Designer's Block (for the last few years)

I was having this long, wonderful conversation with Carina a couple days ago that left me feeling so uplifted and clear-headed.  And trust me, after the week I've had - I definitely welcomed the feeling. Our talks, ever since college, have always had that sort of effect.  We were talking about two main things (one of which I'm going to save for another entry). But one of them was blogging + designing.  I mentioned how even after all this time, I can't bear to part with my old site, withoutwords.net. It doesn't matter that I haven't used it in forever and don't have any plans to.  I've had it for 10+ years, you can't just delete something like that.  Anyway, she used to be one of my "hostees" and I completely forgot that I still had her old site up, so I sent it to her and we were just having this big laugh over it.  It was such a throwback.  

Then I admitted that a few weeks ago, I looked through all of my old designs and felt jealous of my younger self.  I know that must sound so stupid but I am! I was so inspired back then! And my designs were good! I feel like I've lost whatever it is I used to have.  Then as we kept talking about it, I started saying all this stuff that I didn't realize I felt until the words were out in the open.  The truth is, design used to be an emotional outlet for me.  (Seriously.)  When I was looking at my old stuff, I could remember how I felt at the time I designed almost every one.  All my designs were based on my mood so my layouts were constantly changing. I never thought much about what other people would think of them and I think that's my problem now when I sit down to design something.  I try to design for myself but I'm not really doing that.  I thinking of other blogs and how good they are and can I make mine just as good.  It's more of a struggle to create and feel creative.  As usual Carina got it - design meant/means the same thing to her.  When we were in college, we used to talk about opening up our own company and creating websites for people all the time.  She did bring up a good point though.  Work did change designing for us.  It's about competition, getting paid and creating ("sometimes overly hyped") websites with crazy graphics. When we were 19, we were designing for us and just us. I want to try and do that again.  I want to look at design the way I used to five or six years ago.  

So... expect some design changes on the site in the weeks to come.  Hopefully.  It all depends on whether or not I feel inspired.. but I don't know, I'm feeling pretty good right now so we'll see! 

In the meantime, here are some of my favorite old layouts. 

I made this one right after watching Before Sunset for the first time.  I kept this one for a while because I couldn't get that movie out of my head.  (I just re-watched it for what was probably the 100th time last week.)

I really, really love this one.  It's so simple. I was (not-so-seriously) thinking about moving to Brooklyn  and just trying to figure stuff out (funny how I'm still trying to do that).

This is an oldie from my college years. I wanted to try something fun and crazy.  It's definitely not something I would do now but seeing this makes me smile.

Another one I love. Before I ever went to Europe, I would think about running away to Paris whenever life got a little stressful.  The Eiffel Tower has made its way to a few of my designs in the past.. usually when running away felt like a really great option.  Of them all, this one was the best.