Packing up is always this wild ride of memories for me. I have this knack for hiding things that I know I’ll get at later, and then over the years completely forget about them. Crossing my fingers I can get my act together this next time. I came across these photos I took while on a winter vacation to France with friends in 2009. We somehow all made it there over our extended winter break during our senior years, and it’s become this kind of extreme running joke “oh, you know, that time we went to Paris for New Years…no big deal.” Hah. We definitely scored as far as finances went, having friends living abroad and getting tickets on the cheap in advance. We saved up so we could spend a couple nights in Montmartre and enjoy as many espresso shots as our hearts desired along our walking adventures before we headed to different destinations to spend the rest of our three weeks. I went off with Megan (france-hugger) to stay with her in a little town called Fougeres. She was teaching English there, and I was able to stay in her apartment during the week and take small weekend trips with her over the visit. I’ll just let you know that this part of the country was known for its salted caramel and hard cider. I was kind of in heaven. Local cuisine is one of my favorite things to experience when I’m on any kind of trip.

These photos brought up two things that I definitely am needing to get into again. One: taking actual photos. These were all taken—not very well, as you can see—on my old holga camera. It was the kind that could flash different colored lights to set the mood. Leave it to holga to have a mood-setting camera. Two: getting my butt back abroad. I’ve been feeling it for a while, but now that it’s been almost four years since my last trip. The itch is getting a little hard to bear. While I’m certainly a fan of France, I’m thinking I need to head somewhere a little different on my next trip abroad. Sydney? Amsterdam? New Zealand? I’m sure this won’t be happening any time soon, but it is fun to dream about. Does anyone have any favorite spots I should jot on my list?

PS, can you stand my duck face and blonde hair!? I had to include that one for a giggle. This was taken on a weekend trip to Renne where Megan and I stayed with her friend Thomas. We traded making him salmon crepes and espresso for a couch to sleep on. We did have to walk through an abandoned fun-fair to get to the crepe man, but I’d say the trade was well worth it in retrospect.

This post is a long-time coming, but I didn’t want to jinx anything by writing about this before it was officially official. These past couple months I have been on a whirl-wind of a job search, which has been full of opportunity, but full of complete highs and lows at the same time. Mixing that with finishing up school, computers dying, and tying up lose ends with my job in Savannah before I graduate, I’ve been more of a mess than I’d like to admit. As of today I signed my paperwork, and also put a hold on a new apartment in…Cleveland! I’ll be heading back to my roots on Lake Erie, but starting a whole new adventure at American Greetings as a designer on their stationery team. I couldn’t be more thrilled to have this opportunity to do something I truly love day-in and day-out. It’s a true blessing.

I can’t wait to start on my new adventure, and I’m so thankful to all of those that have supported me along this journey. It sure has been full of jumps and bumps,  but there are so many of you—family, friends, boyfriend, professors, readers, and many more—that are getting huge cyber hugs from me right now. I’m a huge fan of positivity and you have all been there cheering me along this whole time, and giving me that much needed constructive feedback when necessary. Thank you.

Along with this new venture in my life, things are definitely going to start changing around here. Starting off, I’m letting myself off the hook with blogging until that thesis is personally handed in to the graduate studies department and I get those signatures from my committee. This just needs to be lower on my priority list for right now. As it’s intention, this space is all about my journey as a creative, so it’s bound to grow and get pruned here and there. I don’t know where things will be going, but I can feel that change is in the air.

Savannah darling, you will be missed.

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So where did this week go, huh? I’ve spent almost every day this week working deeper and deeper into my visual thesis, and reading a ton on interactive design, our brains (yeah!), and even some on creative processes. The written part is all figured out as to structure and topics and found quotes, but a couple pages still need to be written. I can’t believe how I went from a panic a couple weeks ago, to kind of smooth sailing. There will be some road bumps ahead, I’m sure, but for now it’s more about being able to truck along than anything. It’s always nice when you find those last couple things that seem to tie up all those loose ends. If you’re in to reading what I’m reading, check it out:

Learning to See—A great post on how we learn as graphic designers.  There was a great part in this post about the difference between knowing typography and being an expert in typography that had me all ‘yes yes yes!’—then more of those moments happened. Just read it.

Designing with the Mind in Mind—I’m only a bit through this one, but if you’re into web design or UX design, this is a great one. It shows you how our brain works, and how to design interactive elements based on how we think as humans. I’m way into it. Hah.

