Coming Soon: The Donahue Media Group

A new company is in the making…

The Donahue Media Group will soon launch a new website, before taking Portland, Ore., by storm.

Brochure

I designed a brochure for somebody’s homework assignment recently, yet I went forward with it like it was for a $1,000 client. I' had been waiting for the perfect opportunity to use this trick with the grassy typography, and voila, here it was!

So, while I essentially did the project for free, it was SO WORTH IT! Even if only for the fact that I spelled “Grow” with grass.

Here’s the cover (PS: There are a couple of typos, but I really wanted to share the design before I made my final edits!):

Calendar Contest Winner

One of my favorite websites, Smashing Magazine, holds a monthly contest where users can submit calendar designs for computer websites. Last month I downloaded one of the awesome designs for my own desktop.

For April, however, I decided to design my own and submit it. I thought I was one day late, but alas, I just found out today my design was chosen!

Now, I wasn’t the only winner, as they pick a slew of designs to feature each month (click here to see all the winners this month). But I’m still excited that such a prestigious, world-famous multimedia website would feature a design by me!

So, without further ado, here is the design I submitted (their only rule is that you showcase their logo somewhere and include a calendar in the design for only one month).

 

By the way, that photo of the squirrel was taken with a borrowed Canon Mark III during my fellowship at the Poynter Institute. I still firmly believe that any single person can take phenomenal photos with that camera.

If I can do it, anybody can (here are some of the others I shot with that awesome camera).

New Website

I finally started building my Online Portfolio (jakedonahue.com). For real this time – and not just another Wordpress template, either. This one is alllll me!

But the keyword here is STARTED.

All I have is a landing page at the moment, but I created it from scratch. All by myself. This can still direct you to my temporary blogger site holding my graphic and news design portfolio, as well as my writing portfolio on another blogger site.

You can also access many of my social media outlets along the bottom (you have no idea how long it took me to make those buttons “pop” when you hover over them).

So let me know what you think. I have a feeling the rest of the site will be based off this.

Save the Date

Now that Holly and I have finally got things organized concerning all things wedding-related, our Save The Date cards should be in the mail any day. That being said, here is a sneak preview of the card I created for our STDs (I’m not too fond of that acronym). The people at the Crystal Ballroom let me sneak out on their balcony to shoot the photo, and then a few minutes in Photoshop let me change the reader board text to a more fitting sign.

I know Holly probably wanted everybody to wait until they got this in the mail, but I just couldn’t hold back any longer!

Crystal Ballroom

I’ve been racking my brain for ideas to design our Save the Dates for our wedding this summer, but alas, I’ve got designer’s block. Obviously, since I consider myself a pretty decent graphic designer, it makes sense that I want these to be the greatest thing I’ve ever designed; after all, you’re only supposed to get married once, right?

Well, I went down to the intersection by The Crystal Ballroom (where we’re getting married in June) to see if any good photos might lend their way into a design.

Not exactly. But I did snag a few pics I liked, although they’re far from ever making it onto my Save the Date.

The famous neon “Dance” sign adorning The Crystal Ballroom.

Cars driving on the freeway underneath Burnside.

Basketball Program

Once again I get the pleasure to design an event program for North Idaho College’s athletic department: a high school invitational tournament hosted by the college. Unlike last year, where I was given a cover and asked only to design the innards, I get to create the entire program from cover to cover this year.

But before I finish (or even really begin!), I had to design a schedule for the high schools involved to post around their campus. Thus, I came up with this:

Website bonanza

It seems like I haven’t posted in over a week. Perhaps that’s because I haven’t!

Well, it’s all in good cause – building a Flash website! I know I’ve inundated this blog with routine proclamations concerning the “new” and “improved” JakeDonahue.com. Since buying my domain name earlier this year, I’ve indeed changed it's homepage more often than not.

But, believe it or not, I’ve finally settled down. Seriously. I’m not even joking!

My indecisive mind eventually buckled down, creating a monster of a website in Photoshop before transferring it to Flash. Sound easy, eh? I’ve worked on just the design in Photoshop for over a week, then spent 18 hours over two days mocking up the Flash file; I’ve since doubled the hours in just Flash, this week alone.

