There’s no point in pretending things to be more glamorous than they are: October was a complete amuck. Not only because of the excessive amount of work that I’ve been doing – even though that aspect was also present – but also because I’ve been doing so many different things that I haven’t had time to process all my new (and lovely) experiences. This is partly why I decided to write this post, on a slightly therapeutic note.

I’ll become a graphic designer – officially

Some might know that I’m not exactly a fan of institutional design classes but it’s been annoying me for a while that even though I do graphic work all the time, I cannot ‘officially’ call myself a graphic designer. By last spring it had been annoying me so much that I decided to start yearly course in graphic design (while maintaining my day job). After some research my decision fell on Corvin Art School (Budapest), so since the end of September, I spend every Wednesday and Friday evening at their graphic design classes. Even though I’m planning to write a longer post on my experiences, I can already say that the heavy workload gives me both a hard and very enjoyable time. The extreme amount of work has a very good impact on my creativity, and it is out of the question that a day could pass by without actually drawing – or at least thinking about how to execute a certain design. At the moment it is fairly hard to grasp that this pace of life will continue until next June, but I sincerely hope that I will get used to it at some point.

The blogger world

I’m very proud to announce that a project is now LIVE, which I’ve been working on for months and months with Zsófi (Kittenish) and Ági (Csillagsarok). Studio ZODA is a new a blog supporting all Hungarian bloggers, so they find everything in one place if they want to start a blog, or become more expert in the field. The Hungarian trends being slightly different than foreign ones, we think that our new blog deals with a topic that has not yet been addressed in Hungarian. The idea was born after last year’s Blogger Day – an event organised in Budapest every year by Cosmopolitan Magazine – which we also attended this year (in October, obviously), as Studio ZODA. This is a project where I can use my graphic design skills freely (the design mainly lays on my shoulders), but I can also write about other passions of mine, such as writing itself or social media.

The long-awaited vacation

Summer came and went without taking a break, but as wanderlust never really leaves me alone, I stuffed October with some long-awaited travelling – as well as with some unexpected ones. This month I walked around the High Tatras from both Polish and Slovakian sides (twice) but I also visited Stockholm, Vienna and Eger – a wine area in the northeast of Hungary. Apart from taking a well-deserved break, these few thousand kilometres also meant that I was absent from the online world for nearly 3 weeks. This is partly why there were fewer posts on this blog and why I’ve still not managed to catch up with my to-do list.

And some illustration. Of course.

Even though I managed to fill up all 24 hours of the day in October, I still managed to find a 25^th and 26^th hour to do a bit of illustration. I am working together again with Evelin, creator of Honeybear, who was also part of the spring and summer edition of Goods From Our Garden design box. This time we are working on a set of Christmas cards with my illustrations on them. 5 hand-painted forest animals are waiting to find their owners: a fox, a bear, a doe, a reindeer and a squirrel. They are waiting for their owners in the Christmas pop-up store of Projekt Showroom (Budapest, Paulay Ede u. 29.), in Csokiszeg (Kőszeg, Várkör 69.) and in the virtual shelves of Etsy.

Apart from these Christmas cards – which have really grown on me during the project – I also worked on some wedding stationery. We had been planning for a while to work together with Ditta, who organizes beautiful weddings, and now the collaboration materialized: I’ve painted a set of stationery (invitation, name card, table number, menu) for the wedding exhibition in Budapest (4^th November). I can honestly say that even though Károly and Lina are a fictional bride & groom, they were very happy with the result. :)

So this is how the 26-hour long days of October passed. I only dare to hope that the next months will be a little less stressful, even though I’m not planning to refuse any exciting collaborations, so if you’re thinking of working with me, don’t hesitate to contact!

How did you spend the beautiful days of October?