What I Designed Today: L’Amore D’Italia Program for OK Mozart

The program for OK Mozart’s L’Amore d’Italia Ball is a smaller, 4-page, 1-fold piece.  I love the interior and it printed nicely on a heavy linen stock thanks to Bartlesville’s best print shop.  It turned out just lovely!  Osage Casinos sponsored the event and the mask picure on the cover was taken by local artist Gary Gibson.

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What I Designed Today: Print Shop Docs with Horrible Fonts

I’m loving the interesting flow of work coming from Bartlesville’s local print shop.  There is, however, the problem of recreating things to print EXACTLY as a client requests — but that is ugly as all get-out.  It nearly killed me the other day to save a print-ready file using the Hobo font.  The project here called for Rage Italic and a graphic with lines that I absolutely do not understand (It’s so abstract, it could mean anything!).  Kill me now.  But, such is the life of a print shop — the client’s requests always come first!  And if you are the client and you happen to read this:  take it from an experienced designer — it’s time for an update on your logo and materials. You don’t even have to hire me.  Just, for the love of all that’s holy, refresh your brand.

Exhibit A:  Rage Italic in all its horrific 1980s glory — letterhead and envelopes.  Because a small town rec center is nothing if not thorough.
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What I Designed Today: 2015 OK Mozart Festival Poster

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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?!

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What I Designed Today: 2015 OK Mozart L’Amore d’Italia Ball Invitation & RSVP Card

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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!

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What I Designed Today: March Madness Poster, Invitation & RSVP Card for OK Mozart

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}.

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Recent Design Work: OK Mozart’s March Madness 2015

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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!

What I Designed Today: Banner Ads for The Artful Ewe

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I love knitting. I love banner ads – so small and easy, right? Well, sometimes the small size can be really constraining. I left the ribbon-like banner at the top of one of the ads so perhaps the white space above would set it apart from other banner ads. Anyway – it’s yarn! What’s not to love?

What I Designed Today: Logo Designs for Tech Learnology

Here are some quick logo samples I designed for a client in Houston. Which one is your favorite? Mine is the third from the top.

What I Designed Today: Christmas Songs Book Cover

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So my smarty-pants friend is, among many things, very good with words. He compiled this testament of a book as a Christmas gift for friends and family and asked me to do the cover. I can’t wait to see the final product!

Before & After: Simple & Spectacular Design!

Just received my latest issue and it’s always a lovely surprise in my email. I have been subscribing to Before & After for a very long time. It’s cheap ($24/yr for the online version) and short (easily read!) and is usually stuff I already know but presented in such a way that it gets the creative juices flowing again. This mag would be perfect for any kind of designer: print, web, scrapbook, fabric, you name it! You can check out the mag here and the design blog here. Bonus – the blog is holding a design contest for a boring book! Check it out. It’s all about the ideas, baby…