One is a grayscale ad for newsprint and the second is a recreation of their ad in Conde Nast, originally done by PDG Creative, with the proper fonts of this year’s campaign and a little bit of a changeup in placement if items and photos (at OK Mozart’s request). It was a good work day, busy but not TOO stressful!
Tri-fold brochures are the bread and butter of marketing, aside from business cards. They give you a chance to show and tell what your business is about. Designs that flow well are few and far between but I like how this one turned out. The only thing I would add or change now are calla lily leaves following the curved divider or at the top right hand corner of the circles. Can’t wait to see this one in print!
It’s 5:25 a.m. I’ve been up since 4 a.m. exporting files I finished yesterday, noting to myself in astonishment that in my 20s, I would stay up until 3 or 4 a.m. working on projects and now that I’ve reached my 40s, I GET UP at 4 a.m. to finish projects. There is something wrong with that!
Anyway, this includes the final touches of the poster written about earlier, including one pricing change. The entire set of marketing collateral for this event for OK Mozart includes a poster, a two-sided invitation, and an RSVP card. It’s a great set! I’m not a HUGE fan of the basketball with leprechaun hat but he’s kinda cute and growing on me. I customized him out of other stock pieces and parts. One would think there would be more basketball leprechauns given March Madness’ basketball theme, no? Well, one would be wrong {insert heavy pompous sarcasm here}.
What I designed today is still in the works but here’s the first draft. I had a client make an unusual request: they wanted a mascot of sorts for their children’s publications. It’s not their logo, but it’s a friendly “wolfie” which was, apparently, Mozart’s nickname as a youth. He’s to be splashed all over their publications involving youth during the coming year. I’ve created two wolfies (each with slight variations): one for a younger audience, heavily based off this royalty-free art from comodo777 at BigStock and a second one entirely created by me for a slightly older audience. Which would you choose? Let me just say, drawing that wig was so satisfying! And, also, there is zero vector artwork readily available for Mozart wigs. Just sayin’. Well, now there’s one…
Ben’s baptism was a rushed one. We had a small crowd for our last baptism but it was beautiful. He is such a one-of-a-kind kid. He chose the 4th Article of Faith for his favorite “scripture” and so I quickly typed it up a little bit prettier than average for the program. I am offering it here as a FREE download for your personal and church use, should anyone be so inclined.
I have projects to design pretty much every day. Unless something family, church or kid-related has taken over. But usually one or two projects is hanging over my head just waiting to be done. Right now, I’m procrastinating a cute little custom drawing for a local festival that works with kids. I have time to get to that yet today (that’s what I’m telling myself, anyway!) but I wanted to share this 2015 Ward Mission Plan that I drew up for our local church congregation. It was so easy — mostly because they provided me with perfect text. I mean absolutely-perfectly-clean-never-happened-before-especially-in-church-wonderful text. Hallelujah! Seriously, people, knowing exactly what you want to say before you send it to a designer is a gift. One design rule to follow: the more concise the text, the better. If only I could follow that for a blog post, right?! I know, I know, but this blog is my therapy therefore I can ramble and nobody has to read it. It’s a win-win.
Anyway, 2015 is the year where I will catch up on some online posts of what I’ve designed but, realistically, it will probably NOT be something I did just that day but in weeks, months and years past.
I didn’t want to throw a “real” party. It’s Christmastime and who, really, has time for all that extra cooking, cleaning and prep? Not me. So I decided that I wanted to start a new tradition: caroling around the neighborhood and then serving hot cocoa afterward. It was so simple and so much fun! I’m not sure which was more fun: watching the kids have a blast or singing the carols (which I love!). I think watching the kids has the edge, though. They were so excited but tired easily.
Next year we’ll limit it to one chosen street instead of trying to go around the block. We were able to sing 10 to 12 times. I used the collection of sheet music that good ‘ol Martha Stewart put together. It was a nice mix of Christian and more secular Christmas music (e.g. Up on the Housetop and Jingle Bells in amidst The First Noel and Silent Night). I was smiling about it for days afterward and hope that those who went with us had as much fun as we did.