How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer—A look into famous graphic designers and their creative processes. Two words: Stephan. Sagmeister.

Other than thesis, I’ve spent a lot of time blowing my nose and sneezing and taking allergy medicine. I think half of my week is spent trying to figure out how to act like a normal human that isn’t terribly allergic to the outside right now. I really need to get my hands on some local honey, stat.

I hope you have a lovely weekend everyone. I’m off to craft and read and to generally fill my brain with knowledge. Oh, and these happened again. Snacks galore.

Background by Pheobe Wahl // Foreground by Megan Cignoli

So you’ve maybe realized that I haven’t done a real Alt Summit recap on here, huh? Well, it’s come to the point where I don’t think I can cover anything that hasn’t been said. Over the past month—I can’t even believe it’s been a month already—there have literally been hundreds of posts going up. Yes, Stephan Sagmeister was out of control awesome. Yes, I made so many wonderful new connections and friends. Yes, it was super sparkly. You got this I think. In case you want to get your hands on some of those posts, my new friend Callie of Call me Cal has put together a wonderful pinterest board full of round-ups and everything Alt Summit. You could totally get lost in there for hours if you’re up for it!

Instead of posting everything that I did and learned while at Alt Summit, I came home a little overwhelmed with catching up, but I also took the knowledge I had gained and started to put it to action here on the blog. Maybe I don’t talk about this enough on here, and rather in my head or to friends and family, but what I’ve really been striving for over the past year is a journey towards happiness.

I’ve been designing for a little over six years now, all while in school. I’ve gone through the internships, the taking-jobs-for-free-expereince thing. I’ve tested out a lot of different artistic venues: concert promotion, working on magazines, marketing, advertising, etc., etc. I’m just ready to find my place—and blogging has really been helping me figure that out in a lot of ways. It gives me a place to experiment with new things on a smaller scale, and test if they are adding to this goal of happiness, or taking too much away from it. Of course, you’re always going to have to do a little of what you don’t like—not everything’s gravy. What I’m searching for is more of a balance—where I feel like I’m doing what I love more of the time than I’m doing things that make me unhappy. I’ve realized if you can’t stay on the happy side of that equation, it’s just not worth it. You feel miserable, and you start to dislike even the small parts of that something that did bring you joy—aka my concert promotion stint.

I guess the point of this story is that I kind of started to feel this way about blogging before Alt. A little before Thanksgiving I took an unexpected extended hiatus from the blog. I was feeling uninspired, and it started to feel more like something that I had to do—I fell towards the unhappy side of the equation. After Alt, what was most significant, is that I got my spark back. While you hear time and time again that it’s not about the numbers, it’s not about sponsorships and how many fans you have on Facebook, sometimes those things just get to you a teeny bit. I felt like I didn’t have a voice, and I was more or less just adding to the clutter of the blog world in a really insignificant way. I’d lost my vision of why I started blogging in the first place—to find my passions and explore on a more regular basis. Since Alt, I’ve started cataloging my inspirations, I started planning with an editorial calendar—I got organized! With this organization I was finally able to see the bigger picture and make this space more of what I needed it to be. It’s getting there, and I can clearly see what a positive impact this has been having on my creative life—and yes, even my numbers—and the not-so-surprising part of that, is that I’m not worrying about that anymore! Rather than scrounging last minute to come up with posts, now I marinate on them for a couple days—or weeks—and feel like I’m contributing things that are more significant to the community and to my personal creative journey. It’s been great, but it sure has taken some time to get to this mind-set! I’m so excited to come on here every day and share the things that have been going on in my life, the artists that I’m inspired by, and looks into the lives of other creatives. It keeps me going, and I hope that it gets you rilled up to get a little creative juices flowing in your own life.

