So this came in the mail yesterday!! I couldn’t wait to share. I also can’t wait for the album release party this Sunday at the awesome Biltmore Cabaret. It’s going to be a lot of fun. Shirley Gnome will be playing her smutty and hilarious tunes with a full band. Plus, she will be accompanied by hot burlesque dancers from Kitty Nights, which is sure to be a super sexy and fun time, as Kitty Nights always is. More photos of the final product coming soon!
To say I have always wanted to design an album is an understatement. When I was little, I used to spend hours listening to records while looking through the insert and studying lyrics with a thirst that I believe only a nerd living in a remote Canadian town before the internet was invented can truly understand.
So, when I found out through my friend Suzy Rawsome that our mutual acquaintance Shirley Gnome was looking for a graphic designer for her next album, jumped on it and sent her a message. I really wanted this project for my portfolio. But also, if you have never heard Shirley’s songs or seen her on stage, she has the voice of an angel and writes the dirtiest and most hilarious songs I have ever heard, which naturally was right up my alley.
Seeing Shirley on stage in her polyester sequined costumes and listening to her dirty folksy-country songs summons an image that is a little bit 70s Dolly Parton, a little Elvis and a little disco. The woman is in love with glitter. The choice was clear, I really wanted to opt for a vintage 1970s aesthetic, and luckily Shirley agreed.
We started a Pinterest board with album covers that inspired us:
http://www.pinterest.com/padgettmeister/cool-and-bad-album-covers/
A short Photoshop tutorial later, I learned how to accomplish those oh-so-important 70s light flares:
Shirley wanted the cover image to be her in the streets under a streetlamp. Due to time constraints, we weren’t able to put together a photo shoot, and I had already fallen in love with a photo that was taken of her during the live recording of the album. So we went with that and altered it with Photoshop.
Here is the final album cover:
We definitely wanted to include Shirley Gnome’s signature pink cowboy hat, since it was missing from the cover. Shirley had the great idea to put the hat on the cd, so when you pick it up, the top of her head would be revealed. I loved it! Here is what the inside of the cd case will look like, with and without the cd:
I felt like Shirley’s lyrics were just way too funny not to include, so we made a 4 panel booklet of lyrics, so people could sing along at home! We used some photos that Shirley had taken after a show, and used Photoshop to give them a similar look and feel.
For the type, We used Angel Tears by Billy Argel for the cover and Thirsty Rough on the song titles.
I am so happy to share with you this very big, awesome project! Now, I just can’t wait for the cd release party on February 8th at the Biltmore!
During the summer of 2013, I was hired to design two vending machines that lived inside a hardware store in Vancouver. This was a freaky job because I barely knew how to set up a production job this large in scale, and it was actually one of my very first real-life (non-school project) design jobs.
I always find creating a mood board for a project helpful for keeping a consistent design aesthetic. This project didn’t really require one, but I made one for my own purposes. This is part of a mood board that I created for this project.
My only regret was not using as many colors on the final vending machines as I could have, but I was hoping to do the labels for the water bottles with the colors from my original mood board. The client ended up keeping the generic labels and didn’t have a budget for the water labels, and I got all caught up and busy with school again and so never ended up doing the labels, which is a bummer.
Anyway, it took me a while just to find an image on iStock that best represented what the client had in mind for his machines. He told me from our initial meeting that he wanted the image of ice falling down the side of the machine, so that’s what we went with.
I then found a picture and altered it in Photoshop to make the colors more vibrant, added more ice cubes and tried to make it look as refreshing as possible by lightening the color. This was the result:
After laying out the type, we were ready to go to print and wrap this thing! I made a few iterations and sent them to the printer:
There were quite a few iterations and revisions, back and forth with the printers, who were, thankfully, quite patient and understanding of my graphic design rookie status.
And here is the end result! My very first very big and very real-life package design project:
Later, the client asked for a price decal to be applied to the following circled areas:
Here is what the price decal ended up looking like:
This was a really exciting, and really scary project just because of how new I was at design. But, I always say yes to a project that I think I can learn from, and this one presented a big learning challenge. It is fun to look back and see how far I have come with my design knowledge.
