Niftayyyy Restaurant/Bar Findings

Last week while I was in Charleston, I felt like they had SO many awesome restaurants and bars. I know I was in a tourist area, but I think Chucktown is quite the fine dining city. The thing I thought I would share though, was the great design elements from these restaurants! You know when you go somewhere, and you can hardly look at the menu because it is so poorly designed? That was not the case in Chucktown! Also, most of the bars we went to had such fun/funky decor. Made for a great bar atmosphere!

This bar, Closing Time (what a GREAT name for a bar), had a lodge feel mixed with Route 66 diner. It was what my pals like to call a honky tonk bar, but we had a blast there.

Ok, this restaurant was terrible. We just wanted margs and chips and salsa, and they did NOT have unlimited chips and salsa. THEY ONLY SERVED TACOS, IT WAS AWFUL. But, it had cool decorations and nice company branding.

It was too dark to get a picture of the awesome interior at this bar called Speak Easy (which may have been an actual speak easy in the prohibition era? or maybe its just their "thing" but it fooled me.). So I am instead sharing my amazing drink from there, called Spring Fever. IT HAD ACTUAL ROSEMARY IN IT. shit was cray.

For our one "fancy" dinner of the week, we went to a seafood place called Hank's. It wasn't that fancy, but it was expensive. The back of the menu had a map of all the swankiest/most scandalous/famous bars/joints/clubs of Charleston.

My roommate loved the napkins so much she stole hers. Classy broad.

App recommendation/review: What the font?!

So a regular feature I'm going to start doing is app recommendations.


This week: What The Font?!

Splash page.
You start by taking/uploading a photo of a font that you have seen and love and want to know what the eff it is! This happens to me all of the time.

After uploading/taking a photo, you crop to highlight one word. It's best to take the photo straight on, without any tilt or angle to the photo. Also, no glare is preferable.

The app then guesses what characters it "sees." This is where the app is lacking in my opinion. It's not very good at recognizing characters, as you can see.

After correctly identifying characters and selecting identify, it gives font suggestions. It's not entirely accurate, but it gives some close ones that will do the job most of the time.

Overall, this app isn't the best designed or functioning app, but it does what I need it to do. It's a great idea. I'd love to know if there are any other apps with similar functions that are more effective? Let me know y'all.

Can't Miss: AceJet170

The cynical, organized, dry humor side of me loves this.

 Purchase your Disappointments Diary here.

who calls people anymore.

bleak.

ugh.

story of my life.

crappe diem y'all.

its going to be a new saying of mine.

Photo inspiration

My spring break destination.
inspiring me... to get through this week.

So. close.

Burger Covers, take 2.

So! I turned in my final round of burger covers today.
here zey are.

I added a few details to make is seem more blueprint like. I played with sell lines and color and cartoon hamburgers and drawings.

but still, my design wasn't chosen. pfffft.

Great Web Portfolio inspiration

Here are some great portfolio site inspirations. 

OK, this site is seriously adorable. 

TappCandy has a great responsive site, which makes sense because they are a mobile app development company.

Great web design here.

As you scroll down the page, the letters explode!

neat!

Some more adorable illustrations here.

I love how the moving carnival scene at the bottom.

I love the style at Pointless Corp.

Giant floating pie! 

These sites are really great examples of web design, which I know might be a little advanced for our class, but still good inspiration.

Photo(s) inspiration

This weekend was moms weekend with my sorority and I had a blast with my momma! i also enjoyed hanging with my friends and their moms. We went to the winery for dinner one night and just had some great conversation about all the factors that make us the person we are.
I think my friends and family are a large influence on my design style bc they are such big agents of socialization for me, and that is what good design should be based on.
So! Here is me and my momma, and then me kallie and Kait, then all of us with our mommas.

Can't Miss: AceJet170

Over at AceJet170, she found some lovely luggage tags for sale.

I love how diverse this blog is in topics, and how she finds good design everywhere. Inspires me to keep a look out!

Burger Covers: take 1!

Thanks to double production, I had another cover due this week.

The cover story is actually from The Scene dept this week. It's going to be a burger guide for Columbia and burger bloggers are going to be the main sources for the story.

Here are my original three cover ideas!

For this one, I went with kind of a techno feel for the blogger aspect. Its supposed to represent a minimalist version of a hamburger. I think I should have added some more details, even if it is supposed to be minimal. Perhaps have the cheese in a triangle shape instead?

I also really love the tagline on this. I hope we end up using that.

These next two ideas go with the story aspect that we will show what makes certain burgers in Columbia special. We are going to break down the ingredients, or deconstruct the hamburger. So I went for a blueprint theme.

I wasn't sure if I should use color or not so I did a version of both.

I personally prefer the all blue and white version.

My last idea was that bloggers always instagram pictures of their food, so it could be kinda funny to have the cover be a photo illustration of just that. This is my poor photoshop attempt, just to express the concept. If we proceed with a photoshoot, I would know exactly how I want to execute it. 

Any suggestions of how to improve the designs for next week?

Moveable type at t/f!

At true/false there was there was a woman who ran a print shop from her truck. From the outside, it looked like a food truck! During certain hours throughout the weekend, she let people on the truck to do their own true/false print! Here's the press:

She had some good designs, but mostly I just kept thinking the print she was having everyone make could be better. Still a neat design souvenir!

Stories We Tell

So this weekend I was lucky enough to get to catch NINE true/false films. By far my favorite of the weekend was Stories We Tell.

Stories We Tell was director Sarah Polley's look into her own family's secrets. The film covered some pretty deep topics in a delightfully light hearted manner. I feel like the audience was rolling with laughter at the larger than life characters but still quickly attached emotionally to this characters that, had they been presented in a more straight forward manner may not have been as sympathetic. What's also amazing to me is that a documentary had more twists than any narrative writer could dream of, I would have never guessed the big secret.

It really got me thinking about my own family history, and how there is so much I want to know about it. Hey, it could make a great documentary. Like they say in the film, everyone has a story to tell.

Photo inspiration of the week

T/F explorable art! I ran around it like a crazy person for a good 20 min snapping pictures like mad.

You would look through eyeholes to see works by different artists.

Can't miss: ace jet postage

So, I've always enjoyed the designs of postage stamps but been afraid to say so for fear of being seen as a crazy stamp collector.

Ace jet found a way around that.

http://acejet170.typepad.com/foundthings/postal/

Just take pictures of the pretty stamps, then blog about it.
Ooh. I learn so much about blogging from ace jet.