blog

For Print Only & The Nu Creative

2013-05-23T21:34:55Z

Today is amazing and I'm beyond flattered to be getting so much love for a stationery set I did for a friend & colleague last August. This piece has a special place in my heart because it was my first wedding piece and the project I learned to letterpress with. Overall, this was a phenomenal project that only brought Sarah and I closer and I'm sad to see that it's over. If i had to do it all again, I wouldn't change a thing.

UnderConsideration's For Print Only featured my work today and Duncan Robertson of UnderConsideration said something very beautiful about this piece.

Wedding invitations designed and printed with care by someone with a personal connection are all the more special. This set of wedding materials are a nice example of what can happen when the couple trusts the designer. With attention-grabbing quality and tasteful references to wine—because the couple would be married in a vineyard—each piece finds the balance between something safe to send a conservative relative, and a representation of the couple’s energy and creativity.

— DUNCAN ROBERTSON

And if that wasn't enough, then a dear friend, colleague and fellow designerd, Fabienne Wente did a write up on this piece on her blog, which is FABULOUS and everyone should read. Fabienne has an amazing eye for design and beautiful aesthetic.

I'm feeling really loved today!

The Beauty of Letterpress

2013-05-23T00:25:43Z

Recently, Neenah Paper created a website called The Beauty of Letterpress that promotes letterpress. I was flattered to have three different projects featured in their gallery. Click here, here, or here to see my most recent press.

It seems the true reason for the site is to help build support for Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum located in Two Rivers, WI. The Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum is the only museum dedicated to the preservation, study, production and printing of wood type. With 1.5 million pieces of wood type and more than 1,000 styles and sizes of patterns, Hamilton’s collection is one of the premier wood type collections in the world.

The museum must relocate and this is where our support come in to play. They need to raise funds for the move and Neenah Paper has generously pledged to match $15,000 of the contributions raised on The Beauty of Letterpress. The money will be put towards moving palettes, materials to pack, store, and preserve the archives, equipment movers, and to sort and catalogue Hamilton’s inventory before and after the move. You can help by contributing as little as $5! Check out the lovely prints available for purchase.

Shades of Purple

2013-05-22T02:52:11Z

I did this wedding stationery some time ago, but my files got all corrupted and I was finally able to get the process shots and final digital versions for this project. My client was very easy to work with and loves the color purple. Ombre has been such a trend with women's hair & fashion, that I decided to apply it to this project and get as many shades of purple in as I could. The envelope for this is a dark purple, the invitation is a slightly light purple, the map is a dark to medium purple, the welcome dinner invitation is a medium purple, the front of the RSVP card is a medium to light purple, the back of the RSVP card is light purple and the RSVP envelope is a lighter purple. Totaling seven shades of purple right there. The calligraphy was done with purple ink, the stamps are purple and all of the peices were held together with string that had purple buttons (buttons were a decorative element at the ceremony/reception). All in all more then ten shade of purple.

I'm really looking forward to staging a photo shoot for this piece because of the theme. I'm not obsessed with purple, but I'm trying to channel my client for this one and gathering as many purple pieces as I can find to add to the purple tally. In the meantime, below are some shots of the letterpress process and a digital version of the invitation. Enjoy!

Also, I want to congratulate Jessica & Scott on their big day, which took place earlier this month. It was a pleasure working with you!

Typefaces: Gulyesa Script, Museo Slab & Love Potion

Rebranding

2013-05-17T22:47:59Z

I've been trying to design a logo for myself for months and have been really unhappy with everything I've drawn. Finally, I came up with a concept that I'm really happy with. Now I just need to decide how to print my business cards (letterpress or screenprint) and then I'll redesign my website.

Typeface: Univers LT Std

Fly Away With Us . . .

2013-05-17T21:49:28Z

I'm working a new wedding invitation for a very international couple. They met in Singapore, but she's from California and he's from South Africa, so the guest list will be very international and the theme of the wedding is vintage travel. The bride had a pretty clear idea of exactly what she wanted and the couple is on a budget so they wanted a single piece wedding invitation to cut costs.

I'm really looking forward to staging a photo shoot for this piece because of the theme. In the meantime, below are some shots of the letterpress process and a digital version of the invitation. Enjoy!

Typefaces: HaloHandletter* & MrsEaves

*HaloHandletter has kerning issues, but if you manually alter the kerning it looks a lot better.

April via Instagram

2013-05-17T21:37:13Z

Locations (top -> bottom, left -> right): R-23, Americano, Downtown Los Angeles, Figaro, WME, Bay Area, San Francisco, SF Moma, USS Pampanito, Downtown Los Angeles, Pacific Electric Lofts, Grow Your Own Media, Lala Press, Pacific Electric Lofts, The Last Bookstore & SF Moma

Awards Season

2013-03-13T01:52:16Z

The Oscars are over and I had a lot of fun designing the below minimalist posters. Ignore the funny dimension, but I handed these off to a motion graphic artist to animate them. Congrats to the winners!

