Blog – Page 47 – Holly Whittlef

January 7, 2014 — Comments are off for this post.

CALIFORNIA

Smack dab in the middle of October, the manfriend and I took a 10-day trip to California. It was not the smartest decision I have ever made. I was busy with fall semester ( a very tough semester ) and had just made the jump to freelancing after my full-time job ended in September. Money was iffy, school projects were really iffy, and perhaps most notably, my sanity was past iffy.

But that's the thing about vacations - you just gotta go. You gotta go when you're feeling your most frazzled, because that is precisely when you need it most. So I said the hell with it, and we ventured down the PCH from San Francisco to Los Angeles, with stops in Napa Valley, Capitola, Big Sur and Butano State Park in between. Coincidentally, the only photos I took were from my favorite places: Napa, Big Sur + Butano ( where we camped under the sleepy giant redwoods ).

As you can probably see from my photos, it didn't suck. Not one bit. The first day of vacation, I was wine drunk by 11am. Photo proof right here.

So yeah, like I said vacation...you just gotta go.

More photos from CA on Insta: @hollisanne_

Published by Holly Whittlef in Photography, Travel

January 3, 2014 — Comments are off for this post.

SEE YA 2013!

I kind of don't even know where to start with 2013.

This past year went entirely too fast ( in a scary, I'm-going-to-wake-up-tomorrow-sixty-years-older-aren't-I? kind of way ). Perhaps that's because I worked the hardest I've ever worked in my entire life. I pushed myself much further and much more out of my comfort zone - partly for the good, partly for the bad, partly to pay the bills and partly because I know I'm always capable of doing better creative work than I'm producing.

But there was fun too! A lot of it. There were anniversary Indian dinners, inaugurations, homemade birthday cakes, paintings, TV appearances, weddings, babies, 80s-themes pedal pubs, girl crushing on Jennifer Lawrence, bike rides around the lake, hammerschlagen, concerts, camping, trips to Door County and California, photography, raspberry picking, birthday brunches, hikes, margaritas and best of all - lots of family, friend and manfriend time.

As Zora Neale Hurston once said, "There are years that ask questions and years that answer." This year asked questions. Lots of them. Good ones too. Most had no tangible or concrete answers. Many were hypothetical. And a specific few I'm very curious to discover the answer to in 2014.

Until then, I have lots of catching up to on this blog. So sit back, grab a green juice ( it's not just me detoxing, is it? ), and let's make 2014 about working less, enjoying more and refusing to keep up with the Kardashians. Ya hear?!

Published by Holly Whittlef in life

August 25, 2013 — Comments are off for this post.

FLICKER CAFÉ

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Flickr Menu_Page_2

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School starts tomorrow, so I thought it only appropriate I finally wrap-up my work from last semester before the new one starts. And it just so happens that I saved one of my favorite projects for last.

I happen to love food ( hello! I write a blog about it ), so when my typography teacher gave us the assignment of designing our own restaurant logo + menu, I was ecstatic. To design menus for a living might just be my dream job. The one caveat was that we had to design the logo + menu in the style of a design movements. I chose Dada, which, as you can see from the top inspiration board, is a funky European avant-garde movement that started in the early 1900s as a rebellion against World War I.

Flicker Café is probably my dream restaurant. The menu, the type ( I used League Gothic + Marion ), the shapes and the simple yet quirky result. If I do use this piece in my portfolio however, I want to go back and refine the menu design to give it more richness and depth. In the logo, you can see that I used a light texture overlay which adds to the "flicker" of the design. The menu lacks that same texture, which is making it read a little flat to me. But otherwise, I love it all.

And that my friends, is an official wrap on spring semester.

Other spring semester projects here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 + 6

[ Dada movement images found here ]

Published by Holly Whittlef in Design, school