Afterward, I made Crockpot Hot Cocoa (this filled my 7 qt crock pot!):
I also made White Hot Chocolate:
The White Hot Chocolate was the bomb. Seriously. I did not know it would be so good or I would have doubled the recipe. Three or four people asked for the recipe!
Here’s the selection of marshmallows and additions including maraschino cherry skewers, spray cream cinnamon and chips of almost every kind:
Before everyone showed up (we had two more families come after this shot!).
The teenage girls who participated just INSISTED that “Let it Go!” was a Christmas song. Ahem. I disagree but they sang it with gusto (along with a few parents!).
The best part? Everyone seemed genuinely welcoming and happy to see us! It’s definitely a new tradition. Next year, I’ll make the boys bring their drums and bells from percussion.
I loved doing this last year (see below for last year’s version). This year, another local design company has generously volunteered their time (okay, their interns’ time) to redesign the logo for next year so I changed the Christmas card design to match the lovely greens and sent them two options below. I would have wrapped their logo on the ornament but these were initial proofs and they chose the dark green so I didn’t bother. Which do you prefer?
OK Mozart Christmas Card 2013
OK Mozart Christmas Card – two options for 2014
Catching up on old design work (well, sorta, cause that could take decades and nobody really wants to see all that crap from my beginner years, anyway). This was from October of 2014 so it’s fair game to post.
Finished up this week for next March. Yeah, I wrote that correctly. I think it might be the very first time I’ve completed a project so long in advance. I hope it’s a new trend…I could use more “cushion” time on projects! I’m not liking their new logo but that wasn’t my design…yikes. I’m all for change but the old one had so much more authority and classiness to the font selection than this one and I don’t like the ragged right. Oh well! Not my circus, not my monkeys is my motto for 2015!
I’m preparing a talk for the Bartlesville chapter of Pilot International (a non-profit organization that raises money for brain injury awareness and other worthy brain related organizations) and I’m using this quote so I thought I’d share it online. I’ve had this quote laminated and hanging on my office desk for, oh, about 23 years now. It is surely one of my all-time favorite quotes and anybody who knows me knows I’m a quote junkie. You can view my quote board on Pinterest here.
It’s been a busy year and a particularly busy month — but not as busy as the month Cole graduated and getting him off on his mission to Manchester, England! That was insane! But one of the highlights of August 2014 has been the Tulsa, Oklahoma Stake Relief Society Women’s Conference where we, with our fearless leader, held a preparedness conference which I will post about later with downloadable graphics, etc. As part of this conference, though, we held a diaper drive for a Tulsa non-profit called Emergency Infant Services. We collected diapers and packaged them up in bags of 20 or so according to size and will be delivering them this week. Hooray for clean bums! It was an easy, effective, and necessary service project and one that everyone seemed to wholeheartedly support. I love getting out in the community with service projects outside of our own little homes, wards, and stakes. So fulfilling!
It’s been a long time since I blogged. Almost a year, in fact. I’ve missed it! In my time away, I’ve done many things and learned quite a bit. Let’s see how much of that I can get documented down the road but, for now, here’s some recent work I completed for Theater Bartlesville — even though I’m no longer serving on their board this year. Last year was so much fun, not to mention meeting some pretty amazing people, but I simply don’t have time to do it again. I won’t be doing most of their items but as a huge Josi Kilpack fan, this poster design I just couldn’t resist. Can’t wait to meet her at the fundraiser. And, for all you font nerds out there like me, the font is My Aunt Celia and you can buy it at MyFonts.
FREE DOWNLOAD. So easy and cute. I was making 20 for Ben’s class party but we had two extra packages of Capri Sun drinks and I knew I might run short at the church trunk-or-treat tonight so I fixed them up! Good thing, too, as we ran out of goodies and all the Boo Juice went first! They were a hit! If you click on the pic of the file, you can download the file from Flickr.
Final billboard.
Final poster.
I ran a test vote on Facebook with my 777 friends and the red poster won out over the sideways-text white one by a thin margin. We’re using the red poster with the spyglass from one of the others. Good combo. This made the billboard much easier to do!