Time is on my side…

Except when it comes to finding time to blog. So, instead of a haiku, this time I present a photo of my latest progress: The Design Lab’s official home. Get on the bus….

Today.

this is my workspace...ugh.

This is what my space looks like today, and there is so much more hidden underneath. In short, I’m swamped

It’s been a while since my last post but I just don’t have the time so I’m going to write a 5-7-5 format hiaku about my updates in leiu of an actual post…it goes a little something like this:

Pebble drops in pond
Many ripples following
Soon get on the bus.

Translation to follow at a later date. Peace out!

Celia Herrera, Urban Bricks Creative Design Company
Denver COLORADO baby.

…if you need websites, marketing materials, css help, css tricks, SEO or SEM management, Joomla installations and template customization, business card design, cheap nightclub flyers and printing, green printing, shameless tag clouds, or to learn more about the innovative design bus project…holla.

The fusion.

I love what happens when great design minds come together. While it can make a process 10 times longer than it really needs to be, the end result is a culmination of beautiful elements that create a masterpiece! I’ve got a couple of recent projects that really illustrate the things that happen when creative people mesh their minds together in the name of creation…

The first project was a logo design for Solar, the reincarnation of Karma cafe. People I love dearly were involved in this project so I was really able to connect with some ownership on the end result here. What started as a few lines…turned into a few leaves…and ended with a splash of metropolis meets (insert clever word that begins with M here). With help from another designer friend, the cafe owner, and one design goddess, we were in business. While this isn’t the final final version, it’s close enough to post online for the www to see.

The second project began several months ago and with some creative input from the author, also a fabulous friend of mine, we came up with a rough book cover for “Urban Soul Warrior.” However when you’re publishing a book it’s not uncommon for the publisher to take push the initial design to their team to add their own flare to it. I’m soooo glad they did, because this is what happened…and it speaks volumes of what’s inside.

I guess the end result here is that you get to see what your design intuition paired with the creative energy of others can produce… a very rewarding experience. My love and energy goes out to both of these projects. Check Solar’s site frequently for updates, we will be launching soon, and be sure to check out Soft Skull’s site for Urban Soul Warrior by Lalania Simone.

Peace! Until nextime…

Celia Herrera
Urban Brick Creative Design
Graphic | Print | Web
http://www.urbanbricks.com

Me, Yu, and Sati.

(L to R) Celia, Muhammad Yunus, Satia

A few weeks ago I had the honor of meeting Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Muhammad Yunus at a conference for Social Business Development in Denver. During his introduction to the stage, the president of Regis University described Yunus as a small, soft and simple spoken man. I was totally blow away…without using a rash of fancy microeconomic business terms, Yunus spoke about poverty in his country, Bangladesh. He made an analogy of people in poverty vs. people who lived with financial wealth using a Banzai tree. Planting a seed taken from the largest tree in a forest inside a pot will give you a perfectly tiny Banzai tree. The size of the tree is not about the seed, it’s about the space that little seed has to grow in. Yunus believes that poverty affects people in the same way.

Later that day at a VIP reception I had the chance to meet Yunus who immediately embraced my daughter in the same loving way a father does…it was a great moment, one I hope she never forgets.

More about Yunus…
In 1974, Muhamad Yunus was a professor of economics at Chittagong University in southern Bangladesh, when his country experienced a terrible famine in which thousands starved to death.

“We tried to ignore it,” he says. “But then skeleton-like people began showing up in the capital, Dhaka. Soon the trickle became a flood. Hungry people were everywhere. Often they sat so still that one could not be sure whether they were alive or dead. They all looked alike: men, women, children. Old people looked like children, and children looked like old people.

Ashamed of not being able to do anything by teaching economics, he said, ” I needed to run away from these theories and from my textbooks and discover the real-life economics of a poor person’s existence.”

read more…

Cruisin’

I drove around this morning for about an hour trying to scope out a new cafe where I could find a free outlet and connect up to the wonderful world of webmaster-ness. Unfortunately my favorite place on earth closed down a few months ago to relocate and in the meantime I’m left endlessly cafe hopping.

Today I landed at MBD, and while they don’t serve my coconut-flavored soy latte and breakfast burrito to kick start my morning, at least they have an empty desk where I can plug in and get some things done. While Solar is manifesting I’ll continue to play ring around the restaurants understanding that they will never put my name on a bar stool the way Karma did. Still, I gladly accept being an office-less freelancer over the real-life version of Office Space my life used to be.

Nex-time.

Celia Herrera
Urban Brick Creative Design
Graphic | Print | Web
http://www.urbanbricks.com

2,809,059 blogs with 111,430 new posts today

Forget about it, I’m not trying to compete when there are 2,809,059 blogs with 111,430 new posts today – and that’s just WordPress. Now add Blogspot, Blogster, Blogmeister, Blogger, Blogness, Bloglog, Bloginator….all those other smlog sites and you’ve got approximately 547,392,384,382,102 blogs with….yeah, you get the picture.

Well being that this is my first post I’m going to keep it short and simple. I’m a graphic/web/multi-media designer located somewhere near LATTITUDE 39.75 LONGITUDE 104.87, and to save you the research time (I will create no suffering from trying to be clever-er than my 2 million+ blog coherts) that’s the Mile High City, Denver, CO.

I noticed that a lot of my favorite designers maintain some creative and informational blogs online and I figured hey, why not join the gang? Honestly I could think of 857 reasons not to join the gang, but what the hell, I’m trying to improve my SEO, share some design goodies, and hopefully sprinkle some inspiration here and there.

URBAN BRICKS. Learn it, love it, live it. And don’t be surprised if the name changes…soon.

More topics to come:

• I’m going GREEN. Yup, GREEN DESIGN. What does that really mean? I’ll tell you when I get there.
• Graphic Design Edumacation: Yes. No. Maybe so.
• Rant-om Space. I’ll probably just unload my frustration here. I love my clients. I hate my clients. I love my clients.
• PmaC: Will PC’s and Mac’s ever get along? I hate browser compatibility. Can’t we start passing some laws around this maddness?
• Hook it up – Guantes para Niños. One of my latest design projects is sending gloves to kiddos in DR. The site’s not active but I’m geeked about it enough to share my progress link: http://www.urbanbricks.com/clientfolder/guantes.

That’s all for now folks. On the topic of GREEN DESIGN, I’m leaving you with some vintage Kermit. He was the first to admit, it’s not easy being green.

Until nex-time.

Celia Herrera
Urban Brick Creative Design
Graphic | Print | Web
http://www.urbanbricks.com