What’s more, I’m simply a Flash novice – no fiend here!

That being said, let me know what you think. I’m still learning Action Script and tweens, motions and dynamic images.

Let it also be said that my inspiration for this site design came from the background photo. It’s a panoramic of the downtown Portland skyline, one that I’ve bee looking forward to shooting since moving here. With my buddy John in town, we walked all over downtown before finding such a terrific vantage.

So, click the image below to view my newest attempt in Flash. Mind you, it’s roughly 80% done (still need to perfect the layout under the DESIGN tab, not to mention import material for WRITING).

Let me know what you think!

New Website

I’m pleased to announce the new JakeDonahue.com, version 2.1. Stay tuned, as there will undoubtedly be updates, but this is the new home for everything Jake Donahue: Design, Photos, Portfolios, Blog and Resume.

If it’s by Jake Donahue, then JakeDonahue.com will be the starting point. Of course, this new homepage is only the beginning. I actually borrowed a template to get it started in Adobe Dreamweaber, and I plan on learning both HTML and CSS, not to mention PHP and Flash.

Until then, when I am able to announce the new and improved JakeDonahue.com version 3.0, just go with the flow and let me know what you think (to begin with, I don’t like the bars flanking each side of the main page…).

Nevertheless, at least it’s better than nothing!

Awards

So the one year I clean up and snag a chunk of awards from the College Media Advisors’ annual design competition, Best of Collegiate Design, they stop publishing the book of winners.

But of course.

After 16 years of printing this damn publication, they stop when I make it. Supposedly, instead of the book they normally give away, all the winners receive a certificate. How cute.

However, they did make a slideshow that showcases all the winners. And that’s OK, because they only reason I ever liked the book was to see what other colleges are doing. I love flipping through and getting ideas and see who’s used some of mine.

Oh well, at least I won this year. And by that, I mean I made it into the book. And by that, I mean I made it five times! With close to 1300 entries from almost 80 colleges and universities, I’m pretty stoked to say the least.

So all is well in the land of Jakewood –- at least for now.

Here are the awards I won and the pages with them. By far the greatest success in my collegiate career concerning all things design is winning first place in the nameplate category. I spent more than a year designing the template for The Sentinel’s current nameplate, so winning that was huge for me.
 

NAMEPLATE: 1st Place

 

HEADLINE PRESENTATION: 2nd Place

 

SPORTS PAGE: 3rd Place

 

INFO GRAPHIC: 4th Place

 

 

PHOTO PAGE SPREAD: 4th Place

Flash, baby

After more than four years I finally decided to upgrade. Not a new computer, oh no. I’ll wait until I can afford a Mac. But I finally bumped up the miniscule RAM on my Toshiba to roughly a Gig and half (it was 512 MB before, believe it or not).

Yeah, 512 MB. Do you realize how long it takes to open InDesign CS4 when you’re running less than a gig under the hood? A long freaking time. How about 12 minutes to merge an eight photo panorama in Photoshop CS4. Yeah, life was dandy.

But now, sweet Jesus, I can download FLASH CS4!!That’s what I used back in Florida to make my Poynter project, and I’ve missed it ever since. Oh, how I’ve yearned for the succulent taste of action scripts and tweens, animations and motion paths.

Well, now I get to delve into it once more. Not just for fun, but for work! I’ve built the website template for my company’s book (I signed a confidentiality agreement, so no real news about it until it prints…), and I want to keep the site contained in our office – rather than pay a web programmer.

Thus I’ll be spending the better part of November with my other girlfriend, Lynda.com. There will also be a slew of Q’s I plan to sling at my Poynter fellows pertaining to web design and analytics. But in the meantime, here is what I’ve got for the template so far. Let me know what you think, but remember it will be way better in Flash, when the buttons highlight and boxes appear and the Polaroid pictures flip through.

Obama Mask: Linked

Remember this mask I made during the election last October? We also printed one for McCain on the other side of the page in The Sentinel.