I didn’t originally blog about this project because I wasn’t sure if I really liked the final outcome of it. Of course there are things that I would have done differently if I had this project now, but I am very happy for this first job and how cool it was to work on such a large object, having only completed one year of school! Yay!
I keep thinking about doing the water bottle labels, just for a fun package design exercise. We’ll see if I can make time!
Back when I was still in school, my friend Erik contacted me to ask if I could do a logo and some signage for a yoga studio (Centered Within Yoga) that also doubled as a karate dojo (Okinawan Traditional Martial Arts).
The reason this project sounded like so much fun is that the people who run the studio are so cool and happy, and they seemed to trust my creative ideas. This can make the hugest difference between a fun project and a not-so-fun one. So, I incorporated the project into a class at school so that I could get credit and also get paid at the same time, which I thought was pretty smart.
We have just finished the exterior signage for both storefronts (the project ended up growing a bit, and that is why it has taken a little longer to complete), and I thought I would share!
The logos both needed a more simplified treatment. For Centered Within Yoga, the client wanted to keep the lotus, but we opted for a san serif typeface that would be easier to read from the street view exterior of the building. Although we didn’t want the logos to be too matchy-matchy, we wanted them to family together a little better.
The updated logos and color palette(s):
The logo treatment was a little trickier with Okinawan, as the yellow crest is a traditional martial arts crest and so to alter it too much would be disrespectful. We opted for a slightly simplified version of the crest (#4 below), and the red and white Okinawan flag for the main logomark.
Here are the final logo treatments we went with, which we chose for their simplicity and optimum street visibility:
Back in March, I provided the client with a photoshop comp of what the exterior signage would look like after completion:
And this is the actual completed project!
It’s really fun for me to look at the before and after.
We branded the heck out of that storefront!
I’m particularly happy with how the decals on the doors and windows turned out.
Then I did the signage for the second location. Although I can’t take credit for the Sage River Wellness logo, I did set up the signage for them (file set up, color palette and production), as well as the decals for the windows that say yoga, massage therapy, counselling and reiki.
This was a very fun project, as I love to see my designs out in the real physical world! I hope to work more with these clients going forward, on their promotional materials (mainly posters and flyers) and their business collateral. They were great people to work with!
This blog entry wouldn’t be complete without a big shout-out to Erik Ferguson, who not only helped me get this job, but acted as a terrific advocate for my creative ideas, and offered tons of second opinions and helpful feedback. Many thanks to you, Erik!!
I was recently approached by my friend Josephine, who asked me to design a save-the-date and invitation combination to let her friends and relatives know about her upcoming wedding next summer. She wanted it to be low on paper waste, so we combined the save-the-date and the invite in an effort to get people to RSVP on the website only. I was super excited, because knowing how playful and fun Josephine is, I knew this would be a fun project. Also, I’ve never done any wedding design before, so I was super stoked about the experience. I will also be setting her up with a WordPress site with RSVP functionality in the coming month or so.
Josephine said she wanted a color palette that is “vibrant and retro” and she wanted something playful and whimsical. Other than that, I had not too many other guidelines. She gave me complete creative freedom, which was so much fun! I knew that she likes orange and green, so I based my color research on that, and found this color palette at Design Seeds:
The plan for the wedding is for it to be a very casual camping weekend in Alberta, and she said she wanted a VW camper van theme, which I was skeptical about at first, but thought could be really cute and fun.
Here’s what I came up with for the final electronic version:
Josephine loved it so much that she has asked for postcards as well! (Which will mean changing the dimensions a little bit.)
The illustration originally had a bunny where the groundhog was, but I replaced it because Tony loves groundhogs.
I have to give a shout-out to Michelle Booth, who has taught me everything I know about wedding invitations, save-the-dates, funky typography and ampersands ;). She is a design force to be reckoned with! I believe I was channelling her on this project!
Anyway, this is one of many projects that have been keeping me busy lately. I will post more updates on other projects soon!