It amazes me when I come back to this blog and realize that it's been almost a year since I've posted anything. I am going to try to put stuff up more often.

We have been working on Halloween invitations lately and have just released them to the internet vendors. Here are a couple of samples.

My co-designer, Laura, painted the elegantly spooky one based on her view of the catacombs of Paris. It's one of my new favs!

I've also gone "girly" with our invitations. I have been working on all kinds of girls - graduation, holiday and Halloween. Each of our "girl" invites is available as a blonde, brunette, redhead or African-American. Some of them are also offered with an Asian option.

Each of our Halloween invitations also has a coordinating response card and 2.5 inch square label. Hope you enjoy!

Halloween Invitation with Coordinating Personalized Self-Inking Stamper

If you are looking for a coordinated look with your Halloween invitations and treats, take a look at our Batty Brackets invitation and Bat Self-Inking Stamper. The opportunities for using a Halloween stamp are only limited to your imagination. Here, I've shown using the stamp as a return address, to make tags for treat boxes and to create labels for candy bar wrappers. You could make tags for your child's treat bags to take to school or if you have a small number of trick or treaters, why not put candy in a cellophane bag and tie up with a cute and crafty punched tag. If you think of other ideas to stamp, post a comment and let me know.

If you are interested in this card or would like to see other options we have for Halloween, click here.

If you really like coordinating items, then you will love our soon-to-be-released holiday line. We are including coordinating envelope liners, matching/coordinating self-inking stampers and matching return address labels for most of our new items. (And don't let anyone give you grief for insisting that your file folders coordinate with your other office decor or that all your wrapping paper coordinate under the tree - I understand the compulsion and I salute you!)

My Favorite Things - Fonts

Okay, I will admit it . . . I am crazy about typefaces. I have more than 10,000 and I add more all the time. For those of you who are having issues managing alot of fonts, look into Suitcase. This entry is about the typefaces that deserve to be in my personal Wall of Fame. Shown above are the all stars (for now - they change all the time). Reading from left to right, top to bottom are in no particular order:

1. Burgues . . . when you need to say it with a flourish. This typeface is just fabulously decadent and extravagant.
Alejandro Paul’s ode to 19th-century American calligrapher Louis Madarasz will sweep you away.

2. Stephanie Marie . . . A lively, brush-style script font, named after a dear friend of the designer. This one is a favorite of Susan's (boss/fearless art director). Created by Jukebox.

3. Bauer Bodoni . . . Based on designs by Giambattista Bodoni (Italy 1740-1813), an Italian punchcutter, typefounder and printer who led in the development of the letterform we call ‘modern or didone, in the last years of the eighteenth century. Jen, my office-mate turned me on to this one again. I love the clean lines and extremes of the thin and thick parts.

4. Helvetica Neue . . . If I had to pick just one, this would be it. My personal faves are 25 and 43. Typography just doesn't get any better than this. I don't know of any other font that has a documentary about it. You can download the whole film to your ipod - go to http://www.helveticafilm.com/ for more information.

5. Ministry Script . . . Alejandro Paul designed Ministry Script to be “A time capsule that marks both the American ad art of the 1920s, and the current new-millennium acrobatics of digital type.” The idea was to make as many possible variants of each letter as he could possibly handle. Ole Alejandro is my hero! I love fonts with alternate characters!

6. Feel Script . . . Current script favorite by Alejandro also. See my previous blog regarding Feel love.

7. Mrs. Eaves . . . Here's a little bit of typography trivia for today (as if this entire entry isn't) - This typeface is named after Sarah Eaves, the woman who became John Baskerville’s wife. As Baskerville was setting up his printing and type business, Mrs. Eaves moved in with him as a live-in housekeeper, eventually becoming his wife after the death of her first husband, Mr. Eaves. Like the widows of Caslon, Bodoni, and the daughters of Fournier, Sarah similarly completed the printing of the unfinished volumes that John Baskerville left upon his death.

8. Engravers Gothic . . . I know I use this one too much but it works so well on invitations. IMO, it MUST BE IN ALL CAPS and typeset rather small to maintain its' elegance.



As I typed the above, I thought of those left behind . . . Bickham Script, Futura (especially light), Fling, Trajan. I'm sure there are more that I haven't remembered but I can only spend so much time on type.



