to show that our beloved "Sidewalk Chalk" was about our personal styles (and was not related to art supplies -- a common problem we ran into in search engines). We were still neophytes at fashion blogging and photography -- look at that camera strap visible on the right! I couldn't find a copy of our header with the font we used, but I believe it was a chalk-looking design on the sidewalk.

october 2009 - november 2009:

And here we come to the end -- or in this case, the very beginning of this blog. My sister actually designed this header through Picnik with a photo she took herself at a park. It was designed with a Polaroid border, which was a popular Picnik feature at the time. I will always be grateful to my sister for starting this site and for getting me into blogging in the first place.

Finally, just to further demonstrate how this blog has changed over time, I thought I'd share these word clouds! With Wordle, I was able to capture and showcase the most-used words.

Here's one from June 2010 made by my friend Val:

And here's one from June 2012:

And there you have it -- a history of my blog's design. I believe it's all an ongoing process and I'm sure that I'll have more to share of these headers in the future. 

Have you ever re-designed your site, and why? What kinds of layouts and techniques did you use?

Superfood

 

I had the prettiest delicious berries for breakfast today, so I broke out my camera and took some photos. Even though I'm technically an adult, I still have fun playing with my food (sometimes when no one is looking, I wear the raspberries as thimbles on my fingers when I eat them). 

And now,  a completely unnecessary collage of my efforts combining vintage effects from pixlr:

Thoughts from the Sidewalk

Listening to: Old Crow Medicine Show, "Evening Sun."

Sketch roundup

As I've mentioned, I've recently decided to start sketching again and I'll probably share a few from time to time. I've been experimenting with watercolor pencils and have been enjoying them thoroughly. They force you to loosen up on the hard lines you draw -- something that's analogous to me right now.

Lately: Nature's inkblot test

Maybe it's because I studied psychology in undergrad, but I found it amusing to flip a couple of these photos to resemble Rorschach tests.

Sketchy sketch

I've always been a doodler in class -- I've found that I recall information a little better if there's a design associated next to it in my notes. Here are my recent  (rough) sketches of my favorite Hitchcock movies. I'm thinking about designating a whole Moleskine notebook for these illustrated daydream moments ...

Happy Friday!

Thoughts from the Sidewalk

From REM's "Oh My Heart," which is a pretty fitting song for the way I feel about my town.  I try to take photos of this spot every time I head this way, and had some fun adding HDR effects to it. 

Thoughts from the Sidewalk

from "Blackbird," by the Beatles. 

("Fly, blackbird, fly -- Into the light of the dark black night ...")

New feature: Snapchic advice

I get asked quite a bit about some tips for taking self-portrait photos outdoors. Now, I'd love to start a discussion of  photography observations I've picked up during my time as a blogger. Though I don't consider myself an expert by any means,  I'm always up for discussing self-portraiture and landscape photography because I have a huge interest in both.

First up is one of my favorite partners in crime, my tripod. In windy weather or uneven ground, it's easy for a tripod to lose its legs. The easiest way to combat this is by slinging a bag (preferably one with a long strap) over the top of the camera base to keep the structure weighted and to allow for easier, sharper photo-taking. Make sure you don't have anything too valuable in your bag before you allow your tripod to start doing its own stunts.

Got any favorite tips of your own in blog photography? If you've got any questions or would like to see something covered in this new feature, comment below!

Thoughts from the Sidewalk

A little inspiration from Mumford and Sons' "The Cave." I get excited every time I hear this song on the radio or Pandora.

Thoughts from the Sidewalk

A musing from Tolkien for Monday afternoon.