Happy New Year, 2012!

As we all stumble back to work today I wanted to take a minute to wish everyone a very Happy New Year! I wish you prosperity, joy, laughter, success and happiness for this year and more. 2011 was a whirlwind of a year for me. There were hardships, difficulties, sadness but also resilience, strength and love. Most of that is personal but from that came a rebirth and a chance to start anew. In 2011 I returned to more full-time work with my notable clients EFS, Alex Shakar and Mauricio Calero Photography. And 2011 marks the year of my first print publication with the illustrations I did for Shakar's Luminarium. I also made a mental note to learn more, keep up with industry news and trends, get in touch with peers and mentors, and delve into the design & dev community in Toronto.

2012 will be more of that and I hope more work and more wonderful clients. As the year begins I already have some small projects for a couple of clients and January will be a busy month for me. January 2012 marks the launch of Mission US - Mission 2 "Flight to Freedom" on January 24th. I'm so excited to be able to finally show you what I've been working on for most of 2011! Be on the lookout for more soon!

Next week I will be speaking at a local high school to kids about design and development and how to leverage your skills to build the career you want. I'm also scheduled to help with Ladies Learning Code in Toronto for their January workshops. LLC is a relatively new initiative to help females learn about technology and programming, something I have recently become passionate about.

On the list this month is also a complete redesign of my website portfolio and this blog. I've decided that I want to consolidate my website and blog so that they are both easily accessible and people can come to one place to find all of my information. I have had this redesign in the back of my mind for the last half of 2011 but haven't had the time to buckle down and get it done. This will be a bit of a challenge as I want to redesign it and my mind changes daily. But I'm kicking myself in the ass to find one direction, focus and get it done. The challenge is always to find one a design direction and stick to it. I can do this with my clients but always find it hard to do when designing for myself. In terms of development I'd like to leverage some HTML5, CSS3 and possibly use a Responsive Web Design approach. I am also moving all of my content to a Wordpress enabled site which means that I will create my own custom theme for it. Now to get to sketching to define the look - I have so many ideas in mind. I just have to remember that this will be my design for now, it can/may change in the future but design for my taste and style now.

I hope to continue work with some of my clients in the new year and also gain a few more. Along the way I'll continue to learn and showcase my work.

Best wishes for a productive and prosperous new year!

Ivonne