Creating a New Mess…

I know I’m alone in this, but I’m still pretty much in awe of my new blog design by Lizzie and Isaiah of Love Your Way. (It’s more than likely gauche to say so, but since when has that stopped me?) There wasn’t anything wrong with my previous design, but it wasn’t exactly right either. Lizzie had offered before to help me with my design, but seeing her stuff made me wary…this wasn’t someone who dabbled in graphics and could help…this was a PROFESSIONAL. Did my goofy blog deserve her hard work? I mean, have you SEEN her and Isaiah’s work? Gorgeous. The most popular posts on Kind of a Mess are about boob cakes or me getting stuck in scandalous skivvies. (Seriously. I get more hits a month due to searches for boob cake than I do from anything else.) Not really of the same caliber…

But luckily for me, Lizzie told me I was an idiot and set up a time for us to get together. We met at Lili’s Bistro where I met Isaiah and their Gorgonzola burgers for the first time and thoroughly enjoyed both. Okay, I enjoyed Isaiah, but the burgers? I love them in a way that it not entirely appropriate.

Heading to their adorable digs, I also met Vinnie, the cutest little malamute ever. Well, not little, Vinnie is a long legged fool and too cute for his own good. He also minds pretty well for being such a young puppy, they’re doing really well with his training. MY puppy, on the other hand, is fully grown and has an attitude problem and massively selective hearing. It’s like living with a teenager.

We got down to work. While I was there for about 6 hours, I really think there was only about 2 hours of actual real work going on. The rest was spent gabbing, something Lizzie and I do fabulously.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a theatre kid and while I started as an actress, I moved into directing. Directing sounds important but when it works it’s really the result of gathering a group of people in a room who do a job well, and then letting them do those jobs, with occasional boundaries. There are lots of types of designers, but my favorite ones were the artsy folks that I could say things like, “Okay, listen to this song. You know the part where the bass goes ‘bam bam BAM’, and then it’s all “woooooahhhh” and you’re like AHHH!? That’s how I want the lights to look on this scene.” And they’d do it….

Lizzie and I Isaiah were like that. They had me go to Pinterest and pick out some elements I liked, anything that sparked my fancy. I chose fonts, looks, colors, designs, elements, just about anything that I saw and went, “Oooo, pretty.” It was fun, like designing my wedding all over again and using inspiration boards… Of course, as I went on, I kept second guessing myself, thinking, am I doing this right? What if I just think these things are pretty and not necessarily for my blog? What if my taste sucks and now Lizzie and Isaiah will know? I then concocted a scene in my head where I proudly showed them my Pinterest boards and they took one look, calmly closed my laptop, handed it back to me and said, “Get out.”
It was then I knew that I had to put the mouse down and step away from Pinterest, lest my neuroticism get the best of me.
And in the end, it didn’t matter. What I picked was nothing like what we ended up with. But it gave them a basis to work off of, what I was thinking combined with what they had imagined on their own.

It was really amazing watching Lizzie and Isaiah work. I know couples who are also business partners, but I’ve never have the privilege of working with one and let me tell you, I’m a little jealous. As well as Jethro and I work together as a couple, we would strangle each other if we worked together as a business. I’ve heard of people warning others off of working with your partner, but while I see their point, I think it’s kinda wrong. It’s not that it takes special people to work together, it takes a special understanding of each other and a respect for that the other one does. Lizzie and I sat on the couch and handled the site building side of things while Isaiah sat the the computer and worked on logos and the more design aspects. Both offered each other ideas and thoughts, but neither encroached on the others territory or argued with their decisions. It was less like a well-oiled machine and more like a artfully crafted ballet. You could tell that this is a partnership that’s been worked on, rehearsed and is still growing, but nearly perfected. That kind of relationship is seriously enviable.

And I am seriously lucky to have Lizzie and Isaiah as my blog designers. They’re crazy easy to work with, never made me feel stupid if I didn’t have an answer to their questions and added that extra something you just can’t fake. That’s the hallmark of an excellent design team; it’s not like all the elements weren’t already there, it’s that they pulled them together in a way that is unique and exactly what I needed, even though I didn’t know it. Designers have this way of taking these nebulous ideas, thoughts, feelings, technical needs and budgetary restrictions and then forming it into a working, accessible piece of art that just wows me. Y’all may just see funny fonts and pretty colors, but I see years of hard-work and talent, and me being lucky enough to have them leave their mark on my blog.

Once again, I asked for “Bam bam BAM, woooooahhhh, AHHHH!” and I totally got it.