Check out this rad wrapping paper. Can you tell what it is?
Isn’t that brilliant? Security envelopes! Not only does it look awesome, but it’s probably in your house right this minute. With more arriving any day now!
Here’s the whole story, created by Charissa from The Gifted Blog
(Found on Wantist.)
I can’t believe I forgot to show you this work we just did. For two amazing Catherines and two amazing websites.
First up: Closet of Style.
Catherine Horgan came to us in desperate need of a new logo and a new website. What a treat it is to work with a client as stylish and savvy as Catherine — we loved the challenge of creating for her.
For the logo, Catherine wanted something clever, colorful, and sophisticated. The mark we came up with makes a ligature out of the C and the S. They’re conjoined in a way that suggests that perhaps the S is hanging in the C. (You know — like in a closet.) It’s playful and clever, but also sophisticated. It feels like so many fashion logos, yet doesn’t resemble any one in particular. Wouldn’t that mark make a great silver key fob? I know, right?
With the website, Catherine wanted something that she’d never seen before. No small order. What we created has many references — tear sheets on a work table, layers of clothes, swatches of cloth — but feels like a new thing. A design that was made just for Catherine and no-one else. We also had gorgeous photography to work with — from Ellen Yale. It was important to showcase that in a way that made you stop and look at it. Also, the photos are super clever. Catherine is a problem solver, and these photos do a fantastic job of showing that off.
Most of all, it’s a site that achieves a tough goal — there’s a lot going on, but it doesn’t feel too busy. We’re so happy with how it all turned out and we hope to get to work with Catherine forever and ever.
On that note, if you’re looking for a personal stylist, someone to help you figure out what you should be wearing, or just a great fashion blog to add to your daily reads, you really need to check out Closet of Style.
You’re welcome.
Next up is Her Bad Mother. Catherine Conners came to us not knowing exactly what she wanted, but knowing she needed something. Once upon a time she “just” wrote a blog. (Get it? Just? Like that’s some easy tiny task?) But now she is writing about all sorts of weighty issues that needed their own space to grow and thrive. Yet it needed to still be readable and easy to navigate. We had to make sure the gorgeous writing on the site didn’t get buried in the design.
We decided to give the site lots of clean, white space to make sure it was easy to find your way around. With one, big, featured post a day. And cool accordion-like content areas just under the featured post. We also ended up shrinking the height of her header a good bit to give more “above the fold” goodness. But we made darn sure not to take away the fantastic (and iconic) surprised baby. The green and blue serve to punch things up a little. With a “lots of white space” site, it doesn’t take much to breathe some life into things. Subtle use of bright colors worked well for this site, adding to the clean, crisp feel and giving you some points of reference as you move around the pages.
All-in-all, we’re thrilled with how the site turned out, and we loved working with Catherine who provided us with such great work to design around. If you want to read some amazing writing, be sure to visit Her Bad Mother. But be warned — hours will pass like minutes and you’ll look up after breakfast to find that it is now dark outside and where did the day go?
As always, we’re so lucky to have such great clients who let us do fun work. Do you need a logo or a site redesign? Get in touch - we’d love to talk to you!
Super exciting news to share, y’all! Kirtsy relaunched yesterday!
I’m one of the co-founders and we’ve been working hard for about 5 months (or 3 years, depending on how you want to look at it) to get a completely new site up. The old site was a great experiment in crowd-sourcing. But as the web has become more crowded, Kirtsy became less of a resource and more of a, how shall we say, crackhouse. For spammers. With the new Kirtsy we wanted to preserve what we loved about the old Kirtsy (finding great stuff online) and present it in a way that wasn’t so spamgasmic. What we came up with was curated slideshows.
Every day, the new Kirtsy will feature a slideshow curated by some of the most interesting people on the internet. The topics will be all over the map — fashion, design, food, people, crafts. Our hope is that the slideshows will inspire you. They’ll be full of links to interesting articles, images to pin, projects to try, people to meet.