Going through my research for my thesis, I’ve been studying how blogging and other self-curative media—aka pinterest, twitter, etc.—can aid in the experience for the creative professional. I was inspired by my own ventures and I wanted to intricately study why this experience has been so meaningful and life-altering. Through my research, I’ve seen one thing that comes up time and time again as something that is important for any learning potential: reflection. What’s great about blogging is that you’re constantly putting together life experiences, images, thoughts, and inspirations and putting meaning to these items in a new way. You’re reflecting and taking that time to work out new items of knowledge so that you’re actually aiding in the learning process rather than letting these experiences happen and not making any significant meaning out of them for you to use in the future. Anyways, I realized that while I’ve been practicing this and aiding in my knowledge in a visual way, rarely do I take the time to write on here and really work out my thoughts. I want to start doing this on a more regular basis. I firmly believe after my research that doing this will significantly impact the personal learning potential that the blogging process has. I hope I impressed you with that professional research-lady sentence. Hah. This has probably already been one of the more cathartic posts that I’ve done in the past couple months. It’s not going to be perfect—I’m new at this writing thing. I’m akward in my opinions and jumble my thoughts, and probably won’t make many points for the first few of these. The important thing is that I’m trying, and it’s an experiment to test out if this research really has any ground. Have any of you been doing this? I seriously applaud you if you’ve read this far ;) Have you noticed that when you take the time to reflect on your blog that those reflections have had an impact in your life beyond the post? I’m so curious about how this effects the learning process, and I’d love to hear from you!

Cheers to our journeys, friends! Thank you thank you for sticking with me on this one. It’s going to be a fun ride, I think.

PS: I’d really like to give a shout out to my girl Katelyn Brooke. She gifted me a coveted dribble invite, and I’m excited to get started and see how this venue aids in the creative process as well! I haven’t posted anything yet, but if you want to follow me now, I promise to get some process and goodies up there shortly. Are you on dribble? Let’s be friends! xoxo

OK, for reals signing off now.

All photos taken by Kelsey Cronkhite specifically for Pinegate Road

This girl is off to Salt Lake City in the AM, and I couldn’t be more thrilled. I’m ready to take everything in and finally be connected in a more tangible way with this world that has really captured my heart. Wish me luck!

While I won’t be posting here, if you’d like to follow along with the festivities you can find me on instagram, facebook, and twitter. See you next week friends.

BACKGROUND IMAGE // FOREGROUND IMAGE

ONE—I’m on track to graduate in June, and I’ll be writing my thesis this quarter. After a little over two years in grad school, I’m finally ready to put all this new-found knowledge and practice into full gear and find me a big-girl job. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been working in the field for years now, but it’s always been simultaneously done while working on one of my degrees. My goal is to rock these last couple months with school, find a job where I’ll be doing something that will make me happy, and get to living life post-school.

TWO—I feel like it’s ok to write this since it’s something I’ve been constantly working towards for about six months now. I think I munched on one [or fifty] too many cookies over the holidays, so now I’m back to losing about 15-20 pounds to reach my goal weight. Is this weird to talk about on the blog? Maybe. But I think putting this out there helps me be accountable for my actions. I want to go into my job search and graduation feeling like the best version of myself. Maybe this means losing the weight, but maybe it just means that I continue to take care of my body with healthy food, exercise, and a better state of mind. I don’t want the quick fix, I’m in this for the long haul. This year I want to keep my health a priority.

THREE—This is my big one. Over the past couple months I’ve been steadily taking on more and more freelance, which has been an overwhelmingly wonderful experience. I’m learning so much, and I’m getting to practice design that fits within my aesthetics on a regular basis. I also have a tendency to say yes to every opportunity that comes my way. So, when I finally do get some ‘free time,’ rather than really relaxing, I’m filling this time with little projects or things that I said I’d do for people. I love helping people out, really I do, but when I say yes to everything it really starts to pile up and I become resentful, stressed out, and just a terrible version of myself. I need my me time to binge-watch netflix, or experiment in the kitchen—it keeps me happy and sane. This year I’m going to start practicing saying no and setting boundaries.  I need my free time to make the rest of my working time function sufficiently. Starting this  year I’m taking a break from freelance to focus on writing my thesis and starting the job search. There’s no doubt that I’ll get back at it in a couple months, but for now I need to set my priorities straight and focus on the big picture items.

FOUR—After more than a year of consistent blogging, I now know that this is something that I really want to continue with for quite some time. I’ve been all over the place with blogging over the past year, and this year is for forming a solid foundation based on consistent variables. Soon I’ll be launching a refined re-brand for the blog and my personal identity. It will keep along the same aesthetics that I have, but will just help with building consistency throughout the Pinegate Road brand. I’m hoping to consistently post about three times a week, and make these posts special. While I love my columns, and they will most certainly pop up once in a while, I don’t want to be confined to a certain something having to go up on a certain day. I’ll be attending ALT in a couple weeks, and I think this will be a great place for me to start to define where I want to head this year with the blog as well. I want to make this little space the best it can be, and a place that consistently inspires—not something that has a few good posts muddled around with more ho-hum ones. I know it’s a journey, but I’m committed to making Pinegate Road a much more consistent and inspiring place this year.

