CATEGORY: freelance
Layout Design – Recap 2018
Logo & Branding Design – Recap 2018
Comments: 0 | Category: Design Work, freelance, work
Branding & Logo Design – Recap 2017
Layout Design – Recap 2017
Woman 2 Warrior
Last month I got to work with the lovely team over at Reformation PR, in collaboration with Easter Seals BC, who organized camps for children with disabilities. In order to raise money they host a Woman2Warrior race once a year. To create some hype online and make people aware of the race we worked on designing a simple custom type piece to be printed on t-shirts. Besides being for sale at the race the t-shirts were sent to local bloggers ahead of time, who shared the message on their social media outlets.
The concept for the t-shirts is “There is a warrior in the heart of every woman. She is strong, she is determined and she is powerful.”
Below you can see some of the discarded designs we played around with. In the end we choose a custom watercolour type in a calligraphic style, in order to contrast the powerful message with a feminine touch, click over to the portfolio to see the final design in action.
Comments: 0 | Category: custom type, freelance, work
LT ss15 Look Book
I’m generally not a huge fan of pastel hues, but man, when I saw the results of LT’s SS15 look book photo shoot I was feeling pretty dreamy about the colour scheme. The hints of pastel are really subtle but it was enough to inspire the design of this look book.
Lover’s Tempo SS15 collection is inspired by the freshly blooming spring season and starry night summer skies, featuring a few bolder and edgier elements for the modern girl. Wanting to keep the overall look of the brand light and minimalistic the main elements are the photos themselves. To emphasize the dreamy colour scheme, light geometric squares frame the photos and cover the background. Lastly, simple type highlights the product information and grounds the page.
To view the whole look book click on over to the portfolio section over here, or shop the collection now over on Lover’s Tempo online store.
Designing for products, whether it be in the form of branding, packaging or look books is quickly becoming one of my favourite kind of projects to work on. If you have a product or collection that you are about to launch and need some design assistance with feel free to contact me over here!
I’m currently booking new clients for late July and early August so get in touch soon before the spots fill up!
lover’s tempo re-brand
Minimal grey colour palette with accents of gold AND letterpress?! Sounds good, doesn’t it? I just added the final pieces of a Vancouver-based jewellery re-brand to my portfolio. It’s a good one, pop over here to see the full project.
You can peek at the original moodboard for this re-brand here.
I stand for animal welfare
I’m so excited about this! Paws for Hope is a charity I do contract work for every so often and it is always so much fun. They have an amazing little team and are always so passionate about everything they do. Paws for Hope recently reached out to me to design some t-shirts for them. The shirts will be worn by their team and be available for sale so they can collect funds to keep their mission of animal welfare going strong.
The team send me over a few general directions, mostly of what they did not want, and gave me a few awesome taglines to work with. The biggest challenge was that the shirts need to speak to both men and women. I’ve realized that no matter how much I enjoy illustrating my style is very much on the kids-end of things, which women may like, however it is definitely too cutesy for guys. With this in mind we focused mostly on text based designs. I will share all the final designs after the holiday season when the shirts have been printed.
In the meantime, as I was working on these concepts I was feeling really inspired and overflowing with ideas. Although illustrations were not really part of the plan I sat down one evening, just because I felt like it, and started doodling. I figured I’d have fun creating them and if Paws for Hope felt they could use them, then great, if not, I had just created something fun for myself.
I had so much fun creating these illustrations, that it really came through to the client. Paws for Hope loved the illustration and although they are on the cutesy side and no dudes will be running out to buy them, they will print a few runs of the illustration anyway, possibly a few smaller sizes for kids, and potential bumper stickers.
The lesson here is that, sometimes, when you are really into it, even though it’s not part of the original outline or brief, it’s fun to just go for it anyway, because you never know what will come from it.
Comments: 4 | Category: custom type, design, freelance, illustration, work
Watercolour Wedding Type
Remember these outtakes of custom wedding type I shared on the blog a few weeks ago? Well, I’ve finally added the final pieces to my portfolio. Pop on over to check them out!
It was a pleasure working with Tomasz, and I hope to do so again in the future :)
Comments: 0 | Category: custom type, freelance
cleaning out the portfolio 01
I’ve been busy planning a few new and exciting things for next year. While doing so I’ve been looking over my portfolio and figured it’s time to let a few projects go. Some of the projects I still have in my portfolio are rather old and although I still like them it’s time to freshen things up a little and make room for new designs.
