My portfolio also won an awesomeness award. Because, well, I am awesome.

Original Moxie has now launched as my portfolio site, and all that will live here is this little blog of mine.

It has been a busy couple of weeks, and I cannot wait to finish up a couple of client sites so that I can focus on finding a full time job.

It is a story of 2 siblings, they happen to be from Venus, who are very, very different, yet still love each other.

It was written for Henry and Jane Escamilla, two of my youngest cousins (they are 3).

I have now moved on to creating a design based on / inspired by the people in my life. I am 3 people in, and I have to say it was a brilliant idea. It is much easier to be inspired when you have a starting point other than just being creative. (Magda, Beth & Melissa)

I wrote a design manifesto that I plan on following as well.

I am starting up a knitting design & inspiration blog (not a full on knitting mag, because that will take waaaaay too much time). It will be at http://knitdea.com.

Each week I will post a round-up of all of my designs from the week, both my challenge pieces and client work. Mainly, I just want to show off.

I can be found on twitter via @maryfran, @purpleurbia (my web design blog), @purplecrayonweb (my web design company) and @knitdea (my new knitting site).

Knitdea and Purpleurbia will soon have Etsy stores – Knitdea’s selling knitted hats (go figure!) and Purpleurbia’s selling some print work…I am getting a little letterpress to see how well the tactile graphic arts like me

This site will be getting an overhaul in March/April in preparation for graduate school applications.

It is going to be a ridiculous couple of months, but I can’t wait!

Besides, I have this domain, so I might as well use it. I need to make sure that when you search for me, I come up as the entire first page of search results (currently there is an obituary for someone in Texas with the same name with me appearing after my site, resume, Biznik, LinkedIn and Purple Crayon Web Studio profiles.

The focus of this blog will be Design (of course), building a business, and of course some of the stuff that I do in real life (make things and have city adventures).

Basically, I am going to be claiming ownership of my name. (And hopefully being interesting.)

I got some pretty cool pictures while I was there making the pitch:
I was in nerd heaven. I might just be buying a kit to buy a robot there for myself one of these days because it would be fun.

And, those pictures are from my phone, and not retouched in photoshop or any of the apps.  It really is that colorful and vibrant in there.

I have it on good authority that they are giving away custom greeting cards next week and a custom vinyl banner the next!

If you win the poster or the cards and want a custom design, we will throw that in for free!

Please go there and comment!

When you say that you support WordPress, make sure you tell your customers that you support only a very old version with a giant security hole.  And that if you want to use a more recent version you have to pay someone there to make a recent, stable version work because you have limited your customers options so greatly when it comes to the installed applications.

And customer service people who don’t actually know what they are talking about.  Just an FYI – Mod_rewrite is not an .htaccess file, it is an Apache module that allows a specific set of rules to be added to the .htaccess file which then allows an application to re-write links (so your browser address bar isn’t filled with gobbeldy gook – and, yes that is a technical term).

Oh, and having boobs doesn’t make me an idiot, just an FYI.

Don't lie to customers, it isn't nice

Sorry, I might be a little irritated, I just hate it when technology companies make false or barely true claims and the public believes them.  And I really hate that this information is not clear at the onset, even to someone like me.

New York, here comes Mary Fran

I leave for my first vacation in quite a few years tomorrow.  I haven’t been on a plane since an interview with Google in Ann Arbor, MI (yes, I had the poor taste to accept such a ridiculous interveiw).  And, I have to admit that I am a wee bit nervous.  I was going to try to pack in a carry-on sized bag.  Ha!  My camera equipment doesn’t fit in my laptop bag.  And, I swear I am only bringing one lens, one DSLR and one little point & shoot digital. And only one moderately sized laptop so that I can work while on “vacation”. If I do enough work, does the travel become a work expense?  I guess we will see on that one – and I will have to re-think my packing.

I wanted a simple logo that was easily recognizable and that was reminicent of something of my childhood (and the company’s name), so it is a crayon label!

Purple Crayon Web Studio

This is exactly what I was going for!  It makes sense on a crayon, looks mighty spiffy off the crayon and is pretty much awesome.

Logo as a crayon label

What next?  Business cards!  But, I am a designer, so I can’t have just any business cards.  I am also on a budget, so I can’t have anything too crazy or weird.  The business cards are going to be 2″ squares.  Perfect to still fit in a business card case, different enough to warrant a second look.  And it is that second look that is oh-so-important!

Purple Crayon Business Card - Back

Purple Crayon Business Card - Front

I think that the brand is on it’s way to the look and feel that I am going for.  As soon as I have a bit more time I will add some of the finished pieces to the portfolio section.