FIVE—I think this kind of gathers up all the rest of my goals and over-arches them. With everything that I do, I hope that the end goal of those actions ends in happiness. What I’ve learned this past year is that, while not everything you do will actually make you happy, I need to focus on being more happy on my journey towards my goals rather than hoping I’ll be happy when I get there. The majority of time you have is the time you spend working towards your goals, the making of the goal is only a fraction—why make that your entire happy? I want to put my happiness on a pedestal, and really work towards making those moments pop up in my day-to-day life. I want to make sure that where I work this next year is a place where I know I’ll be happy, at least most of the time. The Lentement project was one way I started putting this mind-set into action this last year, and I hope this can continue in the future.

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Break is well underway, and well, it doesn’t really feel like it! For the past couple years I’ve filled my breaks with traveling to visit friends and family across the country—and then I come back to school and feel more stressed than ever. This year I made a pact with myself (you do this too, right?) and I said: “Kelsey, stay at home, no matter what. Relax. Binge watch television. Go on long walks and enjoy the sunshine. Juice.” So I’m doing precisely that. After this past quarter of at-home working and schooling, I feel like I’m just kind of continuing on how it’s been. I picked up a few projects, and am working on a rebrand so that I can be all shiny and new when I head to alt come January. It’s nice to finally put some time into working on personal projects. And that large canvas that I’ve been talking about? Well that’s getting painted over in the next week. I can’t wait to get all these things off my to-do list. Speaking of my to-do list, I have an exciting post coming your way tomorrow that will show you how I’ve been making it through my schedule over the past month, and how you can get in on the action too! This month is a little giveaway crazy, but ’tis the season I suppose—and who doesn’t love free stuff??

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Things have been slow with finals, and boo boo, I’m taking another break from le blog this week. I’m heading home to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family (and another special friend!). About a month or two ago, I set Megan up with one of my cousins, and surprise! They’ve really hit it off. Despite the distance, she being in St. Louis, and he in Erie, their Skype romance will be going beyond virtual and she’ll be coming home to out family Thanksgiving. I’m so excited that these two very special people in my life could get together and I’m wishing them all the luck in the world. It really seems meant to be. I hope I’m not blog-cursing this, jeeze! Not only is Megan heading to my hometown, my Aunt and little cousin will be joining as well. Our family might be weird and beyond silly at times, but I love them all so much, and I’m so thankful that I get to spend some quality time with them as much as I do. And no blog posts are going to get in the way of that time.

So, adios friends. I hope you have a magical Thanksgiving, spend some time with loved ones—virtually or otherwise.

PS—during my lazy weekend I decided to have a holiday-themed photo shoot! I can’t get enough of the holiday spirit, seriously. The banner in the back was graciously sent to me by minted from their new décor line. And what would a holiday photo shoot be without some sparkle? Thanks to ban.do, I could spread the holiday cheer with this sequin heart pin.

As I’m heading into the last few weeks of my quarter, it about time to get in the groove with school. In the past while I’ve been enjoying the repercussions of my last project, and just taking the time to slow down and enjoy life for a bit! I can’t tell you enough how much I need that in my life, and it’s been wonderful hearing from those of you participating. Keep it coming, I’ll be doing an update on the effects of the project soon. Megan’s visit was nothing short of amazing, and I’m in such a chipper mood from finally being able to wear a coat down here in Savannah! Donning some pretty sparkle definitely adds to that happy feeling. Here’s to hanging in there—especially you folks up north!

Oh, and that typical warning that I give you all around this time—posts are going to get sporadic and weird, just saying.

My dear friend Megan gets into town today and I’m beyond excited to galavant around Savannah with her this weekend. I think this outfit would be perfect for our adventures, don’t you think? The warm weather is still here, and I’m soaking in every last bit before the cold comes—which I’m also extremely excited about embracing. Can you say sweater dresses?

This photo is from the series Not so Serious by Vishesh Verma, and it’s seriously gorgeous. Talk about a fantasy photo shoot! I encourage you to check out the rest by clicking on the source link below!

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