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Welcome to the world of Shawn and Octoberson Design!
I'm a graphic designer who's finally starting to branch out into other areas of art and interests. I've been a graphic designer/production manager/graphic/production director for a local magazine. While I like designing ads and helping to produce a magazine every month, I also love to draw.
My hope for this blog is to post all sorts of new things that I've created, from sketches to finished works. I want to put my name and my work out into cyberspace, maybe it will end up making more creations to put into my digital portfolio! Please feel free to contact me if my design skills could be of use to you.
To lend a hand under the pressures of deadline, I also got to help out with our sister publication up north, Lehigh Valley Magazine. I designed a few of the articles this time around, but out of all of them, this was one that I was very pleased with. The more I post, the busier last month feels, which means that now I'm even more tired than I already am!
Back again with yet another update. I guess I have been up to a few things lately. A few weeks back a coworker was showing me how other magazines are using illustrations and page layouts, which we both felt would be interesting to use in Harrisburg Magazine and any other publications we might produce. Granted, we can't go too wild and crazy on certain ideas, since budget is always a factor, but one thing that I did bring up was that I hoped to try my hand at more illustration work in the magazine, if needed and/or wanted. A few days later our Publeditor (yes, that's her title) asked me if I could do an illustration based around a concept she found online. I created it and we kept pushing it more and more until it became a giant tsunami. The original idea for the illustration became secondary to the huge wave about to engulf it. Either way, I learned a few tricks in Photoshop that day and got a nice chance to flex my muscles creatively in a whole new way!
Wow, true believers! It feels like forever since I updated my blog. I'll admit, once I moved into my new apartment (yes, I did manage to find a very cool place to live all on my own again) I did attempt an update, but didn't really care much for what I had to say. I wanted to post something having to do with art and/or design than write a post saying "hey, I moved! go me!"
So, in that vein, I've been pretty busy at work with the usual layouts and designs. This month, though, I had the privilege to go above and beyond with the normal job description. Normally I'm just designing ads and plugging in ads into the editorial, then postscripting pages to be sent off to the printer. This time around, though, I got a chance to design the actual cover story for our January Harrisburg Magazine issue.
While I won't show the entire article, I do want to share a few pieces of it to give the flavor of what I designed.
