So, someone threw the name “lauren lee lashlee” at me the other day. Sounded kinda interesting, maybe some kind of artist or designer? I figured, okay, let’s see what this is all about.
First thing I did, naturally, was hit the search engines. Typed it in. Got… well, not a whole lot of clear stuff, honestly. Bits and pieces, maybe some profiles here and there, but no big flashing sign saying “THIS is the definitive Lauren Lee Lashlee style!” It was kinda vague. Made me scratch my head a bit.
But I saw a few images, some mentions that seemed kinda artsy. Got a certain vibe, maybe? Hard to pin down. Looked sort of… handcrafted, maybe a little bit quirky, personal. Not slick corporate stuff. So, I thought, alright, challenge accepted. Let me try and capture that feeling in something I was working on.
Trying to Nail That Vibe
I had this small personal project sitting around. Just a little website design for a friend’s hobby blog. Nothing major. I decided, okay, let’s try and inject some of that ‘lashlee’ feeling, or what I thought it was, into this.
Fired up my usual design tools. Nothing fancy, just the stuff I always use. Started messing around with textures. Tried making things look less perfect, you know? Added some hand-drawn looking elements. Scanned in some rough paper textures I had lying around. Played with fonts that weren’t perfectly crisp and clean. Spent ages just fiddling, moving things a pixel left, then right, changing colors slightly.
- Tried rough edges: Instead of sharp boxes, I tried making containers look a bit uneven.
- Used ‘imperfect’ fonts: Picked some typefaces that felt more casual, less geometric.
- Added textures: Layered in some grainy backgrounds, like old paper or fabric.
- Focused on asymmetry: Avoided perfectly balanced layouts. Let things feel a bit off-kilter, intentionally.
It was harder than I thought. Making something look intentionally imperfect without it just looking… bad? That’s tricky. Took me a good few hours just to get a single banner looking somewhat right. Kept comparing it back to the vague ideas I got from searching that name. Was this it? Was I even close? Who knows. Felt like chasing a ghost sometimes.
Why Bother With Vague Stuff?
You might ask, why even bother if it was so unclear? Good question. Reminds me of this one time, years ago, working for this small agency. Boss comes in, slams a napkin on my desk. Seriously, a coffee-stained napkin with some scribbles on it. Said, “Make the website look like this.”
Like what exactly? A coffee stain? Some illegible chicken scratch? He just waved his hand, “You know, that feeling. Energetic. Raw.”
Spent two weeks trying to translate that napkin into a website design. Endless revisions. Constant back-and-forth. “No, not quite that raw.” “More energy!” It was maddening. We never really nailed what was on that napkin, mostly because he didn’t even know. We just ended up with something generic he finally signed off on, probably out of exhaustion.
It’s like that sometimes. You get these vague inspirations, these half-formed ideas, maybe just a name like “lauren lee lashlee”. And you try to run with it. Sometimes it leads somewhere interesting. Sometimes it’s just a frustrating wild goose chase. But you try anyway, right? Keeps things from getting stale.
How’d I even end up looking into this “lauren lee lashlee” thing anyway? It wasn’t for a client project, thank god. Nah, my cousin’s kid is doing some art project for school. Asked me for help finding ‘cool, lesser-known artists’. So I was just digging around online, fell down a rabbit hole, and that name popped up. Figured I’d spend an afternoon trying to see if I could mimic a style I barely understood. Just for kicks, really. Kept me busy, at least. And hey, maybe the kid finds some actual inspiration somewhere else. Me? I just ended up with a weird-looking banner design and another story about chasing vague ideas. Business as usual.
