Whitman College’s Earth Day 2009 is quite the shindig, a celebration so full of energy that it encompasses a week in the small Pacific-Northwest town of Walla Walla. A series of movie screenings, panels, and parties are designed to stir appreciation of the world around us as well as prompt serious discussion on sustainability and green initiatives. I was given a design objective of creating a fun, lively identity to be used across multiple print formats. I wanted to avoid the ubiquitous green and brown palettes cluttered with images of trees and gradient globes. Bright colors and retro collages mixing traditional earth imagery with innovative environmentally-friendly technology exemplify the mood and sensibilities of the trendy liberal arts crowd. I have to admit I’m a jealous I’ll be missing this year’s lineup; the Whitman crowd does Earth Day right!

I’m bringing these drafts into class tomorrow for my redesign of Project Porchlight’s logo. I think these have potential, I’m interested in developing a “PP” icon out of the intertwined CFL tubes.

Sometimes when I’m tired of my monitor’s desktop I whip up a corny motivational poster to replace it. This time the advice comes from Design Observer and 37 Signals. I’m at a pivitol time here in SF, and I need to make the most of it. I’m shaking things up a bit. I recently accepted a new job (more later) and my semester here is half way over. Here’s to bigger and better things.

I’m applying for a job as an Icon Designer. As I have no actual experience in icon design, I was given a trial assignment to recreate and develop some new concepts. Scaling things from 128px down to 16px is definitely a worthy experiment. I scaled everything up in this preview, because although the bottom row is functional at 16px, the detail looks so much better at 200%.

I’m redesigning Project Porchlight’s website for my Interactive Design class. This is a preliminary mood board/flowchart. It’s an amazing non-profit, and although they don’t need a redesign, I support their mission so strongly I figure that if anyone picks up on it by stumbling upon my little blog then its worth it. I’m feeling some parts of the identity, others not so much. I’m also developing a motion graphic that will anchor the homepage. These are midterm assignments, so look for more progress over the next 10 days or so, leading up to a (knock on wood) solid portfolio piece.

If you’re following the blog via RSS, now is the time to click andrewwitherspoon.com to see what you’re missing out on. After a feverish few days and one big setback, I’m proud to present the new site. Thanks to the guys over at Graph Paper Press I was able to quickly and drastically improve the usability and quality of the site. My favorite feature, hands down, is the full 950px post space, allowing for big beautiful landscape graphics. Also, although that “More Inside” button in the upper right may be small, there’s a LOT under there. So check that out.

My true goal is to custom build a portfolio site, and I see this current iteration merely as a stop gap. I’m in school right now and am looking for a job now/for the summer, and I needed a better face for my online presence. Thanks for checking in guys, and please, look around!

Also, I’ve been spending way too much time on Twitter lately, check it out: www.twitter.com/awith.

OBJECTIVE: Redesign the Netflix homepage along with two of its subpages. Original content was not to be altered.

A interactive PDF of the site is available here. Best viewed in Adobe Acrobat 8+.

OBJECTIVE: Prove basic Illustrator proficiency by drawing an insect. I rectified my terrible sense of scale by naming my new species after its overwhelming size.