Hey There, Hi There, Ho There!

Welcome and thank you for clicking on to Jordan Edwards Designs.

I am a 21 year-old graphic designer and (very soon to be) graduate from Columbus College of Art & Design in Columbus Ohio. I can't remember a time when I wasn't working on or daydreaming about an art project. In elementary school, I was the nerd who would sit inside and draw rather than go to outside for recess. I was the de-facto t-shirt, concert-program, prom-flyer, stage-set, school-newpaper and website designer for my high school and in college it finally dawned on me that I could do this thing for a living!

I am a Disney-loving, glasses-wearing Nerdfighter with an affinity for typography, branding and themed experiences. I have wanted to be an Imagineer since the age of five. I need Harry Potter like a Grindylow needs water. I tweet. I have a portfolio and (if you like what you see) I look forward to hearing from you!

Jordan

Headed in the Right Direction

Regardless of what the timestamp on this blog reads, it is 3:57a.m.

I have been hard at work trying to iron out the last details of hosting and domain services so that I can have something for the world to see before (during, and after) Directions. Amazingly, I was able to purchase, set up and begin using my hosting (from Fat Cow) in about an hour.

I've propped up a pretty little landing page over at JordanEdwardsDesigns.com so the new visitors will be able to download a portfolio sample or résumé.

Directions is tomorrow. Good lord. I guess I'm pretty much set. Just a few last-minute things to print and purchase. I can't wait to get in there and meet the industry pros that have agreed to come help out as we peddle our wears.

After Directions (almost immediately) I will be on my way home to go with the family on a quick vacation to the Southwest. We're touring Arizona, visiting the Grand Canyon, Phoenix, Sedona and all the sights in between. The parents even planned a stop at the Frank Lloyd Wright House at Taliesin West! It will be a welcomed respite from the crazy that my life has been the past few weeks.

I would say I'll post pictures if I actually thought I would remember to do it but, as it is, I make no promises.

Cue Jeopardy Theme or Welcome, Directions Peeps

Okay, okay.

I know.

I said I would have a real, live, big boy website up, like months ago...but I've been really busy...and...you know. Stuff.

Something is in the works but, it's being coded by hand (my novice hands, actually) and for that reason things are going slower than I anticipated. It seems like whenever I feel like I've wrangled the HTML and lassoed the CSS, they rear up and kick me in the teeth.

So, enough with the excuses.

We're down to the final weeks of school (cue epic fanfare from Star Wars)!

Classes are winding down and, remarkably, I am not stressing out too badly. Classes have shifted from the standard, run-of-the-mill assignments to Holy-Crap-Directions-Is-Next-Week overdrive. We're putting the finishing touches on our portfolios, tweaking the work, spell-checking. All that fun schtuff.

That being said, if you clicked on to jordanedwardsdesigns.com and are wondering, "What the heck?" Welcome. This is my apartment on the internet while my official home is being built. If you are one of the kind people who agreed to come to Directions and therefore received my resume and therefore clicked on to my website, I am looking forward to meeting you next week!

Welcome, Leakies!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have the great pleasure of being a member of the LeakyCon 2011 Media and Communications Executive Staff. Since around July of 2009, we have been hard at work planning what will undoubtedly be the greatest Harry Potter fan conference (read: Party) ever thrown. If you have been linked to my site from one of the LeakyCon YouTube videos, I bid you a very warm welcome! LeakyCon is going to be incredible and I can't wait to share the experience with everyone.

In the coming days, I will be posting some of my work for Leaky as well as from the past semester at CCAD along with descriptions of some of the experiences I've had over the past year or so. Check back soon!

IAAPA!

I have the pleasure of spending the week in beautiful, Central Florida while I attend events at the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (thankfully, shortened to IAAPA) Expo. The show is absolutely massive with over twenty-thousand industry professionals in attendance. The crazy thing about the amusement park industry is that "it's a small world after all!" It seems as though everybody knows somebody who knows somebody. This fact makes networking incredibly rewarding and even more interesting.

Beyond the Expo scene, I forced myself to visit The Magic Kingdom and soak up all the magic that the park has to offer. It was strange to walk the park by myself. Every other time I've visited, I've been with either friends or family. I didn't let it get too me, though. I spent nearly the entire day marveling at the expertly established sight lines that Imagineers have set up across the Kingdom. It is amazing to watch the trees perfectly frame the castle as you look east and Splash Mountain as you look west. Of course, I was also completely smitten with the scads of wonderful graphic designs speckled across the park. Each sign is beautifully lettered and blends seamlessly with its themed surroundings. It looks so effortless, although you and I both know that it isn't.

I also took some time to do some things that I have never done, even after all my trips to Walt Disney World. I rode the Peoplemover for the first time. It was a nice, relaxing tour of Tomorrowland was made all the better by the Mickey-shaped ice cream I was enjoying in the process. I journeyed into the Enchanted Tiki Room for the first time ever and, if it really is "under new management," I'd like the old management back, please. I found the show to be oddly disconnected. Iago looked like a weird, ape-bird hybrid and the whole thing ended on a sudden, awkward note. Don't make people excited to get up and dance and then force them to dance right out of the theater.

Despite 95% of Fantasyland being walled off, I enjoyed marveling at the "fairytale" architecture. My Medieval Art History teacher would be proud as I silently recounted the names of each architectural element on Cinderella Castle (gargoyles, trefoils and finials are very prominent). I am excited to roam an even larger Fantasyland when it reopens in 2013.

I have so much more I could say about The Magic Kingdom. I might write a separate post just about my observations (I say might because this site already has enough unkept promises).

Another might: I might be giving the ol' site a much-needed refurbishment sometime soon (and by soon, I mean before the start of the new year). Honestly, between school and LeakyCon, the Jordan Edwards brand has been simmering, alone and afraid, on the back burner for too long.

More soon, I hope.

Things, they be a changin'!

Jordan Edwards Designs is on its way to becoming a real, live website!

I started work last night and I'm really excited by what's happening so far. I'm not going to give a date for the switchover but it will be soon.

Stay tuned!

An Unlikely Response

Below is an excerpt from an essay I am writing for my Sociology class about my core values. I am posting this because I know many of you can relate to my sentiment.

One final factor to which I attribute many of my core values comes from a rather unlikely source. Like the marching band, it is one I was reluctant to accept at first. When they were first released, I dismissed the Harry Potter novels as just another fad, a trend that would soon fade away. I wouldn’t read them; I didn’t even like reading. After seeing the first film, my interest was peaked. I picked up the second book hoping to have it read by the time its film counterpart was released. By that time, I had read all of the published books and was in the process of rereading them. Never before had I been so taken by a series of books that I felt compelled to read them again. The Harry Potter books taught me that, though the odds might seem to be stacked against you, with courage and love and the support of friends, incredible things can happen. That message was beautifully illustrated in May of 2009 when I joined nearly one thousand fellow fans in Boston for LeakyCon, a Harry Potter convention whose sole function, unlike every other convention, was to raise funds for charity. At that conference, I came to know scores of amazing people, many of which have come to be close friends. While we came from all corners of the globe, from every conceivable background, it soon became clear that we shared in a common value, that of love and friendship and the desire to do good.

If I have learned anything in the brief time I have spent exploring this world it is that we are all pieces of a bigger picture, scattered across the globe. Everything we do, every interaction we make, changes the shape of our piece, affecting where and how it will find its fit. I believe that we are all searching for a place to fit our piece of the puzzle and can attest that it is an amazing feeling, whether it is in a marching band, or at a Harry Potter fan convention, when your piece finds its place.