April from Judi - planning?

Judi's note with this card (below) explained that she combined some digital art with hand coloring. Pink and black is one of those color combinations that always seems to work. I think she said something about the zip code being not quite right. Since Judi has responded favorably to my critiques of her work - I will offer some suggestions on this design. There are three *chunks* - the stamp duo - the name duo - and the address trio, which has that extra space between the top two lines. Stretching out the zip and almost making it a rectangle was a good move. 

Then I look at the name duo which is centered. The stamps are centered. So it probably would have been nice to center the address lines in their rectangular spaces - but I will be the first to warn you that being able to eyeball an address and get it centered is something that I've been working on for 25+ years and it's still really hard for me. My only suggestions are to either pencil it first on scratch paper or print out the list of addresses with the lines centered.

That second suggestion is the winner - because it is faster. If you copied and pasted the list into a document and bumped up the point size and centered it - then you would have a nice template for centered addresses. I've done that - but I do between 20 and 30 envelopes each month - so I tend to just sit down and wing it every month - and then I also have to go through the grrrrrrrr-ing when my spacing is off.

Let's go back to Judi's address - even with the non-centering - it might have looked better without the extra space between the two top lines. That might have happened when she intended to do only two lines and then decided to put the zip at the bottom. I like the two different point sizes in the address because that  relates to the two different point sizes in the name.

As I've said before - it can be very helpful to do a quick pencil rough of how you think the elements will fit together. I only do that about half the time and wonder why I don't do it all the time. Planning is something that I actually enjoy. Other times I just like to dive in without planning. My intuition tells me that it's deeply personal. Do you like to plan? Do you like different approaches? 

My final thought about planning - is asking the question - was there ever a time when planning was not a good idea? Think about that and I'll have my answer tomorrow.

 

OK - I like spring - but those #$%^&*($%^&*($%^&*#$%^&*$%^&&* weeds. Grrrrr.