Spring is definitely in the air! Well, at least here in sunny Scottsdale. All sorts of creatures are out, the temps are going up and we see the sun earlier and later, finally. This all means 110F is right around the corner, but I’m willing to overlook that in lieu of excitement for ditching my winter gear and bringing in spring colors!

Here’s what I’m loving right this moment.

1. Anthropogolie: Caridad Ruffled Dress $198.00

OMG I love this dress! I definitely fill it out more than the model on the website and I think that’s a good thing. The bust area is not sewn in, which means it doesn’t stay up unless you have boobs. We have two weddings to attend in a few weeks and I can’t wait to wear this to one of them! I’m thinking I’ll wear either navy or black pumps, I have a black pashmina (so if it’s cold I’ll wear black pumps) and maybe purple studs in my ears (we will see once I put the look together if it’s cute or not) as I want another color accent. You bet I’ll post pictures after the wedding(s)!

2. Anthropologie: Level 99 Sailor Shorts $78.00

I was at Anthropologie this weekend falling in love with item number 1 on this list and I saw these shorts. I think they’re adorable and now, in hindsight wish I took the time to try them on. My only concern is my legs are short/sturdy and they might accentuate the negatives instead of flatter my positives.

3. Maybelline: Dream Fresh BB Cream $7.44 (at Target)

I have never worn a bb cream and now that I think about it, I haven’t worn foundation either. I was curious to see if I would like it, but didn’t want to spend a lot of money on something I was unsure of. I usually use a powder from Bobbi Brown, a little blush, lots of mascara and call it good. When I saw someone rave about Maybellines Dream Fresh BB Cream I made note to pick it up next time I went to Target. Based on the shade on the bottle I grabbed the medium hue. I layer it on after I use my daily moisturizer and it evens out my skin tone and provides a bit of coverage. It’s definitely not a foundation (not that I would really know how to compare). It’s light and does well with a dusting of powder on top. I’m totally hooked! And I just noticed on their website that it has SPF30, I had no idea and that’s a huge selling point for me.

4. Bath & Body Works: Lemon Mint Leaf $12.50

How freaking cute are these mason jar candles from Bath & Body Works? They totally hit the mark this spring! The lemon mint leaf is an excellent scent for the kitchen (where we predominately have a candle burning). It’s clean and cute and burns for 30-40hrs.

5. Bath & Body Works: Oceanside $20.00 (or 2 for $22.00 RIGHT NOW!!)

These are by far my favorite candles ever! The scents are fabulous and make your home smell wonderful. It’s a sad day when our candle dies. In our home we have two different scent preferences: I am a huge fan of fruity, coconut smells and my man prefers a more relaxed, less in your face smell. I’m okay with either so we lean towards his taste and Oceanside fits right in. It does get to be a bit too much (for me) after a while and I end up blowing it out. I highly recommend finding your scent, buying during their sales which seem to happen all the time and have your home smelling delightful all day every day! The 3-wick candles last for 30-45 hours.

For one of my classes I needed to create a magazine article. I had to create a 4-page article to fit the feel of a current magazine.

I’m afraid to admit, this Graphic Designer doesn’t read magazines that often. Maybe that’s because they cost money or because my dream is to design product instead of print. I don’t know how, but sometime shortly after I graduated from undergrad, I also graduated from reading magazines.

That explains why I felt like i was banging my head against a wall when it came to coming up with an idea for this project. Fortunately I was at my moms house one day, so she could take me shopping to Bath & Body Works (this is another story for a different day – love their candles!) and I found a Real Simple magazine laying around. I asked her if I could take it home with me and that’s essentially how I came up with the below 4 pages.

I will also admit to reading my fair share of food blogs. I grabbed the four recipes and photos from blogs that I will link to so you can reap the benefits of their fabulous recipes!

Photograph from  KERF

Recipe & Photograph from Daily Garnish

Recipe & Photograph from KERF

Recipes & Photography from How Sweet It Is

I believe the feel fits in quite nicely with Real Simple magazine. While my font choices are not spot on (meaning I couldn’t buy the fonts used by Real Simple), I do think they blend in well. The article was created for the May issue, you can see I used Spring/Summer colors for the spread and kept the look clean. I used a grid to keep each page uniform. And the numbers to help you flow from one page to another.

While it took me forever to figure out what I wanted to do, I’m quite pleased with how this turned out. Sometimes during projects I rethink my desire to build products in lieu of designing for print, this was one of those times.

Now it’s spring break, which really means time to design, design, design for my portfolio I need to send off to the printer in 6 weeks – yikes!

Assignment:

Create a 12″x9″ tri-fold travel brochure of a destination of choice. Research destination, audience, purpose and how the brochure will be distributed.

My Process:

The first part of the process was figuring out what destination I wanted to use. I am in love with New Zealand having spent nearly a year living out there and I thought what better town than Queenstown. I did my research and it was overwhelming. Queenstown is filled with adventures and activities for tourists. There was just too much information and too many great websites already created. After spending several hours on Queenstown I scrapped it and went back to the drawing board. My teacher threw out a few ideas when I told her my conundrum and that’s how Istanbul began. I fell in love with the idea of traveling to Istanbul once I started researching and not only learned about all the history but saw how colorful the city is.

Once I finished research and gathered several photographs I knew I wanted to showcase the color of the city. The other purpose of creating a brochure is to ensure it sticks out next to others. My brochure briefly explains the must-see sights of Istanbul. Each description is either in a block of red, yellow or blue.

I created the piece to appeal to a younger audience with a simple format, blocks of color and pictures attached to each locale.