Ghosts of design work past
Do you remember your very first school project? How about the first website you ever made a profit off of? It is a real treat to see a designer transform and evolve into a professional by taking at look back at where they started. Our early work isn’t something we should be ashamed of. It should be used as a visual timeline to monitor our continues growth and gain in our profession.
The following 18 designer’s took a trip down memory lane to dig up old design projects from their archives and were kind enough to share them. The following showcase of design work was created by designers I feel have grown tremendously from their early days and are living proof that time and experience will only better you as a designer and as a professional.
Antonea Nabors, VelvetAnt (@antonea)
This was the 3rd project I ever made in college. It was my 2nd time ever using Illustrator. I drew all of the elements in this project, but clearly had total disregard for typography and readability. By the way, the bolted border is not uneven on purpose.
Colin Wright (@colinismyname)
This was the very first magazine spread I put together, I believe in one of my intro design courses. As you can see, I was very interested in mixing scanned illustration work and computer-based design from early on in my education!
Anthony Sanders, Freelance Designer (@anthonydsanders)
This was (and is STILL live) a website for a record label I did for very cheap about 6-7 years ago.
Rob MacKay (@svgrob)
This was a site I “designed” for a friend a good few years now, who was setting up a monthly bands event for showcasing new talent within churches in the Northwest of England – I’m very, very sorry.
Lauren “LaurenMarie” Krause, Creative Curio (@creativecurio)
Type specimen poster for my Intermediate Graphic Design class, 3rd quarter
Chris Spooner, Spoon Graphics (@chrisspooner)
This magazine page mockup was created back when I worked at a local design studio while studying for my degree. Looking back the design itself isn’t too bad, but there are a few mistakes around the grid layout, margins and typography that I can point out now.
Jacob Cass, Just Creative Design (@justcreative)
Anno Domini Logo & website designed back in 2004 when I was 15 years old for a heavy metal rock band. This was my second ever logo design and the third ever website design
Shannon Farrell (@dolceshan)
This was something I made for Package Design class. We had to create a unique container for an item of our choice. I find this completely laughable now with the shiny cinnamon, horrible shadows, and the fact that the round container looks very flat 
Lee Munroe (@leemunroe)
Did this site about 6 years ago (when I was 18) for a local cinema, featuring tables and even a marquee. It’s still going too. www.iveagh.com
Matt Fouty (@mattfouty)
This logo was created in Adobe Illustrator 10 on an old crappy Dell PC laptop. I’m not real proud of it, but it really reminds me of how much I’ve learned since then!
Andy Sowards (@andysowards)
Wow, This post brings back a lot of memories. This is one of the earliest things I can remember creating in Photoshop.I believe I was using Photoshop CS, and I think I was 18 or 19 and in college when this was done. The image was mostly created using Brushes(some of my first attempts at using these) and some crude and simple layering effects with some hue/saturation modifications. I remember this was the first year that I had decided that I wanted to be a web designer/developer as I created many other images similar to this. Although my early work in those days revolved around pictures of myself taken on my camera phone, and sadly most just ended up in my myspace, where I also began showing interest in HTML/CSS. So I guess as much as I hate myspace now (for many reasons) It helped me realize a lot about my interests back in the day when it was still popular . Thanks for the opportunity Antonea, and Thanks to the visitors for reading, hope you found this flashback into my life insightful and interesting and learned a little about where I came from professionally!
Liz Andrade, CMD+Shift Design (@cmdshiftdesign)
Magazine cover for fictitious magazine, Voice. There just seems to be no regard to typography or grid on this, the only thing I actually like is the image concept – but that’s about it.
Andrew Kelsall (@andrewkelsall)
This was a Billboard Design I created back at University, about 9 years ago (when I was 21). The design was part of a D&AD brief, whereby all the students in my class were to create an advertising campaign for a company called “Breeze”—an organisation set in the future who took passengers on holiday to Mars.
I still think that this Billboard Design has a good concept, however, there are many elements I would change. Firstly, I would change the font, I feel it just doesn’t fit well. Secondly, I have no idea why I had chosen to enclose the logo in a white box—and that “exclamation mark” in the top right corner…what’s that all about? Thirdly, I would take away that dire purple border. I now see that it serves no real purpose.
If I were to produce this same design knowing what I know now about design with years of experience, needless to say it would look more professional and straight to the point. I would do-away with the clutter and produce a sleeker, more coherent design.
