here is hazel

Oh look, pretty dresses!

Originally posted on GUISE:

Two days ago Amanda and I had the chance to watch Mass Exodus, the annual runway show featuring collections from Ryerson’s fourth-year fashion design students.

This being my first year in attendance, I didn’t expect to see such a great breadth of designs, all with varying cuts, fabrics, and styles, within a span of just one hour. It was overwhelming, in a good way.

Still, I couldn’t help but wish the show went on for a few more hours. Sixty minutes was simply not enough to give all 58 collections the appreciation and attention they deserved. The construction of many of the pieces were so good it was hard to keep my constant exclamations of I’d so wear that! to myself (sorry Amanda).

Aside from those in the photos, other notable designers whose work stood out to me include Kendra Pegg with her androgynous ensembles, Alexandra Boultzi’s troupe of Japanese warrior women, Lia Valdez’s highly provocative fetish pieces, Monica Saraguro’s lace-fur-and-leather collection, Kelli Kikcio’s menswear, and Alexandria Julian’s cast of Little Mermaid ballet dancers, complete with a tights-clad prince!

Thanks to the Mass Exodus crew, you can watch a live stream of the whole show right here and see photos on Flare.com.

Here is the graphic design activity book I was talking about earlier.

I had the privilege of collaborating with a handful of other very talented classmates to design and build this 20-page book for our final project and it ended up looking incredible! It was so enjoyable to do, mostly because my group worked extremely well together and were all pumped about the project.

The idea was to create an activity book for those just getting into graphic design. As you go through the book, you get to learn about the elements of design through the different activities we created.

We invented a mascot named Steve (he’s the dude with the glasses) who is also learning to become a designer and is present in every page.

There are lots of fun aspects of the book, including a pair of glasses you can wear and design yourself, a fully-functional colour wheel created by Raina, as well as a certificate done by Brandon congratulating you on finishing the book.

There’s even a “Graphic Design Pledge” you have to recite once you’re done, which goes like this:

I am a graphic designer, see me kern! I will only use legible fonts. I will know the right time to use serif and sans-serif fonts. I will respect the difference between a font and a typeface. I will understand that there are many colours in the world, and with that understanding, I promise to pantone each and every one of them to my best ability. I will use negative space and never fear white space.

Good design is a privilege, not a right, therefore I will never under charge and I will stand by my compositions proudly. For as long as I design, I will never forget my mission and goal as a graphic designer to improve the world visually for the benefit of mankind. Finally, I shall never stop trying. If I can think it, I can do it!

Muchos gracias to my teammates Ali, Erin, Zachary, Brandon, Raina, Caleb, and Jimmy. it was a blast working with you guys!

Nothing like being able to get a 360º view inside the Sistine Chapel—complete with background choir music—to renew one’s faith in mankind and the internet. I highly recommend you set your browser to full-view to get the full breadth of Michaelangelo’s masterpiece. Use your arrowkeys and control/shift buttons to move about.

It’s incredible how this has been preserved for so long. Look at that anatomy, those colours, and how he fully integrates the architecture into his painting. Gah!

I actually think this might be better than being there in person, what with those tourists crowding the chapel and all.

Welcome to another edition of What Did Design School Make Me Do This Time?! where we take a peek at some of the shenanigans Hazel gets up to inside that place that resembles a pixellated cow on stilts.

In this episode, we have a cynical hole puncher, a hand created to look like a lowercase N, a design about design, and a dissected computer.

Well, that’s it for today! See you in the next episode of What Did Design School Make Me Do This Time?! Cue applause.

One of the projects I’m working on at the moment is a graphic design activity book, which I’m doing with a few other classmates. While brainstorming, one of them shared the super cute Hyperactivitypography book.

From the same creators comes the History of Graphic Design for Rainy Days, a story and activity book made by Studio 3 and published late last year.

The story starts with a young boy asking his grandfather what graphic design is and leads to a great adventure back in time where they explore the mediums, art movements, and people that shaped the history of graphic design. I love the minimal use of colour and the kid-friendly graphics. It makes me wish that I designed it!

See more photos here and flip through a preview here.

I wasn’t able to grab some treats during Toronto’s Macaron Day, but here is the box of macarons I bought for a friend’s birthday back in February. I usually head to Nadège to satisfy my craving for this cute confectionary, so this time around I tried something different and stopped by Petite Thuet on Yonge Street to see how theirs measured up to my regular pâtisserie.

It’s clear how differently they brand themselves from Nadège just by taking one step inside the store. At Petite Thuet I saw breads inside baskets, a shelf stocked with jars of jam and a casually-dressed person behind the wooden counter. While Nadège could be described as minimal, sharp, and very high-end, Petite Thuet lies at the other end of the spectrum with words like rustic and laid-back coming to mind.

As for the macarons themselves, I found Petite Thuet’s to be a bit larger, contained more ganache, and had more food colouring than its counterpart. When I opened the box after a long and bumpy bus ride home, half of the treats from Nadège had cracked shells (see photo #7). Now this could be entirely my fault for not carrying them horizontally or as carefully as I should have, but it was still a very disappointing thing to see.

They also had an inconsistent amount of filling, which you can compare between photo #2 and #6, the latter of which shows an orange macaron with practically no ganache to separate the two shells. Was this another result of the bumpy bus ride home? Should the blame lie on the baker at this location? I honestly don’t know. So let’s move on to what matters most: the taste!

As I said before, this box of Nadège macarons was a gift, meaning I didn’t get to taste any of them. But from previous visits to Nadège, I can confidently say that their Rosewater macaron wins against the version at Petite Thuet, which was much too sweet with the unnecessary pink sugar sprinkled on the shell and which made me feel as if I was eating perfume—blech! The brown hazelnut macaron was lovely, though it tasted like it had a bit of coffee flavour in it? That was confusing.

The ultimate test came down to the pistachio macaron, my all-time favourite flavour. I definitely prefer the light green colouring on Nadège’s pistachio macarons but since there was a larger volume of ganache and meringue on the macaron I bought from Petite Thuet, I’d have to go with theirs.

I could go on and on about macarons but this blog post would become longer than that english essay I have to finish by next Tuesday, so I’ll end it here. I still plan to try Petite Thuet’s salted caramel macaron which I keep reading about, as well as Nadège’s nine other macaron flavours so this isn’t the last you’ll see from them.

ALL PHOTOS © HAZEL LLANES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Those who know me in real life know that I am crazy about anything nautical-themed. So much so that my most worn pieces of clothing are, by far, my numerous striped tops and my good ol’ trusty navy blazer (complete with gold anchor buttons). I even have a captain’s hat that I throw on during Halloween.

Naturally, I created this huge set on Svpply called Nautical Nonsense. It’s a carefully compiled collection of all things nautical, from accessories and menswear to books and home decor, and it’s still growing. For anyone having difficulty getting me a gift, you know where to go.

I started this a year ago as a portfolio piece to show to a couple of schools. Didn’t end up finishing it in time so I decided to stretch my Illustrator muscles for a bit and refined it this morning.

I’m considering making this a regular thing; creating an illustration for a random quote. What do you think? Any suggestions for good quotes?

Shifting away from the school projects I’ve been posting, here’s a logo I made for a friend’s store recently.

Since I knew the client personally, it was fairly easy creating a logo that fit her style. It’s very loopy and feminine but it also has some hip hop influence with the way the type is written. One thing she requested was that her afro be incorporated into it in some way and I did this by connecting the first and last letters together.

This was ridiculously fun to make and what’s weird was that the pen tool and I got along for once. I need more projects like this.