By the Skin of My Teeth

October 15 was the deadline for ordering the business cards I won from a Sew in Stitches giveaway. With the help from some friends, I designed them at the last possible minute in the nick of time. The last month has been busier than I anticipated, and I didn't get a chance (or make the time) to sit down in front of photoshop/illustrator until Thursday. To use these programs, I need to be in an on-campus computer lab, so when I think about it at midnight, it's not exactly going to happen then.

Nevertheless, I had fun playing with these programs -- I used to know Photoshop well but I haven't kept up with it in the past 10 years so I have to re-learn stuff each time. As a result, these business cards aren't perfect. But I like them nonetheless and will be happy to use them. Here's the design:

I couldn't have made them without the help of two friends: Cristin, who drew the hippos for me and gave me permission to play with/alter them (I cut off their back halves for layout purposes) and Amanda, who sat with me in the computer lab and noticed layout imbalances and encouraged me to hurry up so we could go to my house for dinner (squash soup, if you're wondering!).

Ordering the business cards was a little tricky -- as I was warned by Becky -- and required some online live chatting with "Jonah." This is the proof. You might notice that Jonah took it upon himself to add those weird lines to the hippos' left sides. He claims that was necessary to ensure the rest of the design isn't cut off. This may well be true, but why he didn't continue the line of the hippos' backs is quite unclear to me.

There are a few other layout things (e.g., the "belts" not quite lining up with "chuppahs" and "quilts") that I couldn't figure out how to get perfect in the time I had. I'm ok with imperfect, though, because it was a fun exercise to make the business card. Also, I ended up going with black and red, though I had considered using a deep orange (Tibetan orange, if you will) in place of the red and deep purple-blue (the color of my study, visible in this post) or maroon in place of black. However, I couldn't figure out how to change the hippos, either in illustrator or in photoshop. I'm sure there's a way to do it -- and would love any tips from those of you in the know -- but again, time created certain limitations.

Thanks again to Becky and uprinting for the business cards!

p.s. I meant to post this on Friday but I've been unable to access blogger on the internet at home. Is there a setting that might have created this? Only blogger and typepad seem to be affected; everything else loads like normal...