Because the thought of completely deleting these babies from the internet makes me kinda sad I figured I’d just transfer them over to the blog so they can quietly retire here. Over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing some of these old projects, as well as adding a few brand news ones.
First up is splash! Splash is one of my leftover school projects. I know, crazy right? It’s an oldie….Our project was to design a unique tour guide for Vancouver. As the name already suggests, splash is a booklet full of waterproof activities for kids and their parents. Displayed in a fun and colourful way, are twelve different places you can visit in the Greater Vancouver area on a rainy day. Perfect for the Pacific North West, no? I thought so…
The small size of the booklet makes it easy to carry along. The booklet contains big, full page images with overlaying colourful stripes which guide you though the book. It sort of has a juno-theme going on there. The body copy is a fun and simple sans serif while a hand rendered type is used for the headlines. The different locations are described on the respective pages and include a map with directions The map is perforated and can be removed to make it easier for parents to arrive at the various destinations. The leftover pages can be used by the kids to write or draw their memories of their adventures.
I’ve always really enjoyed designing booklets. I guess this is it for Splash but if you are in need of a little printed piece please do get in touch here and we can further discuss your project :)
#designervaca 2014
Sun kissed and full of inspiration to just get shit done I am back from my second year attending DesignerVaca. For those of you unaware of what DesignerVaca is you can check it out here, but in short, it’s like a huge three day meet-up with a bunch of graphic designers all eager to get to know each other and share their knowledge. Plus, it’s hosted at the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs which is a huge plus! Chill poolside vibes all around!
When I attend last year I was honestly a little overwhelmed. I am not the most social person and there was just a little too much going on for my little introverted self, however I left having made a few great new friends and a ton of new knowledge to apply to my new life as a fulltime freelancer. Attending deisgnervaca this year was less stressful; I had a better idea of what to expect and knew a few of the girls already. While I learned so much last year, this year it was more about making really amazing in-person connections. It’s so weird how you feel like you know someone online and then you meet them in person, sometimes even with a little bit of hesitation, and they turn out to be 100000 times more amazing when what you had ever anticipated.
I think my biggest takeaway from this year is that we are all in this together. I guess you could consider us all to be competitors but that isn’t the case or vibe at all. We each have our own unique backgrounds, expertise and experiences, which we are more then happy to share. If you’ve had a sticky client situation in the past or don’t know how to handle a certain part of your business there is a very good chance quite a few of the other girls have either gone through the same thing or are currently going through it too. The truly amazing part was that everybody was so open and willing to share everything. There was no such thing as secrets, everybody was super open to just laying it all out there and helping each other out. This transparency and honesty really energized me to go home and just get shit done. I have so many ideas and clarity on what I want to do with my business, where I want it to go, and most importantly, how I want to use it to also help fellow designers.
That pretty much sums up the magic of DesignerVaca. There seems to be no other event or conference or meet up out there that has this same vibe. If you are a freelance designer, whether you’ve been doing it for a few months or a few years, DesignerVaca is the place to be.
Everybody who attended DesignerVaca (see a full list here!!) is amazing and talented and although I didn’t meet everyone I did have a few really amazing in-depth conversations with a few ladies that I would like to highlight. First of all there was my three roommates, Becky Murphy, Kate Wong and Laina Miller, with which I discussed everything, including design processes, exercising and that awkward stage in your early 20ies when you are trying to figure out who you are. Then there was Jessa Stevens who I just feel like I connected with right away and who I would like to add to my BFF list, as well as Sian who I got to travel down with and who has an awesomely adventurous attitude towards life. I got to catch up with Shauna Haider, who after admiring for a long time I got to meet last year and am so happy to call a friend. I got to meet Anelise Salvo with whom I talked about surfing and traveling and raising a family while doing both! I got some quality poolside chats with Azalea, a fellow vancouverite who I am looking forward to hanging out with more often and Emily Leclerc who gave me a ton of healthy cooking ideas. The fan-girl highlight was meeting Jessica Hische again and getting to soak up plenty of her wisdom, in areas such as design, lettering, book deals, acupuncture and overall health issues/solutions, a very resourceful girl indeed! And lastly, there was Patti Murphy, with whom I had chatted online a few times and who, upon meeting, I realized I have so much more in common then I would have ever known. Unfortunately all these amazing ladies live all across North America, making it difficult to stay in touch. However, this does add about nine new cities to my list of places I want to visit at some point in the near future!