Yesterday’s big slideshow was a set of 10 easy one-day crafts — with step-by-step how-to’s — curated by Blogstar. I’ve already bought the supplies for the tie-dye bags because my kids are required to carry tote bags to school this year (instead of backpacks). I’m excited to help them make their own awesome looking bags this weekend. I’ll let you know how they turn out.
We partnered with Giggle.com for the launch, and to celebrate, they’re offering $10 off when you sign up.
I’d be honored if you’d take a look and let me know what you think. I’m kind of crazy excited about it all.
P.S. — Don’t know what Kirtsy is? No worries — here’s a short history.
Friends. Texans. People who love food. I’m excited to show you something we made. It’s a logo and a website. For an amazing place: Revival Market. Revival is a locally-sourced grocer, butcher shop, coffee shop, and restaurant all wrapped up in one hip store that opened in March, in Houston. We had the great honor (and luck) of getting to design for these folks, and we couldn’t be happier with how it all turned out. Co-owners Ryan Pera (from Charlotte, y’all!) and Morgan Weber were the best kind of clients: smart, interested, opinionated and creative. No wonder the store is so filled with awesome.
The website just launched and let me tell you — it seriously makes me wish I lived in Houston. Drought be damned.
(click for bigger)
I hope you have a chance to take a look at the site. And if you live in Houston and have not been to Revival yet, please. PLEASE. Do yourself a favor and head over there this week. I promise you’ll thank me for it.
I’ve spent the better part of this morning staring at and playing with this site. I Am Not An Artist is a big ole page of animated gifs, or, as it says on the site, “An Animated GIF Paranoia about Nonstop Design Workers.”
Commissioned by ELISAVA School of Design in Barcelona, and designed by Soon in Tokyo, the base 56 animated gifs were directed by Johnny Kelly and Matthew Cooper. But the fun part is you can add your own animation to the tapestry with their handy, built-in, GIF Generator. Go have fun!
I love it when someone takes “old technology” and makes it look new, don’t you?
(Thanks for the tip, Photojojo!)
Having a hard time deciding if you should do that project for free? Now you can consult this extremely handy flowchart from the oh so great Jessica Hische.
When I first visited I thought it was just going to be another well-designed, funny infographic. Which would have been great too. But as it turns out, it’s actually really helpful. Much to my surprise, Jessica agrees that there are times you should work for free. And the chart explains exactly when and why. Very smart.
Check it out here.
(Thanks for the heads up, Liquid Treat.)
The Illustrious Omnibus of Superpowers, created by Pop Chart Labs. A super handy taxonomy for all types of superhero powers.
Can’t remember who can Envelope body in Fiery Plasma? Just use their handy magnify tool to find out. Plus, it’s gorgeously designed with vintage muted colors and retro science lab shapes. A great gift for your favorite superhero lover. Or anyone who loves charts.
(Thanks for the tip Fanboy.com)
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was the ultimate coming-of-age movie for us Gen-Xers. It portrayed rebellion, soul-searching and fear of the future in a witty, charming and slapsticky package. And it even had Charlie Sheen winning way before Charlie Sheen was winning. If it came out today, instead of 1986, how would it fare against the sea of sensitive, coming-of-age, navel-gazing movies? This fantastic “new” trailer, recut by UK filmmaker Joseph Brett, makes me think it would do just fine.
Here’s the YouTube link if you can’t see the video below.
(Thanks Holiday Matinee!)
I saw this quote on an Instagram image from the lovely Maile Wilson. It spoke to me. So I designed it.
Clever, meaningful and stunning. This is exactly the kind of site I like to find when taking a work break at 1:00am. A weekly typographic interpretation of philosophical song lyrics. Perfectly sized for iPhone wallpapers, or you can buy one from the Etsy shop.
What philosophical song lyric would you like to see on a poster?
Click for bigger
