So I guess a bit about me and my Berry Vine. My name is Valerie Smith and I am a graphic artist living in the Rogue River valley of Southern Ore. I appreciate your visit to my digital graphics portfolio.

I have been providing a wide variety of graphic services beginning in the 1980's when I opened my first design studio in in southwest Washington. We were a graphics design, sign painting, and screen printing shop, that provided a varied range of graphic services to the region (long before the dawn of photoshop) . I began experimenting with digital design using the early versions of Corel Draw, and Adobe Photoshop, and have been addicted to digital art ever since. When "Mirage /TV Paint" became available, I chose to learn digital animation using that program over Flash. Primarily because of the huge variety of special effects and output capabilities it offered. My little motion demo was created using clips originally designed and animated in Mirage. Some of the clips were a blend of Mirage and Blender 3d.

I became interested in front-end web development a little over twelve years ago, while customizing my personal graphics blog. I started out by learning the basic coding languages for designing a website. I decided to add back-end development to my tool kit for database creation and management. I began studying and experimenting with PHP and MYSQL to set up a list of jams and open mics in southern Oregon. Jam Venues That site is in the beta phase so don't trust the data if you want to head over to a jam with your banjo (call the venue first, times and jams vary quickly). Over the last handful years there have been so many astonishing advancements in the means and methods to provide rich, informative content over the internet. Both for enhancing innovative branding styles, as well as providing responsive and intuitive content. I put together some interesting samples that can be seen over on the Code Demo page.

What do I mean by "home grown graphics"? I pretty much chose that slogan because I prefer to cultivate my projects from the ground up, starting from a blank canvas so to speak. Many designers will design your project using pre designed templates purchased online for pennnies. Only to add your art and content, then charge you rather disproportionately. Not only do you get ripped off, but your web presence and brand identity becomes a cookie cut, carbon copy, of every other template site out there. I believe in keeping on top of all the latest technological trends, yet as design trends come and go so swiftly, I prefer to design in a fashion that is as uniquely your own, and timeless as possible.

I offer donations to charities and non-profits as time permits. The "Blue Slide Project" really struck a chord for me. I designed a poster for their fund raiser and you can peek at it over here... The Blue Slide Project.