professional design & web portfolio of Cara McKinley

 

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Viewing posts in: Digital Art

Dont’ Call It ‘Expresso’

Several weeks ago Threadless, a Chicago-based company that prints t-shirts from community submitted artwork, posted a design challenge called ‘Threadless Loves Coffee‘. Every month or so they create these design challenges, which usually involve a specific topic and some financial/material incentive from a third company. I don’t normally participate in design competitions since they are a little too close to spec-work for my liking, but Threadless really supports its artistic community, and the participants are really getting a chance to make the artwork they enjoy and have a chance to get something for it, versus trying to provide services to a real client.

Since this design challenge was about loving coffee, I couldn’t pass it up, because… I really love coffee. It gave me a goal to work toward, and after coming up with some idea/sketches for an infograph, I went for it. I called on my 3 years’ experience as a barista while in college, and created a conversation piece about making coffee the right way.

Don't Call It 'Expresso'

404 Not Found: Now More Interesting

404 Not Found error pages are something often overlooked in the design of a web site, with most templates often left to their generic and somewhat intimidating output – the large Times New Roman error message. Inspired by Smashing Magazine’s review of some very lovely 404 pages, I made my own for this site. Since hopefully no one will actually be seeing the 404 page, I wanted to post the artwork here so that it can see a little daylight. A prettier collaged version sits below, but for the actual page I used a version that more closely follows the simple cleanliness of this site design. You can test the real 404 page here.

Textured version of the 404 art