Happy New Year?
What a year it has been — there has truly never been a time like 2020. Even though in many ways the date on the calendar is somewhat arbitrary, I think we’re all ready for the clock to strike midnight tonight, so we can collectively and mentally move on from this year. To celebrate the New Year (or, rather, to celebrate the end of this dreadful one), I designed a badge to commemorate this whole time period with the best analogy I could think of: a dumpster fire.
I created this badge in Figma, which currently doesn’t have a great way to natively bend text, but there’s a plugin called Arc that was helpful in manipulating the “2020’s Over!” text. I gave the text and the badge’s enclosure a thin stroke to make it pop a bit. Often, I spend a lot of time thinking about color combinations and typography, but this time I knew exactly the colors and the kind of font I wanted, so it was really just about getting what I envisioned in my head out “on paper,” so to speak.
One of the things I love about designing is that sometimes I don’t know the answer to the problem or how I’m going to make something look and feel until I begin to actually do it. It makes the process itself so much fun — to discover how to get things just right. On the flip side, sometimes you have an idea in your head and it flows out almost exactly like you envisioned. This was one of those times, and I’m thankful that the end of the year gave me one last thing to laugh about.
In all seriousness, 2020 has been a truly terrible year with way too much suffering and loss. May we all have a happy and safe new year and may 2021 bring much happiness, health, and healing to all. Happy New Year everyone!