Jeremy Jaymes, Papertree Design (@jeremyjaymes)
On the left is a drawing from a 9th Grade Art class project in which we had to use grids to recreate a photograph to scale. I believe the photograph I choose came from a National Geographic but I am not 100% sure on that. On the right is a sketch of my hand taken from a sketchbook I have save for years. I would date this sketch sometime during my college years. On a side note I never actually completed a degree. Most of what I studied while attending either fell outside of the Art department or in the areas of Art History and Film.
Kawsar Ali, Desizn Tech (@desizntech)
This the first background I created for my portfolio site http://i-exist.co.cc I just had learned how to use photoshop brush and patterns. I kind “Od’ed ” with the patterns and brush. However, still I was so happy that I created something. I struggled for days just for creating that. I am still learning from all great web designer I meet online and I still feel like I do not know anything about web design.
Stuart Thursby (@sthursby)
My degree was in history, and one class was so mind-numbingly boring that I did almost anything except pay attention. In one class, I was playing around in Photoshop and came up with this. Pretty garbage now, but hey, that’s the point, right!
Niamh Redmond (@nredmond)
A perspective on being Irish – Digital Imaging project. This was one of the first photographs that I experimented with in PhotoShop when I was 18.
Chad Engle (@chadengle)
An awesome school piece for a newspaper ad.
Thank you all so much for taking the time to participate. I am sure many of you were blowing the dust off of your old external hard drives to dig up some of your outdated work!
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On May 21, 2009 at 3:02 pm Hernan Valencia wrote:
The only thing missing from this hilarious post is my own horrible design work that would be sure to grab laughs. We’re talking 1992.
On May 21, 2009 at 8:18 pm Chris Wallace wrote:
Antonea, sorry I didn’t have a chance to send in some work, if you’d like to add something for me, here’s the first design company I partnered in and designed the site. We even took pictures of our “team” on this page.
As for the work from @chadengle, I heard his early career design work is so amazing they make Chuck Norris cry.
On May 21, 2009 at 9:55 pm Sneh | LBOI Blog wrote:
Good Post! The evolution of a designer indeed! My early designs are quite cringeworthy .. well, some are
On May 21, 2009 at 9:57 pm Colin Wright wrote:
Ha ha! Very nice! Thanks for including my very yellow piece in the mix. Great idea for a blog post.
On May 22, 2009 at 8:19 am Lee Munroe wrote:
lol this is a great idea, thoroughly enjoyed the nostalgia
On May 22, 2009 at 1:11 pm Nick Hand wrote:
Hahah this is awesome, and a great idea for an article! I was just looking through all my old stuff a couple days ago as I just got my new Mac Pro so I’m doing that ‘reorganizing’ thing and finding all my old junk
On May 23, 2009 at 12:49 pm Antonea Nabors wrote:
Herman, I am sure everyone would love to see what old design work is lying around in your closet
. If you’d like it would be super cool if you left a comment and linked us to something old and then something new for comparison!
Chris, No worries! Hopefully I will be able to include you in a future post that is relevant. I love the team picture on that site. I laughed, and I just clicked it again and laughed again. Haha!
Sneh, Thanks! I haven’t met a designer yet who is necessarily proud of their early work. Haha. Some of my outdated work gives me a good laugh. I found a lot of my horrible work from back in the day located in a folder called ‘good work’ on my system. Haha. I promise none of it is worthy of the word ‘good.’
Colin and Lee, thank you guys so much for participating! I am glad you both enjoy the idea for the post. I can’t take all of the credit for it though! It was a laughable topic of conversation in a http://www.dcth.info discussion amongst a group of designers. I merely just implemented and elaborated on the idea of it!
Nick, when I was looking for something to include in this post I found a lot of old Full Sail work. My very first CSS website for the web design class we had in college is pretty scary to look at. Haha. Scripty font buttons and a lot of gradients!
On May 24, 2009 at 11:38 am Matt Fouty wrote:
Great post Antonea!
Thanks for featuring me, I am having a blast checking out other designer’s old work.
On May 24, 2009 at 11:44 am Matt Fouty wrote:
By the way … Chad Engle, you win, lol. That is amazingly awesome.
On May 24, 2009 at 11:52 am Andy Sowards wrote:
LOL Thanks so much for allowing me to participate in this great post, Looking through the post and seeing all of my great designer friends earliest work really made me smile lol. I especially love Jacobs heavy metal site, that werewolf is BADASS
On May 24, 2009 at 12:12 pm Kawsar Ali` wrote:
Oh Man I love it. Thanks for adding me. Haha @young andy ..looking good bro. Very good idea and loving it! I need red bull some red bull now chad
On May 25, 2009 at 9:17 pm Warwick wrote:
Great post, I remember some of my first designs and they were shocking.. Alot worse than these.
