*Please pardon the un-styled mess why I am rethinking and re-designing my blog!*
Remember when you had that *first* genius moment in design when we discovered effects in Photoshop or the gradient mesh tool in Illustrator? (I remember these moments quite fondly…) Its always great to look back and where we came from and laugh at ourselves 
I asked some of my fellow designers to dig though their archives and share their lovely first attempts at design. Enjoy!
Here is a design for Signalnoise.com I created way back in 1999. At the time I was into my first year working in the design field and I wanted a website that encompassed my creative passion, and for whatever reason I thought the right path was with mad textures and blurry typefaces. I think I JUST discovered the Overlay blending mode so it was all systems go.
I have a jpeg version of almost all the hilarious versions of Signalnoise.com, but this image perfectly captures the raw animosity of a young design idiot trying to forge his way without any real goal or direction. Good times
This was one of my first logo designs when I started college in 2001. The brief provided by the instructor was still attached to the file:
“Design a logo for a website dedicated to housing web discussion forums focusing on both current world and political issues.”
You have to love my letter “i” character with the horrid stretched and distorted typeface, and to top things off, this is a PSD file, created entirely in Photoshop — gasp!
First website. circa 2001. “must use IE6, baaaaaddd netscape” font tags and tables inside of tables inside of tables. It’s an angelfire site and it’s actually STILL online. http://www.angelfire.com/music3/stuffwedo/index2.htm go browse that badboy!
I can’t believe that I’m about to share this.
Anyways, this was an awful concept that I had back in the day (2004) and started building for my personal site. Aside from the obvious problems, there is more to this story.
I had just learned about layering using a flash emulator called Swish. So, each “section” came in on its own and was animated. What could be radder than that, huh?
Eek.
I wish I had something older, but I think this is pretty horrific. This poster was designed in art school for a class project, I feel like I had absolutely no concept for designing for my audience at all and they type setting is atrocious.
This was a poster I had to do in one of my adverting design class. I took the photo myself! I even got this one in the student art show. My photography and graphics have some a long way lol.
It amazes me how sites I designed even a month ago look like crap compared to what I am currently designing.
Take this site for example, when I designed it, I thought it was amazing. Looking back on it now, it is obviously extremely bad. Craziest part about this design, people actually paid for it as a premium theme! Despite the sales, I have stopped selling this because of the poor quality.
1 I had to add this, good old lens flare effect…. what a staple in design.
2 This was my first take on using illustrator… I would trace friends faces, celebrity photos and such.. I have to admit this is something that really has helped me with my design skills.
3 This piece was created in high – school.. this was my first pass at photoshop filters… have to love radial blurs eh…
4 This was done in my first year of college. I was just recently introduced to photoshop brushes… that might explain the piece.
1
2
3
4
This is one of my first iterations of Houle Designs, which was my old personal portfolio site. I went through many more horrific designs before I finally ditched the site. I’m now reworking my portfolio under a different domain name, but it’s still a little ways away. Man, this design is terrible, but we all have to start somewhere, right 
I fell into graphic design, I got my first job scanning in photos for a small design agency who’s focus was estate agencies. After a while, after mastering re-touching photos, they asked me to produce an image to show 2 companies becoming one. This is what I came up with, I hope it speaks for itself. 10 years later I still like looking at it, but I would certainly do it differently!
Wow, I really dugg deep this time. I found an old and very simple flash slideshow that I built for practice several years ago, when I was taking some classes and had a strange fascination with flash lol. This was probably my first attempt to build anything useful in flash, and its a really basic flash slideshow, which I created the left and right nav buttons in photoshop, and also photoshopped some pics of my wife and me, and our boys (which were actually really little babies at the time!) It was a good learning experience, and I have built a ton of random flash things since then, but its funny to look back and think how happy I was when I got that slideshow working right lol. Now If I was ever to do a slideshow it would most definitely be done in jQuery!
This is the Press ad we ran for the first venture (a dot com) I was in as a designer and an entrepeneur: Guatebodas (Guate-weddings, for a rough translation) and it was the first wedding portal in Guatemala. I was 21 and an advertising student that had little experience with FreeHand7 or Photoshop.
The design is not great, but it sure does show where I came from! Cheers!
