An Ode to FOAM

For those who don’t know, I’m somewhat of a nerd for magazines. Last month, I opened my mailbox, excited to see that the new issue of FOAM arrived. FOAM—Fashion, Ocean (/Outdoors), Art, and Music—encompasses essentially all my passions summed up in a cool acronym. So naturally this magazine rules.

Well, ruled. Unfortunately FOAM had to discontinue publishing print versions of the magazine. UGH. But I must thank FOAM for the inspiration in all forms—style, art, traveling, action sports, music…I ended up keeping a lot of the issues because they’re well-made, beautiful, and I still find new inspiration when I randomly pick one up to read. I continue to follow the FOAM community online at foammagazine.com. If you’re into fashion, ocean, art, music, traveling, outdoors, action sports, or just cool chicks…you should check it out!

Thanks for keeping up with the inspiration, FOAM.


A WEBSITE!!!

Hello and thank you for checking out my brand new website! I hope this helps me break into the Chicago design world, so I can connect even more with my new city. Not to say I’m not accepting work elsewhere…right now, my goal is to keep learning, keep designing, and keep pushing the boundaries.

Like many may say, the road to a finished website is a long one. I wouldn’t even say a website is ever complete. (PS- Please send over any feedback—good or bad). A ton of trial and error, research, inspiration hunting, avocado-shaped-stress-ball squeezes, and grit went into creating what lies on this domain now. My road went a little something like this if you’d like to know:

I needed a website. A good one. After heeding advice of a friend, I learned some coding, because it’s great to know, especially working in the digital world. I started at General Assembly. Very fun, easy-to-follow, interactive introduction to code. I really understand the way websites work now thanks to GA. I also looked at Codacademy—have only taken one course on it, also very informative, and would love to take more lessons when I’m less busy. From what I learned, I could create a simple and attractive website.

So I went for it. Bought a domain on a web-hosting site (I chose GreenGeeks for its great reviews and ‘green’ platform—it is 300% powered by renewable energy. Read more about that here). Turns out I could have created a pretty cool website on GreenGeeks, but with a full-time job and limited knowledge of coding (and all on my own) there was NO WAY I would be able to create the kind of website I wanted with the timeframe I set. I realized the whole point of making this website was to help me focus on my art and get my work out there. My intense preoccupation with website designing was a whole new world I wasn’t ready for.  So I flipped the switch, and (after extensive research...) moved my domain over to Squarespace (perfectly timed with their release of Squarespace 7, too). The customer service team was really helpful in answering my questions, and before I knew it I had this! Emigriff.com! I will continue to make tweaks and update, and will never stop looking for inspiration everywhere. So you'll probs see changes soon.