The reb bull one takes my vote
Warwick
http://www.ireckon.com/blog/
On May 26, 2009 at 10:47 pm chad engle wrote:
See, I play for keeps even with my old crap school work.
BAH! This is one of the first few things I did in college. Super glad I got flushed of all that bad design throughout my collegiate career.
On May 27, 2009 at 8:48 am Jeremy wrote:
Wow, what an excellent idea! This was truly an enjoyable collection of work, thanks so much for giving me the chance to participate. My vote is to see a couple more collections like this in the future.
On May 28, 2009 at 9:09 pm Antonea Nabors wrote:
Matt, Andy, Kawsar, Chad: Thank you all so much for participating! Chad, it seems as if everyone is really enjoying your redbull ad
Warwick: I am glad that you enjoyed this post! Nice blog by the way!
On June 1, 2009 at 11:34 am liz wrote:
this is awesome! we all sucked! haha (hope no one takes offense to that — i am *of course* fully including myself!)
On June 1, 2009 at 11:42 am Scarlet wrote:
<—- Still a student.
Looks like some of my current work. Haha.
On June 1, 2009 at 12:07 pm Shannon Farrell wrote:
Awesome idea! It was nice seeing where everyone started out and how much you can learn in just a few years.
On June 1, 2009 at 12:34 pm Sarah | @MadysonDesigns wrote:
This is a great idea! It’s so fun to see how far we have come. I wish I hadn’t lost a lot of my early stuff, I’m sure there were some gems I don’t even remember!
On June 3, 2009 at 1:48 pm Andrew Kelsall wrote:
Thanks Antonea for including my own work here. Only just noticed that this article was published, lol.
It’s ‘good to see all the mistakes that designer’s have made’, but more importantly, the processes that should have made them better designer’s in the end. Great post.
On June 3, 2009 at 5:45 pm Jan Caals wrote:
This post gives me some hope for my own future in design
On June 3, 2009 at 7:04 pm Antonea Nabors wrote:
Liz and Shannon: Thank you ladies for sharing your amazing masterpieces! It looks like everyone is enjoying them along with the rest of the very ‘well-designed’ pieces in this post! haha
Scarlet: We were all there once! It is important to never stop learning and to really soak up as much information as you can while you are still in school! I sometimes wish I could rewind time and be back in the classroom learning and improving my design skills. It is awesome that you are reading through design blogs though. They are truly a great source of knowledge and inspiration to stay on top of the game.
Sarah: Did you really lose all of your early work or did you just happen to ‘misplace’ it? Haha. Such a shame! It is a fun little post to see where some of these designers have come from and what they are creating now.
Andrew: Thanks so much for sharing your work! I agree it is a really great visual reminder to see how much we have accomplished throughout our careers. It also brings you down to earth a bit to remember that we all didn’t pop out of college using the grid system properly and with perfect typography skills!
Jan: I am glad that you can look at this post as a source of inspiration for your own work. It definitely gives you the visual realization that your future in design will only blossom and grow into something more beautiful then what it already may be! Thanks for dropping by
On June 4, 2009 at 1:32 pm Amanda wrote:
Brilliant blog. Sometimes when I venture into my ‘archives’ from 7yrs ago to fetch something I’m lured to look at old projects.
I am often horrified at what I see
)
On June 24, 2009 at 11:35 am slee wrote:
wow it is a very funny thing looking back over old work my first site was bright green with a menu that looked like a banana – shocking to say the least
but thankfully we have all improved 
On July 24, 2009 at 2:42 pm Shelly wrote:
This makes me want to whip out all my old disks and portfolios. I’ve saved everything I’ve ever done, but I haven’t looked at any of it ina long time. In fact, I tend to archive it and put it away as soon as the project’s over. Now I want to pull it all out and look at it – I’m sure I’ll groan and go “Oh my GOD what was I *thinking*?” LOL
BTW Chad – that back wall looks familiar. I had 4 sisters attend MU (one still does, actually) and that wall looks eerily like the ones in their dorm rooms and/or common rooms. At least, from what I can remember from visiting them there LOL
On August 16, 2009 at 4:56 pm Danny | dannyhinde.com wrote:
Seriously great post! Never seen any articles like this on any design sites before, and it’s really nice to see.
Thanks to all the designers who have shared their work.