Well, check out this page.

I really can’t complain about someone stealing my photo, as I often times link to other people’s photos. So I’m not even complaining. I just find it very interesting that a year later someone links to it. And they don’t even reference the photo in their blog post, either. It’s just a visual aide to a topic similar to that of the design.

ACP Best Front Page Nominee

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this little ditty I discovered earlier this month: I’m a finalist for the Associated Collegiate Press’ Design of the Year competition, specifically the Front Page category.
Talk about an honor! Here is the page that won:


So, come Saturday, Oct. 31, at the 88th Annual ACP/CMA convention in Austin, Tex., I find out whether I won 1st through 6th place. The top winner receives Adobe software (I guess I can sell it, as I already have CS4). Needless to say, I’m beyond excited. This page already won 1st place in the Non-Daily Broadsheet Cover category for the Student Society of News Design’s University of Missouri design contest. I do have to mention that one of my favorite photographers made this page possible: Tim Sorenson, who shot the helicopter photo and ASNIC pic.

Here is my competition. They all look pretty damn good, and they’re from way bigger schools with proven track records in design success. Cross your fingers!

University of Illinois: The Daily Illini

Columbia College: The Columbia Chronicle

University of Indiana: Indiana Daily Student

North Carolina University: The Technician

University of Washington: The Daily

Best Business Cards … EVER

I had seen this website a long time ago, but finally remembered to revisit it yesterday. I’m not sure how some of these people got them made, but I hope to make a new one worthy of this list.
Here is the list of all the cards posted by the Design Inspiration Lab at Inspiredology.com. However, here are some of my favorites:

This is my card, as it stands now… Definitely not as creative as the ones above. Hopefully that will change soon:
 
I rushed to get this design printed as fast as I could before I left for the Poynter fellowship in Florida, as they advised bringing personal cards.

Spot The Pelican

Wow, it’s been a whole week since I’ve posted anything. That’s the longest layover in a while.

Anyway, remember that pelican from Florida? The pelican I dedicated my Poynter project to? Well, I finally got the project online at it's very own hosted domain name: www.SpotThePelican.info (.info was only $1 … opposed to $10 for .com).

So, without further ado, just click on the image above to view the Flash website I built. And be sure to click on the VIDEO tab once at the site to view my blood, sweat and tears from Florida (since I finished the video early, I then spent two days learning Flash CS4 to build a site to host it).

The Evolution of Jakewood (Part 2/3)

After reading that very first post of mine (see Part 1 of this series: Just below this post, I reposted my first blog), it has become painstakingly clear that while I once obsessed over writing as best I could for newspaper readers I now tailor a web-friendly prose. Dumber audience? Maybe. But people who read the newspaper look for intelligent, thought-provoking articles (I personally believe); those who scour the web are looking for a quick fix.
And thus, writing for the web sucks.
Like I mentioned in my first blogger post, I’ve evolved backwards in terms of sentence structure, variety and even vocabulary. I desperately need to seek out why! My entire scholastic career, I have taken full advantage of being able to articulate my exact thoughts in a well-written way. Now? My work is short, comma-ridden and not the way I once dreamed it would look.
There is, however, one major reason that could have possibly affected all of this: design. Perhaps, instead of taking the time to perfect my product I’ve skipped right along to selling it, if you will. If I make it look good, than anyone will read, right?
This has become incredibly evident as my blog evolved over the past 10 months: More often than not I spent as much time finding a “perfect” photo or playing in Photoshop as I did writing a blog post.
Then I got incredibly lazy: simply posting photos.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing lazy about a photo blog. Some of the blogs I read everyday are dedicated simply to photographs. Yet I originally started this blog to get myself writing. While photos are indeed a nice break from long, wordy posts, maybe I should have started a separate photo blog.
Too late now, as Jakewood is just one massive hodgepodge of text, photos and videos. Now that I think of it, maybe it’s better that way.

