Theodora Nasta

A designer's blog

[theodoran-blog]

Behind the scenes: New portfolio

My first intention to make a personal portfolio was 2 years ago. Back then i used it in my final highschool project and I remember it having way to many parallax effects as this trend was flourishing. Unfortunately I can’t find any screens, it would have been nice to see the difference.

In this 2 years I struggled a lot to find the perfect fit. It was a really hard choice to settle on a style. I played around with bolder versions, at a point it looked like this:

But then I got bored of the gradient and I started to change it into a more feminine, sleek version. 

Always working on it, especially this summer I managed to get to a design that I can say I like: 

But waait a minute, isn't it to regular? Yeah, it is.

A week ago I got a school assignment to make my portfolio. My first thought: ‘Yes, i got a free pass!’. Fortunately i couldn't help myself and wonder how it would look it I’d start all over again, so I took a quick ‘inspirational look’ on Pinterest. Print design is one of my favourite design forms and this got me wanting a portfolio that looks like a modern, minimalist magazine, without being skeuomorphic. So I started designing.

After 3 days of working & lots of coffeine and chocolate i got to a version that i looooove: theodora.work . 

The main goal was to create something simple, creative, and easy to code.

All my previous sites had a CMS installed, eighter own CMS on the first one, or Wordpress. This time, because i was in a hurry, i choose to skip it and do the ‘messy’ work for each project/page. Also this is the reason why i choose to move some of my old blog posts here, on tumblr.

I used 2 plugins that i love:

fullpage.js - for creating the scrolling

smoothState.js - for avoiding the white flashes of page loads

In the end i’m pretty happy with the result, and i can’t wait to hear your thoughts, how do you like it?

My old portfolio is hosted here if you are interested.

And here is the my inspirational board.

[theodoran-blog]

360logos / 360days

For some time now i wanted to start a project like this and it's finally here :) . Why 360? Because it represent the full circle - i want to experiment all styles and formats there days. The main purpose is to improve my logo design skills as in the past year i focused more on web design. 

The only rule i have for this project is to give my full attention to each logo and to write a short pharagraph for each of them. I will take as much time i need to finish each one and if it happens to not be able to make a full one, i will post the sketch / idea and design the logo next days. Those being said here are the first logos:

Day #1 - Logo for event planner:

With this logo i tried to stay classy ad neutral, the logo can fit any type of event and it’s mood can change with the color, which makes it perfect for a multi-specialized event planner

Day #2 - Flower boutique:

[theodoran-blog]

Norwegian design 2015

Norway kept the design blogs busy at the end of 2014 with it’s brand new flat designs for passport and money. Considered to be a symbol of national identity, these items are clearly making a statement, reinforcing Norway’s reputation as an open-minded, minimalist country.

They started by redesigning the banknote series, competition that has two winners : won by Snøhetta Design, a Norwegian – American agency for the back side and The Metric System and Terje Tønnessen. Norges Bank is declaring that ‘ The purpose of the competition was to arrive at a proposal that can be the artistic basis of the new banknote series and communicate the theme “The Sea” in an appropriate manner.’ on their blog.

The designs will be modified to have all the security features they need and we expect to see the new banknotes in 2017.

The front side will featured various sea scenes, that are an important part of Norwegian culture:

The back side looks very cool and modern because is designed to show a pixeled version of the image on the front.

After this competition, Norway’s National Police Directorate announced that they have new passports too. This time the competition was won by by Oslo design studio Neue, and the design is really unexpectedly modern featuring, at first sight, a very basic (and flat) Norwegian view, but, wait for it, when it goes under UV light, the landscapes within the pages transform to show the northern lights in the night sky. And this i thing is awesome!

“All Norwegians are so connected to nature, it’s a very strong part of our history and defines us as a country,” says Gørill Kvamme of Neue, who explains that the minimal concept came from seeking to find the “essence of something”.

These examples got me looking thought Norwegian designer and brands.

Norwegian Airlines just released last week their new ad, that even if it’s more realistic look great:

Looking on Behance for the most appreciated designers from this amazing country i found Kim Holm, Creative Artist & Motion Designer that has more than 1640 followers. Here’s some of his work:

Another great Graphic Designer that i found is Daniel Brox Nordmo, who works at www.tank.no and does amazing stuff:

That one creative that will show up on the 9th position of Most Appreciated Designer on Behance is Hans Christian Øren. He had won lots of award and has been featured on more then 10 known magazine among with his team at http://www.ohyeahstudio.no/ :

Another kind of art that Norway is know for is Architecture. Pinterest boards are full of great looking and incredible functional houses and buildings made here. I just got a few shots but i’m sure you’ve already seen tons of them.

Norwegian Wood / The Lantern Pavilion, Norway By AWP & Atelier Oslo

Polaria museum (Dominoes) building – Tromso, Norway

Split View Mountain Lodge / Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter 

Tverrfjellhytta, Hjerkinn, Norway. Designed by Snøhetta

[theodoran-blog]

10 Awesome Blog Designs For Your Inspiration

To design a blog web design can be quite difficult. You need to display a lot on information while keeping the user focused. This can be easy done with big, clear fonts, good line-height, lots of white-spaces and 60 characters/line rule. But what do you do with your ads and other engagement tools you use to get more traffic? Here are 10 great examples of good webdesign on blogs for your inspiration. I hope you create something even better.

WIRED.CO.UK

They made a very smart decision in keeping the old-school blog navigation on left. Combine this with horizontal scroll and you get an awesome searching experiance  + greate UI as a bonus. The ads are spread across the post in a way they don't disturb you from reading the titles.

THEHASH.TODAY

Hash comes with a totally new approach for a news site: they distance themselves from the classic way of displaying the information by implementing a Twitter based new system. On Hash you can find the trending events from all over the world as they are tweeted. Just choose a topic and you can see what the big news agencies have to tweet about it. The best thing is that you don't even have to on twitter to use it.

MASHABLE

Mashable, one of the news giants, uses a 'Pinterest alike' layout to display their headlines. You can find here a good delimitation between categories. The navigation also works very good. Take a look:

SITEPOINT

SitePoint is an online community of web professionals. You can find here tons of tutorials and information, displayed in a really simple way. Simple and appealing.

MEDIUM

Medium a blogging platform, created by two of the Twitter founders, where people can share their and stories in more than 140 characters. As you can see they have a very minimalistic approach, accentuating the content rather then using pictures.

QUARTZ

Quartz it a tablet-fist focused news websit who’s target audience is made on business leaders who seek information that will help them better navigate the new global economy. They combine in a very good way the use of plain text and pictured based content.

TRENDLAND

Here is another imagery based website, which makes a lot of sense since it is a lifestyle blog. Stunning images and nice typography are the keywords for this design. See  for yourself:

NARRATIVELY

Destination for untold human stories – their slogan also reflects on the design: large and suggestive images combine with strong headlines.

JASON SANTA MARIA

Jason Santa Maria is a graphic designer living and working in sunny Brooklyn, NY. Based on serif typography and whitespace, he’s blog is extremely minimalistic:

SILKTRICKY

Half pictures,  half text, that’s the approach that SilkTricky, digital production company uses for it’s blog.

[theodoran-blog]

First entry to Dressed in Blossoms Project