2012 Holiday Card

2012-12-30T06:12:49Z

This was the first year I'd mailed out holiday cards and I found it a little challenging until I thought of the perfect idea. In about September I starting thinking about different ideas and decided against using a photo because it seems really narcissistic to send a picture of yourself to your friends, family and business contacts. So what to do? I started thinking back on all of the holiday cards I've ever received and realized the best ones were the ones that came with a short letter explaining what had happened to the family that year. It was perfect and extremely personal! My holiday card would answer the questions I'm always asked at family gatherings around the holidays, "So how have you been? What are you up to these days? Are you dating someone?"

The challenge was how to do this without sounding boastful or just sending out a holiday themed resume. I decided to only list major design accomplishments and keep all other blurbs more neutral (i.e. travel, community activity and some self-deprecating humor). I also had to make sure that the blurbs were spread out throughout all the months, so that way the card had a nice balance. Here are some examples of my favorite blurbs:

January 18: Started mentoring Lawrence. A very smart 5th grader from Foster Elementary School in Compton, who is way cooler than I could ever be.

February 22: Gave up the elevator for lent and realized that stairs are sometimes really hard to find.

April 29: Took a photography class to realize that I’m terrible at taking photos and should not adopt this as a hobby. EVER.

June 10: Told the Cable company to get lost when they required me to block out a 6 hour window of time for them to take 30 minutes to set up my internet and cable.

June 30: Decided to paint my bathroom, bathroom ceiling and kitchen walls. Shortly after, I realized that painting is exhausting and stopped after bathroom ceiling.

July 7: In realizing that my antique 1920’s Westinghouse Fan would probably start a fire if I continued using it, I some how managed to get a family friend to volunteering to fix it for me - THANKS MATT!

August 4: Finally finished painting the above mentioned walls in my apartment. I really should have just hired someone - live and learn.

September 23: Returned from a week long vacation in Mexico ill because, though I’d like to think I can eat all the raw shellfish and drink all the tap water I want without it affecting me, I can’t. This is a lesson I will never learn because I’m stubborn ... or just really like ceviche.

October 16: While hanging out with my 15-year-old sister I shared that I would dress up as Tomb Raider for Halloween. I then immediately felt old when I had to explain to her who Laura Croft was with google images as an aid ... Sigh.

October 20: Heard my friend in Zambia killed a black mamba. Even in Africa, he manages to hate on Kobe Byrant - unbelievable.

November 21: Sat terrified in the passenger seat as I taught my baby sister how to drive.

December 17: Realized that I had gone without cable or internet in my apartment for 6 months and I could definitely continue to live without it.

Below are photos of the process of screenprinting the cards and envelopes. This process wasn't as simple as I'd hoped because the lightweight of Univers was too small for the print to come out clean. I increased the type size in the studio and printed a new film and had to burn a new screen. After all that, everything went smoothly and I was able to mail them out right before Christmas. Professional photography to come!

Typefaces: Worthe Numerals, Mission Script & Univers

Christmas Wrapping

2012-12-25T01:34:05Z

My favorite part of the Holiday Season is wrapping gifts. You know you're a designer when your christmas gifts have a theme/color palette and you give more attention to the wrapping than the gift itself. This year's theme was minimalist grocery bag with red & silver as the accents and a splash of light blue.

The wrapping paper I used was brown butcher paper and 2 rolls of paper I purchased at Paper Source (the gingerbread men paper & nautical paper). I was planning on painting designs onto the butcher paper, but got annoyed that I had to wait for them to dry before moving forward so I only did that on one gift. For the bows & accents, I used red & silver ribbon and various colored strings and baker's twine that I had left over from other projects.

The final touch on a gift, or the cherry on the sundae if you will, is the hang tag. I did custom designs for my hang tags this year since I was already in the studio screen printing my Christmas Card. I used Univers, Mission Script and Worthe Numerals on my hangtags and printed 3 different versions. Printing these was really simple and I didn't run into any problem, but one of the tage designs says 2013 which isn't a good idea because I can't use them next year - bummer!

White on Wood

2012-12-15T05:10:42Z

Saturday I was in the Grow Your Own Media studio screen printing Sarah's wedding Save The Dates. I printed these on wood veneer and overall I'm beyond thrilled with how they turned out (and so is my client). Printing on wood was not difficult at all, and though white ink dries more quickly than any other color, I didn't run into any problems while printing. I had to modify my design slightly because the type was too small. But really that's a minor set back.

Below are process shots from the day. Please forgive the photo quality as I shot these with my phone.