Text Message Challenge

North Idaho College is hosting just that at the North Idaho Fair this month. It’s a texting competition divided into three age groups, where people are scored on speed and accuracy. I’ve mocked up a few designs, but they changed the theme to “So you think you can Text.”
So, I had to switch to a design reminiscent of this one:
Well, after my slow-ass computer crashed three times trying to render an 11x17 poster at 300 dpi, I finished this guy after four hours tonight. Let me know what you think.

…And Boom Goes the Dynamite!

In case you couldn’t tell, that’s me. Same glowing blonde locks, nice blue shirt and a huge wooden stick. If I were to be forever immortalized in print with just one picture, I imagine it to resemble something similar to this.

Again, if you couldn’t tell (and I feel sorry but conversely look down upon you if you can’t) that is my Nintendo Wii character: “Jakey.”

“Jakey” is a stud.

He routinely hits 4-under on Wii golf mini games, averages over 200 at bowling while time and again knocking 9 of 10 homers out at HR derby. Well, that was until today.

Being the unemployed loser I have been up until this week, I’ve been obsessed with bowling a perfect Wii game. You said it, 300. But day after day I fail miserably: Starting off with a split or beginning with a turkey only to knock down 9 on the ensuing roll. Needless to say, what began as a simple “I’m sure I can do it” has morphed into a gargantuan “I hope I can do it” that has literally transformed into an “I give up (for now).”

Well, now that I’m designing a book and learning web design simultaneously, I’ve moved Wii to the backburner. Oh, sure, I do my Wii fitness each day to track my Wii age (today I got all the way down to 26. Is that good? I’m still not sure…). But overall, I’ve been using Adobe CS4 more than Wii Sports.

But then I remembered Home Run Derby. I’ve always wanted to go 10-for-10, and it seems like I’ve been close before. Perhaps this is where I can attain my unemployed glory! I fired it up this afternoon with unrelenting fervor anticipating perfection … only to be sorely mistaken.

Our cat suddenly cowered in the corned as I routinely screamed, “Back back back back back back back back!” like Chris Berman’s infamous (yet mostly annoying) HR Derby chant:She shuddered under the sofa when I followed up the chant with a string of expletives reminiscent of the Jerry Springer Show. But when I continuously fouled off the ninth pitch after hitting 8 dingers in a row (that happened 3 games in a row!) she was nowhere to be seen.

So I gave up. I was tired and angry and mad at the world. I buried myself in Photoshop once more.

Two hours later, I was unloading the dishwasher when it suddenly occurred to me that I should bring my camera into the living room for good luck. So, I did just that. I fired up the Wii once more only to foul off the first pitch.

The Wii-mote almost went through the sliding glass door in a fit of unyielding rage that surely would have distressed our cat once more.

Alas, I calmed down. I decided one last try …Boom Shakka Lakka!! Ten pitches? Ten Home Runs!

Text Effects

Now that I’m designing the cover of a book, I’ve went through so many different ideas (probably too far away from what the author actually wants…) that it’s hurting my brain.

Thanks to this website, I’ve tried playing with over 20 different ways to just typographically state the name of the book!

Here is one example where I spent 20 minutes or so playing with a cover template that I probably won’t even use:

Actually, making text look gold-plated maybe what he wants, as this book is about making money off Real Estate investing. We shall see, I guess, we shall see. I’m sure I’ll be up late again tonight toiling over countless design ideas. Maybe I’ll just call it quits after five separate mockups.

Finally working again

I just finished up two newsletters while back in Coeur d'Alene for a few days. One is for the Booster Club at North Idaho College, where I've previously designed a new layout and five previous issues already. The second is a new project, the Friends of Tubbs Hill Newsletter.

It didn't take me long to finish the 8-page B.C. letter, as I have it already set-up in an easy template, but just as I thought I was finished I noticed I had neglected the front page entirely! So, instead of rearranging the whole thing I simply spent two extra hours whipping up this little guy (I wish I got paid by the hour on these...):


Then there was the Tubbs' newsletter. This was a small 4-pager that my journalism advisor hooked me up with. Relatively easy, I just redesigned the original (massive overhaul, but it was quick) so that it looks nothing like the original Microsoft Publisher templated mess.