“Greer TaiTai(太太)”
My working and parenting lives collide with each other and sometimes sparkle.
Recent Posts
When inspirations come to a busy life, they remind me to slow down and enjoy the process.
Graphic Design - Composing a Complex Narrative
Composing a simple book by assembling the images and spreads I have collected from previous practices and made into one place. Setting up an eight page book consisting of 8 spreads (3 double page spreads plus a front and back cover) takes me some time to figure out indeed.
My strategy is putting similar techniques together, such as sketched banana and calligraphy outlined dog. Bold color contrast from Legos and blocks is on the covers to draw audience attention. Lastly, binding this pages is really something new and interesting to me. I purchased the bookbinding kit to “sew” the pages together. Even though the pages are digital prints, I still get the feeling of “flipping” book pages.
Graphic Design - Composing Simple Spreads
I began with just two cobras made from last assignment and added some older elements from previous practices to amplify the strategies. During the images arrangement, it's important to stay with hierarchy for not losing the focus while balancing out the empty spaces. The scale strategy works really well with the iterative spreads and catches audience attention greatly in my opinion.
Graphic Design - Range of Representation
It's interesting to construct images from realism to abstract. Sketch based on real objective seems working out the most for me while abstract innovation takes me longer time trying to catch it's spirit.
Graphic Design - Improvisation
I began with my backyard during playtime with kids. It's fun to pick up whatever is available in the backyard and I finished four images in no time. Continued the rest ideas with all my resources in the playroom and my craft stash. Due to material constraints sometimes, I altered the images in my head and improvised as the collection and process went. Overall the outcome was not far from my expectations.
Graphic Design - Typographic Poster
Typographic poster isn’t easy for all these tiny letters and the principles of typesetting to be dealt with. I’m thinking a robot may describe characters of “Franklin Gothic” for it’s heavy weight, condensed proportions, and minimal contrast between strokes.
Graphic Design - The Pretty Banans (Poster)
My first graphic design poster - The pretty bananas (Inside & Out) by assembling previous four weeks of practice and assignments in a new combination.
Graphic Design - Contrasts
Contrast combination of doubles and triples of below arrangement just by simple shapes:
scale
weight
direction
space
form
texture
Graphic Design - Complimentary & Contrast
It’s like an experiment playing with sorts of graphic forms. I’m making graphic design by building blocks to best learn graphic design.
My Free Version of Creativity
Inspired by some random Lego post and thanks to boys' leftover blocks, here comes my free version of creativity😉
Graphic Design - The Character of Characters
The character of characters - Typeset the name of an object (e.g. "apple", "shoe", or "glasses" etc.) in a typeface that relates to (or represents) each of the adjectives (e.g. “plump”, “old”, “vintage” etc).
The top strokes looks like the stems where you grab the bananas and there are a bunch of them. Just an objective text name in different forms creates imagination and possibilities!?
Graphic Design - Monogram & Business Card
Create a design of interlocking typographic forms by using different typefaces, and look at the range of shapes that occur within the same letters.
This is a fun practice and I realized how much fun just texts can produce. Designing business card by inserting the art of name initials (monograms) is definitely eye catching.
Graphic Design - Connotative Image Making
And then some optional challenges - three connotative image makings which tell stories.
Graphic Design - Denotative Image Making
My first Graphic Design assignment is Done! My ten denotative image makings of different techniques. Finally I decided to take the advantage of limited offer $199/yr signing up Google’s Couresera and enrolled my first designer course in a hope to prepare myself for my next dream career.
Pokemon Cookbook Practice
All this hassle began from the library book I happened to see and suggested we could try it for fun!? The results are not bad but I'm still not doing school lunchbox this way lol
Halloween Inflatable Brightness Enhancement
I was stunned by seeing these two-year-old inflatables being so dimmed this year (before the one hour transformation - Viola in the video) so I quickly searched YouTube for solutions. Didn’t think it’s actually quite manageable to replace the LED lights inside the tree and the dinosaur. I don’t mind spending a little on the new lights ($1/ea) moving forward for having our front yard Halloween party keep going!
Pokemon the Ultimate Pumpkin Carving
Not sure how I had that courage taking the three-pumpkin-at-a-time challenge AND Pokemon per request. All the chaos began with Mick’s purchase of three pumpkins…
Moon Cake Birthday Cake Tower
This year I took the advantage celebrating my birthday with Moon festival (lunar calendar) because they are just two days apart. Can't be more proud of my cake tower design with the actual "Moon" by reusing my son's cupcake illuminating stand.
Guest Bedroom Upgrade
I’ve been tackling this window in our guest bedroom for it's unique size and bright lighting for being on the second floor. Issues such as:
Too small for custom made shades, like our other cordless pull-up/down shades.
Dark window film still reveals bright lines around it and the lines from cut are just NOT straight!
Maybe some faux flowers could cover up some cut line flaws from the dark film? Not practical for decorative purposes.
Until this moment, I can finally say I did a good job and in a frugal way!
Curtain rod $15 - the shortest I can find for a 20” wide window!
Recycled IKEA curtain fabrics from our first apartment, which are already >10 years old! But still in a good condition!
Curtain strap from my previously used Macrame Plant Hanger! You don’t believe how elegant it looks until you try!
Hanging Plants Restyle
Started with the idea of self-watering device/pot and then realized how tough it was to untangle and rearrange the plants!
Generative AI Perfect Memories
Discovered the new Generative AI feature of Lightroom to remove the unwanted background so cleverly! Only in a few minutes, I'm pretty happy with the results despite some manual efforts defining the area.