So I saw this on jxeonie's blogs and figured, I've been designing long enough that I can probably do something like this, too. I rarely look back at my old designs since I cringe so so so hard, but I figured why not! Let's take a look at how things have been for me~

Warning: Lots of text along with a lot more images, woops!
If they're too small, you can click and drag them to a new tab to see their full size.

Before AFF existed, there was this fanfiction website called Winglin, now sadly dead. Posters and poster shops were a thing back on Winglin, too! Even back then, I had a bunch of fics that never really saw completion... Oops? I know I made posters for those fics though, which I literally had to dig deep into my memory to try and remember where I could find them. I also made posters for my friend's stories and even just random people on Winglin. Sadly, I can't access the actual Winglin website now, but I did miraculously find a place that had some of my very first posters. 

It would probably be around the year 2009. I was around 12 years old and recently got into KPOP the previous year and fanfiction in general. This was the period where I solely used MS Paint, Photobucket, and random photo editing websites. I knew nothing about blending, textures, and the like. I don't think I even knew what cropping was, judging by how I butchered Kimbum's head. I just threw photos around. Also, yes, I went by XiaoM / XiaoMi back then, although I know I had a lot more aliases.

(Side Note: That Junyeon story was actually pretty cute, I miss it.)

Come 2013, I first started designing on AFF as girlwhocriedluhan over at a shop called AYOgraphics. I used just GIMP before, having just gotten into it a few years back, too. Before making posters again, I kinda just messed around with designing, really. I didn't have a set style (unless you want to call Being Bad a style) and I thought mixing a bunch of different photos, colours, and fonts was the way to go! Also, probably cuz my shop's poster featured Luhan and from my username, I got a lot of EXO requests. Like really. A lot. 

Here's my works from that period:

Alright, I think that's enough.

I stopped designing for a bit to focus more on writing, although my eternal curse of taking a long time to finish a chaptered fic and updating in general was there from the start. Eventually, I finally opened this account in 2014 to work on Got7 fics and stuck with it since then, making this my main account for everything else under the sun. I didn't start designing right away, opening AYOgraphics again by 2015 only after a while, keeping the same premise as last time with it being a no rules shop. I think I reached around 4 batches before I disappeared from designing for another period of time.

Here's the requests I got under the new AYOgraphics! Along with a few from when I started working at various shops. The period in between was a bit long, but I didn't practice in any way, so I do think there's not much of a style difference. I still used GIMP, but I know I switched over to Photoshop CS6 some point in the middle, I just don't remember when.

At some point, I started to like my designs more, or at least looking at them now I feel like there were improvements. So while these are still done during the AYOgraphics Era, I do think they're nicer so I'm gonna separate them since I vaguely remember being pleased with these designs back then. These might have been when I switched to Photoshop, but I really still genuinely can't tell. Probably, since I don't think I worked on Photoshop until I went into university, which was around this time.

Shoutout to my self-made Pizza and Other Cheesy Things poster although it wasn't the best!
Mainly cuz PaOCT was my first ever featured fic so even the original poster makes me emo :')

If you're interested in the full version of all my works from the above periods, you can check this out!

Finally, we have the start of WJH Graphic Studio that opened in 2017 after I took a break from designing again and disappeared from AYOgraphics. I tried to return, but I realized I didn't like the whole no rules system anymore since I wanted to establish myself further as a designer and improve, so I wanted to step away from the branding I had under AYOgraphics. I learned new tricks, textures, colourings, got new fonts, learned animation like it was my child, and genuinely think I've improved. It sort of helped that I was also taking graphic design in uni. Eventually I renamed the shop into LOST Graphic Studio, and now it's currently closed, but here's some of my works from then! I also started working at Timelapse around this time so there's those mixed in.

By this point, animation was the love of my life. I'd also like to think I'm now a lot pickier with my colour, fonts and font styles, too. I still didn't apply colouring at the beginning of all this, but it was something I gradually did and eventually loved as well! Now I can't resist. The number one thing I remember doing before I started all this was stalk the latest graphic shops and falling in love with people's designs and styles. I figured since I haven't designed for so long, the kind of design I knew was pretty cookie cutter 2014 style and needed to improve to match the way AFF posters looked nowadays. I still don't think I have a specific style, rather I work with what I have when I get a request.

(Also, if you're viewing this on desktop, you'd notice that I have a set poster size ratio compared to before lmao)

Most (if not all) of them can be found on my current portfolio, which you can check out here. Eventually, I also opened bliss graphics in 2018, where I run the shop as the sole designer. It's still open so you can check it out by clicking the banner below! 

I disappear every now and then, and my latest was just a few months ago. Quite literally, I resurfaced from being piled with school work and other general problems to get back to writing and designing more and finding more ways to make posters just last week or so. The following are my latest work (as of October 18, 2018 anyway) along with my works from yet another new shop of mine, Anything Goes! You can click the Anything Goes poster below to be redirected to the shop. It's basically another no rules shop since I wanted to practice designing and get requests without anything else getting in the way, since I've been designing more as a stress reliever recently than anything else too serious.

Aaaaand, that's it for my Graphic Evolution! It's really long and I wrote a lot, but if you actually read all my little notes and long paragraphs then thank you for the time. I'm not tagging anybody in particular since I just stole this myself. I'd love to see more of these sort of things though! I think the design process is something that never really stops, no matter how long you've been designing. If I have anything to say about my current style, I think I'm aiming to be a bit more experimental and play around with things more and just see what happens.

A few more shameless plugs: my fanfic directory + I take commissions + coffee! Help your local starving artist today.