Design’s Tegan with fun
Some time in 2018 I asked my niece, who would have been about 7 years old at the time, to design a homepage for my website. I gave some requirements about what needed to be on there – a way to get in touch with me, a few images of the work I had done, and a title. On her first attempt, she created what can only be described as perfection:
The title Design’s Tegan with fun really captures the fun that I’m having doing design, the logo ‘DT’, unintentionally reminiscent as it is of tiny men’s swimwear, and surrounded by cheeky hearts and stars, also alludes to that playfulness. It’s not just conveying to others the importance of fun in my work, it’s also a good reminder to me.
It’s hard to say whether the yellow guy is a straight-up monster or an early attempt at an existing creature that she can’t quite articulate yet, but he’s a recurring figure in her work of this period.
The presence of shooting stars and the moon seems to suggest to me a laidback spirit where things are taken in proportion. In this great universe we are insignificant, so the fact that there’s an easily editable spelling error on a website about ear cleaning that no one looks at is probably not worth yelling at the intern about, shall we dial it down a notch please.
Sheep and cats are an obvious inclusion, as well as the practical elements: A gallery containing only pictures of Ds (the fact that at age 7 she nailed this type of humour is a fortuitous accident), and a contact form. She’s credited herself with the design, she is no one’s fool.
I had fully resolved at the time to turn this work of genius into my website and never got around to it. Since I’m having (another) reassessment of what’s here, perhaps it’s time.