Below are a few images from the weekend, it wasn’t easy narrowing it down :p If you follow me on instagram you may have noticed that I took a day trip to salvation mountain. Since this post is getting lengthy and salvation mountain is a rather special place I will save that story for another post.
If you are curious about what my biggest takeaway from last year was click through to read this post.
Comments: 9 | Category: freelance, Freelance Life
artful desperado
Today was a very productive day, updating my portfolio and working on a few more really exciting projects that I can’t wait to share in the upcoming months. Don’t you love productive days?
Anyway, while I am pushing pixels around check out the finalized work for I did for Artful Desperado’s branding, of which I shared the moodboard a few weeks ago. Gabriel is such a fun person to collaborate with, I especially loved working on his re-brand since our styles are similar and we had the exact same vision in mind. It may have even made me want to update my own brand but that’ll have to wait for now….
2013
2013 was a crazy, fun and busy year, full of big and good changes. I quit my full time design job to pursue my freelance career, which by the way has been an amazing experience. I have learnt so much and continue to grow as both a designer and a business owner, ready to tackle all sorts of new clients and projects.
I had the opportunity to design three packaging collections, incorporate some illustration into my design work and experiment with typography in all sorts of different mediums. I continue to work with both big and small, new and old clients and had a chance to participate in a few exciting collaborations.
I finished my certificate in Web & Marketing, took a few eye-opening e-courses, participated in hands-on workshops and even got to help teach a few. I traveled through British Columbia, down to Seattle and the Palm Springs desert, as well as all the way to Europe. I met a bunch of new awesome creatives and made existing relationships stronger then ever.
Above is just a little glimpse at some of the work I have done this past year. I know I am not the best at keeping up with this blog but I have come to terms with it. I will keep at it at my own pace and share bits and pieces of my work and inspiration as time allows, even if it’s a few months “behind”.
2014, I am so ready and beyond excited for you.
pets are not products campaign
Last month the sweet ladies from Paws for Hope contacted me about creating some graphics for their holiday campaign. Paws for Hope is a Vancouver-based charity established in 2011, who realized the provincial animal support system was broken and in a state of crisis. They stepped up by filling the gaps with their own direct animal assistance, educational programs and campaigns.
Their campaign “pets are not products” is all about creating awareness about the misery of pet store animals, especially around the holiday season, when cute fluffy pets are happily gifted. The sad fact is that the vast majority of puppies, kittens and bunnies which are sold in pet stores are bred in commercial mills under horrific conditions. Furthermore, most of them suffer from serious diseases, genetic defects and hereditary disorders, which in turn means you dropping thousands of dollars at the vet.
Way to crush the holiday spirit, right?
It’s sad but so important to make people aware of. As depressing as the topic may be I was very excited to work on this. I feel so much more inspired working for an important cause, something that actually matters or will hopefully help make a difference, as opposed creating marketing materials for some corporation, aka straight to CEO’s pocket. The campaign has a very strong concept which was quite easily translatable into visuals. I choose to take “pets are not products” literal and illustrated the animals on a store shelf. To emphasize the whole idea of “product” each pet also received a bar code.
It was a really nice change to get off the computer for a bit and hand sketch these furry friends before digitizing them. By no means am I an illustrator, but I do enjoy creating illustrations. These guys are very much along my personal style, kinda cartoon-ish and fun. If you think about the campaign this doesn’t fit in at all. My challenge was to make the pets look cute, in order to get your attention. However once you look at it in more detailed you realize they are all actually pretty miserable. The melancholic blue and grey colour scheme also helped convey this sadness. The animal-welfare industry is over-saturated with aggressive and sad imagery. It was important for me to still convey the message, but in a more “subtle and friendly” way.
No matter how cute they may look, please avoid going to pet stores and help spread the word.
Comments: 2 | Category: freelance, illustration
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Comments: 0 | Category: Design Work, freelance, work