As I turned 30 today, I have been reflecting on the summation of my 20s and I decided to create a visualization of it. A decade ago, I celebrated my 20th birthday in Japan… and it was my first time abroad. As I reflect back, it is clear that the most recurring theme the past 10 years has been travel and adventure. I’m excited to discover what the next decade will bring!
Here are some samples of my UX design work for the JNSQ iPad app, website, emails and marketing materials. 
While on the road, one of my photographic themes was to collect images of old signage of vintage cafes, diners, motels, and other roadside establishments. I collected about 35 images in total… here are a few of them on display.
Throughout our road trip from Seattle to Austin, I kept fastidious notes and numerical tallies of every place we stopped, ate, slept, drank, got gas, and so much more. Yes, I know I’m a little crazy, but I thought it would be fun to play with the data later. Here is a visualized roundup of some of that data. I left out many of the fine details such as the names of each restaurant, bar, campground, etc. and their exact locations on the map in order to keep it relatively high level.
Jake and I are moving to Austin! It’s a temporary plan for the time being and we are estimating tentatively a year before returning to the Pacific Northwest. Despite all my international travels, I have seen very little of the Western USA. That said, we decided to take a 2 month roadtrip to get to Austin exploring several states, national parks, small towns, antique shops and so much more along the way. I’ve remapped a roughly 2500 mile trip into an over 6000 mile trip! We are thinking of this trip as somewhat of a creative sabbatical of sorts… and we have a few creative projects we will be doing en route. We will also be documenting random aspects of the trip on our blog: www.handstandstoaustin.com.
Invitations and details:
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Website:
For Jake’s 34th birthday, I designed and hand crafted this multi-layered card containing 4 mini envelopes hidden beneath a velum overlay. Above each envelope there is a number and a clue to something that is inside. The layers of the card are sewn together on the left and fastened with three ties on the right. The card and contents then fit into a larger matching envelope, and his gift was wrapped in a similar style.
#1 because I love you: a handwritten letter.
#2 because you’re sweet: a mini dark chocolate bar.
#3 because we’re lucky: a few lotto/scratch tickets.
#4 because life is amazing: a visualization of 34 amazing moments of the past year.
The design (by me) and construction (by Jake Soder) of this project was a bit of an evolution, but ultimately I wanted a large corkboard to cover the wall above my desk for posting notes, ideas and creative inspiration. I have an aversion to whiteboard covered walls and huge corkboards that feel empty, sparse or unfinished. Therefore with this project I aimed to make the board a piece of art in itself. I combined a dark brown organic looking cork with squares of brushed steel (for dry erase and magnets) and added a 1/2 inch white wooden frame…. creating an overall fusion of rustic and modern. I initially planned on one large composition, but then decided to divide it into two smaller ones for flexibility… allowing me to move them to two different walls if desired and to change the composition up regularly by rotating one or both of the boards.
The design:
In progress:
Final boards mounted on the wall:
Livestar is an app I worked on that helps you get recommendations from the people you trust, as well as notable tastemakers and professional critics. The app supports ratings for restaurants, movies, music and more. Visit Livestar.com to get the app. Here are a few of my designs…
