I’m writing an article about the Riverside Park, Ralph Mitchell Zoo & Riverside Aquatic Center for the upcoming Visitor’s Guide & Travel Edition of Bartlesville Magazine. It is one of our family’s favorite places, so we took a quick trip up on Saturday to get some great photographs and finish up the article. I’m including a few fave photos here, but the entire set can be viewed in our Zoo & Park Set on Flickr.
This guide was commissioned for a company that is still in the works. I’m not posting the whole thing here but just my favorite parts for those who might need some ideas in creating their own branding guidelines. There are some lovely guidelines out there but it does take some good google-sleuthing to find them!
This table card is part of the March Madness set for OK Mozart’s upcoming event in Bartlesville. If you’re in the area, take a look at the lovely food and auction items — it will be a wonderful event!
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!
One of my most popular posts is a Jesus is the Living Water Bottle Labels here. I’m not sure I quite understand the craze of custom water bottle labels but they are kind of fun! Here’s an Armor of God water bottle label quoting parts of Ephesians 6:11-17. Just print, trim, wrap on the bottle and tape. Enjoy!
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}.
I created this motivational quote because I love the quote. It’s true! Running has taught me so much about life. It’s a great quote from Mark Lauren’s 2012 book entitled “Body by You: The You Are Your Own Gym Guide to Total Women’s Fitness”.
“Creative Commons Yosemite” by Jonathan Fox is licensed under CC BY 4.0; Derivative photo editing and typography by Lizabeth Rolfson.
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…
Haha, seriously, from 2011. I am really, really behind on documenting old work. I found some of these graphic files on my hard drive. A version of these was used for a boy’s birthday party “set” over on Kara’s Party Ideas.
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.
UPDATE: THIS POPULAR MISSION PLAN HAS A NEW, DOWNLOADABLE VERSION IN GOOGLE SLIDES. Because I used Adobe Creative Suite to make the original and most people don’t have access to the custom fonts or software, I created a user-friendly version for download. See the new post here.
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 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
I think I need to coin the hashtag #goknitting. I’m SUCH a huge knitting fan. I have never met this client but her website America’s Knitting is a great resource for yarn shops all over the U.S.A. This particular shop has cute sheep and a cute dog!
So a few months ago, I started writing articles and designing daily inspirational quotes for runhaven.com. I also helped with their style guide. It’s a new site from a new social media company out of Australia called MOKO Social Media. I think they’re going to go places, so be sure to check the site out and I hope you feel, well, inspired!
