There’s a great little print shop here in Bartlesville, aptly named Bartlesville Print Shop. The owner is a smart man. He hired a talented young girl who is his right-hand-woman most days. The girl is on a sabbatical for school or something (I forget; let’s face it, I can barely keep track of my own life) and even though I swore off taking additional work for the summer, I decided I could spare a month or so and help out the print shop on an as-needed, contract basis. It’s kind of fun having a print shop as a client — which is actually a first for me. It’s a never-ending stream of varied work! It definitely keeps me on my toes. This poster was designed a few days ago and by the next time I stopped into the shop, he had them printed and ready to go — such a great printer. Seriously, if you don’t have a favorite local printer like ours in Bartlesville, go find one! A good printer makes ALL the difference…
Category Archives: Design & Publishing
What I Designed Today: Interchangeable B&W Newspaper Ads
So, these are quite simple but since they’re only 2″ wide and they pack a lot of info, it is important to make them readable but still stand out on the entire huge newspaper print page full of black and white! Enter the diagonally cropped picture. It really works! It adds just enough visual “movement” to help the ad stand out on the static page and draw the eye of the reader. Take a look and see which is your favorite. These 8 ads are being printed in a series in the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise newspaper, based on which performer is coming up next chronologically.
What I Designed Today: OK Mozart Kids’ Events Poster & T-Shirt
These are similar to the Fun Run poster and t-shirt because it should have the same look but be independent. The Fun Run T-Shirt is going to be printed on sapphire blue so the t-shirt I’m suggesting here is to be printed on neon yellow. If it’s not in the budget this year, perhaps next. Bright colors are so much fun for t-shirts, especially for kids!
Poster design:
T-Shirt design:
What I Designed Today: Stake Conference Invitation
I designed this stake conference invitation for the first semiannual conference of the Bartlesville, Oklahoma Stake! So nice of the stake presidency to put out an official invitation like this. I hope it helps boost attendance and clarifies meeting times, attendance and info for all involved. I tried to make it match the ward mission plan and the stake mission plan that I had created earlier. I’d better watch out or the stake will have inadvertently created its own press kit and style guide soon! Kidding…
What I Designed Today: 2015 OK Mozart Festival Poster
What I Designed Today (ahem, last week): OK Mozart A Really Fun Prairie Run Event Poster
I really need to do better at publishing daily so I don’t have to keep backtracking! But I’ve been working way too much and there’s no way I can post it all. That’s good, right?!
What I Designed Today: 2015 OK Mozart L’Amore d’Italia Ball Invitation & RSVP Card
What I Designed Today (a few weeks ago): Put on The Armor of God for Stake Auxiliary Training
I used the floral artwork from lenlis at BigStock for the flowers and then added the “Put on the Armor of God” text and made a few changes to use for a themed presentation at auxiliary training. It was so cute, I left it up at home for a week after the event! I’m including pics of the wonderful cookies with labels and chocolate covered strawberries served. I don’t know if anybody else liked it but the strawberries alone were worth it for me!
What I Designed Today: Redesigned Newspaper Ads for OK Mozart
So our local newspaper is notorious for poorly printed ads. It seems OK Mozart gets the brunt of the poorly printed ads — even though they’ve checked and asked for proofs which always turn out fine! Black only can be so tricky. The grays look so washed out and since most of OK Mozart’s ads are black-intensive (using Rich Black in 4/c), I had to redesign some newspaper versions of their ads to hopefully boost contrast and not worry as much about printing striations. Frustrating! Anyway, here are some of the redesigns.
What I Designed Today: 2015 Stake Mission Plan
The 2015 Ward Mission Plan was such a success, I got roped into creating a Stake Mission Plan. The text wasn’t as conducive to a great layout but I think it’s nice enough, anyway.
What I Designed Today: NMDEA Black & White Program Ads
I’ve been doing reincarnations of this black and white ad for years. This year, my client decided to bump up the size to a full page. The sponsors are probably so relieved to have their name in readable-sized print! Lovely client. I wish all of my clients were as prepared and easy to work with as this one. I’m not sure which one they’ll choose but I’m sure whichever it is, it’ll stand out in the program!
What I Designed Today: Ad Revisions for OK Mozart
So one of my very favoritest sources of income is revising previously created ads in different sizes for different publications. It takes time, but you just have to adjust things without re-creating the wheel, so to speak. It probably takes more time than my client would think it does but it’s relatively painless and a good source of income — I want to say residual income but that’s not entirely correct because I’m still eating up the clock and sitting at the computer. They’re worth it even though I generally charge quite a bit less for them. These ads were for GTR Newspapers, an independent free papers association for Tulsa, Oklahoma Magazine, and Tulsa’s Currentland publication.
What I Designed Today: Custom Penzey’s Spice Jar Labels
My trip to Omaha over Spring Break was very fun — and very exhausting. Now I’m back home in Bartlesville and there’s a zillion things I should be doing right now OTHER than making custom spice jar labels. But I went to Penzey’s. And I bought these cute jars with yummy spices (e.g., celery salt that actually smells like celery and salt). It makes complete sense, right?? Right! It just makes me feel better. I’m attaching links to the file as a pdf and png, shown below, but if you’d like the original Illustrator CS5 file, just shoot me an email (the fonts used are Alex Brush and Zebrawood). I hope it makes you “feel better” too. Priorities, people.
PDF DOWNLOAD: penzeysspicelabels
This pdf file is set up for HP Restickables (a sticker I highly recommend that is more like a post-it note that you can remove and reposition many times) – it’s from a really old stash and I don’t think anyone sells them anymore, but any basic sticker stock would do! I manually cut out the labels. Yes, I’m insane. Who has time to do such a thing? Certainly not me. But I did cut them out, one by one, and it totally relaxed me. The outline isn’t perfect but I’m seriously happy with them anyway.
Riverside Park & Ralph Mitchell Zoo in Independence, Kansas
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.
What I Designed Today (err, a few months back…): Style Guide for RaceAdvizor
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!