As a kid, I wanted to be an artist and while in junior high I had my first exhibit of ink line drawings of historic Oregon buildings. In 1970, at the age of 14, I produced a set of notecards for sale in local galleries and gift shops. For that project I produced my first logo. The image was a graphic representation of the old Salem, Or city hall building, with its clock tower. The illustrative portion was drawn with a rapidograph pen. I created the lettering using black border tape cut with an X-Acto knife. To a teenager, it was a pretty cool design. Looking at it now it reads “Scenes Salem,” instead of the intended “Salem Scenes” and it’s pretty rough. However, it is a hint of my future identity designs combining text and graphic elements.
ack when I was huge in to politics and anti-war designs like this were a common thing for me to create in my spare time. It’s so terrible, it’s not even funny.
[13] Comments
Posted in design
Subscribe by rss, email, or in iTunes!
Jeanne says:
This really brightened my day–reminds me of some of my first design projects. I think it's natural for us to look back on work we did even a month ago and cringe. If we didn't, it would just show that we've stopped growing.
February 8th, 2010 at 3:55 pm
Chris Thurman says:
Fun and refreshing. It's amazing how much we grow as designers in even a short time. Looking back at my first few website designs, I actually wonder why people paid me to design. I wouldn't dare include some of my early work in any current portfolio. It's also fun to see some great minds in the design world share their early attempts. Thanks for a great post to kick off the week!
My recent post Saturday Swirl 4: Tasty Snacks From the Design Community
February 8th, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Lee Harding says:
And here's me thinking that it was just me who looks back on work I did only a couple of months ago and cringe!
When frustration sets in and your feeling uninspired, its great to look back at your previous work to realise how far you have really come!
Awesome Post!
February 8th, 2010 at 6:40 pm
Don Rogers says:
Interesting look at early work by designers and makes me think about my early stuff. I did everything by hand and paste-up. I did mostly Illustrations & Type (by hand) for posters and Ads. I could show my early Photoshop, Illustrator and Quark work from the end of the 90s & early 2000s, when I went back to school again, to learn Photoshop and Web design.
February 8th, 2010 at 8:36 pm
PowerPoint Templates says:
I laugh when I look at some of my first design work. Its amazing how perception of what is "good" changes
My recent post Revolutionary War PowerPoint Template
February 9th, 2010 at 1:18 pm
@daftks says:
In my final year at uni now and I do keep going back and looking at all the old work, and how much the style has changed…
It's good to read that we have all been there after all :] even all the amazing designers out there now
February 9th, 2010 at 2:56 pm
John says:
Got me looking back at some old design work. Came across this a while back – 'how 20 popular sites looked when they launched'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/6125914/How…
February 9th, 2010 at 4:56 pm
@pixel8design says:
BAAAHAAHAAAAAA these are HILARIOUS! Some of them I looked at them like "HUH!? What's so bad with that?" But that's because, sadly, I'm a n00b. I'm in my second year of college. I'm sure some of you would see my stuff and say it's poo. I'd agree. But it's really encouraging to see how far amazing designers have come and realize that there's still some hope for me. Because I have a long way to go. A LONG way. A VERRRRRY long way. A lon- okayshutup.
My recent post Why I Won’t Be Watching the Superbowl
February 9th, 2010 at 7:50 pm
Slade says:
I like this post a lot. It really shows that everyone starts somewhere. I’ve fallen into design myself working at a company building the website. I hope to go to school to better my skills and improve as an artist.
February 9th, 2010 at 12:55 pm
Anthony Hortin says:
Great post Niki. It's good to see that we all started off doing some not so good designs
My recent post Freebie – iTunes Visualiser iPhone Wallpapers
February 9th, 2010 at 11:14 pm
Daniel says:
This is a fun post and somewhat inspirational to the new designer who might be frustrated with some of his work. It's a great reminder that we all have to start somewhere, but the key is to make sure we keep growing from that point.
My recent post The Life of a Freelancer
February 12th, 2010 at 3:37 am
liz says:
thanks for including me Niki, i'm glad my ugly contribution has some ugly friends now
My recent post How Sales Skills Will Improve Your Freelance Business
February 13th, 2010 at 7:57 pm
seopresident says:
Real design, artists and designers are dying with kind of art. A Radical design!
Powerpoint Templates
My recent post Puzzle Game PowerPoint Template
June 9th, 2011 at 1:53 am