Lauren Kaufmann's Blog o' Stuff

401!

2011-03-21T13:58:00.001-04:00

For the time being I'm back in Providence and it's been an outrageously eventful trip so far. I've been catching up with my friends, meeting awesome new people, and I even got around to celebrating St. Patrick's Day. To top it all off I found an apartment in one of my favorite parts of town, signed a lease, and am picking up the keys April 1st!

Returning for one week of packing and planning in North Carolina and then it's back to Providence for the long haul. It feels really good to have the move in motion; I've missed this place so much.

I submitted a shirt design for the Firefox 4 launch competition: Firefox Doubledutch. I know a lot of designers who aren't thrilled with the competition because it's essentially spec work (strike 1) with no payoff beyond awarding you recognition if you win (strike 2). On the other hand, Firefox has been my go-to browser for many years and I appreciate all the work the Mozilla Dev team has done, so I may as well throw them a free design. It would be even better if they were to use it.

Voting for the shirt design takes place on March 30th. Fingers crossed!

Fair Warnings

2011-03-07T10:29:00.001-05:00

The past two weeks have been chaotic. Between freelance work, tons of new personal projects, my brother and his family visiting, and working out the logistics of the move to Providence I've been pretty swamped.

There will be updates with actual visual content soon. As a placeholder:

I decorated my very battered screen with some duct tape shortly before it was replaced by a real door. (The cat's name is Squirrel.)

Sketching, Not Raining

2011-02-17T18:21:00.000-05:00

There are three dogs and three cats living in the house. Sketch time a-go-go.

Website Is Go—Again

2011-02-06T17:48:00.000-05:00

Yes. Site design change. Doing work for yourself is so much more difficult than working for somebody else.

This time I'm confident with it.

Design Angst

2011-02-02T18:19:00.000-05:00

To be honest, I've been worried that my portfolio site is too much site and not enough neutral canvas on which to display my work. There's a fine line between showing some personality and detracting from work with too much going on. I may have overstepped the line. Significantly.

I'll sleep on it.

Meanwhile...

Website Is Go

2011-01-29T13:52:00.000-05:00

Published it, got critiques from some good friends, took it down, fussed with it, re-published it, fussed with it some more...

I think that for now my website is done.

laurenkaufmann.com

Finally.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

2011-01-25T23:08:00.002-05:00

Mild disaster struck this week. When most of your creations are confined to two-dimensional space on a pretty small scale it's proportionately rewarding to create something at a human scale that's also functional. I had constructed a two-part hinged screen to keep cats sequestered to the second floor of my parents' house after numerous elaborate baby gate blockades had failed to contain them. It worked for many weeks as it was intended and I was rather pleased with myself.

Enter: my brother's Border Collie. He had recently arrived at the house and wasn't aware of the dogs live downstairs/cats live upstairs setup. Neither was he aware of screen doors in any context. In a fit of exuberance he bolted upstairs, straight into the bottom screen, tearing the material and compromising the frame's structural integrity. Duct tape to the rescue for now. But duct tape can't mend my deep sense of failure.

Border Collie: 1
Lauren's Screen: 0

...And We're Back!

2011-01-16T21:40:00.000-05:00

Been ultra-busy. Portfolio website is underway and nearly finished. Working on making my move to Providence a reality. Despite this, there's always time for a mash-up of my guilty pleasures: