AC Vent

A good designer friend of mine is excited this week because he’s getting a new MacBook Pro. This got me thinking about the design tools or general creative aides I find drool-worthy, and would love to have and get excited about. (These are in no particular order of importance or price, just how I thought of them.)

1. The Wacom Cintiq 12WX graphics tablet – Now, I have never owned or even used a graphics tablet before (I know, sad, right?) but I have long wanted one, and this seems to me it would be perfect. Decent size drawing area, yet compact, and shows what you’re working on in the actual drawing area, instead of having your pen working on a blank tablet while your eye is looking at the computer monitor (which I would imagine as a nightmare of coordination). Read the rest of this entry »

How did you come up with your business name? What’s the story behind it?

Naturally when I was creating this blog, I ran into the issue of what to call it. Something like ‘Amanda’s Blog’ was way too generic. But something like ‘The Green Dragon Design Notes’ was too obscure and too much.

Surprisingly, it didn’t take that long to settle on ‘AC Vent.’ It’s short, easy to remember, not hard to say. It also means several things, all of which work for me: AC being my initials (and an old nickname) and matching my logo, venting being one of the things blogs are used to do, and then together ‘AC Vent’ bringing to mind air conditioning and all of the connotations that come along with that. In this case, the connotations I had in mind were: air conditioning being a necessity here in Austin, like design is a necessity for many things; and ‘hot air’ meaning empty or idle talk so air conditioning/cold air should be meaningful talk.

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My current logo (which I am quite fond of) grew out of a process over a couple of years. My very first logo, made when I wanted something fancy on my resume when I was applying for a summer job years ago, was just a layering of Wingdings swirly symbols compiled in Word (don’t be a hater, we all start somewhere).

I eventually did a slightly more customized, enhanced version of that, which lasted for a year or two.

After design school training kicked in, I wanted something more professional, but not so generic. I actually didn’t know at the time that I was going to end up as a freelancer, but was planning on having a personal portfolio site regardless, so decided to do something centering around my initials (A & C).

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Welcome to what will be the new AC blog! Bear with me for a few days while I play with this template and gather some real content.

If you’re looking for my personal/creative-writing blog, it has moved here: Myths and Memoirs.