So, if you are still interested in looking at type after all this, here are some of my favorite sites:

http://typographica.org/
http://www.typophile.com/
http://tackorama.net/ - Free 50's, 60's and 70's fonts
http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/ - What The Font is the best font identifier I've ever seen. Upload a sample and it will recognize it or send it to a forum of super font freaks (said with love) who generally can tell you what it is and where to find it.
http://www.dafont.com/ - This site will get you into trouble. Fonts are free and I usually walk away with at least half a dozen.
http://ilovetypography.com/ - play the font game if you dare!
http://www.typography.com/ Hoeffler & Frere Jones - beautiful typefaces
http://www.wordsarepictures.co.uk/ - beautiful typesetting artwork

There are more but I am tired. Let me know what your favorite fonts and sites are.

Holiday Part 1

Okay, so I've been working like a maniac for months now and ignoring my blog. And today is no different than the last 100 work days . . . there is production work to do, design work to do and administrative work to do. But I am going to take the time to blog because there is always other stuff to do and it will always be there waiting for me.

So today I am going to start showing off the new Holiday designs. In the interest of full disclosure, some of these designs were done by my co-worker, Jen. We really work as a team and you probably won't be able to tell which ones are hers and which ones are mine. And sometimes, we both worked on a card at different times.

I will begin the Holiday display with Halloween invites. We've never really done Halloween before so I am interested to see how this goes. Halloween is on a Friday night this year which translates to two things . . . the obvious is that there will be more Halloween parties (start planning yours now!) and the other is that there will be rehearsal dinners taking place on Halloween. In honor of that, I tried to design some invites that were elegant and yet Halloween-ish at the same time. Let me know what you think!

Personalized Stamps

Well, I haven't written in a while because I've been bogged down in stamps. I thought I was headed toward holiday cards but I veered off and created an entire line of stamps. We released them to vendors on Thursday and the response has been tremendous. There are 80 different designs and these are just a few of my favorites. These self inking stampers are great for making your own cards, creating wedding favors or rewarding a young child just learning how to spell their name. If you are interested in seeing the whole line of stamps and stampable note cards, click here.

Color

Well, Pantone came out with their fashion colors for the fall and I thought I would share both the fall colors and the spring colors.

I check for these color forecasts habitually and they always make me think of the diatribe that Miranda Priestly goes on about Andy's blue sweater in "The Devil Wears Prada" . . .

You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don't know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise, it's not lapis, it's actually cerulean. You're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn't it, who showed cerulean military jackets? And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room.

People tend to think that colors just "become" popular, but what most don't know is that there is an entire industry devoted to forecasting what colors are the next big thing. I'm especially liking the blues and greens for 2008. I have been in a "green" phase for a while now, especially what I like to call "bright olive" and I have included a silk blouse in this color. My kitchen is very close to this, maybe a little bit darker and people often say, "Wow, what a great color. I would never have thought to paint such a bold color." Or, depending on their personality, they may say, "I love this color but I could never live with it." I just know that it makes me happy every time I go in my kitchen, even if it didn't make the Pantone list.

And fashion designers would agree . . . good design is about following the rules while great design is knowing when to break them.

If you would like to see or download the entire 33 page pdf from Pantone, click here.

Classic Design continued

Here are a couple of baby designs that I did just recently using a damask pattern and they have Engravers Gothic also.

Which just leads me to this conclusion: The Sound of Music is still the best movie of all time (I must confess to being prejudiced by childhood memories and the fact that I am named after Julie Andrews).

Have a great weekend everyone!

Classic Design

Last night I was watching The Sound of Music with my daughter and I was struck by how much I still like the design used in this movie. The script font used in the credits looked very much like Ministry Script, that we have just added to our list of available typestyles for customized invitations and the other typefaces looked very much like Trajan and Engravers Gothic, both of which are all time favorite typefaces of mine. Then, when Maria pulled down the draperies and made outfits for all the kids, I was struck anew at how "current" the design of this movie is. Oversized damask has been quite trendy lately and Maria was just a little ahead of her time when she outfitted all the kids in matching lime green and white oversized damask outfits. I think I may have to go work on a Christmas design using this look!

Vintage Sign Series

Another big hit of the January release is the Vintage Sign Series. With a nod to Route 66 and fifties Vegas, Jen and I created a series of eight invitations that are both kitschy and whimsical. The Barbeque one makes me think of the pig from Piggly Wiggly grocery stores. Those of you from the southern eastern seaboard know what it's like to be "big on the pig." Susan, my esteemed boss and fearless art director pushed for all the little details that you might never notice but really bring out the design - the fringe on the Fiesta sign, the bride's bouquet in the Honeymoon Inn sign and the texture on the trunk of the palm tree. Hope you like them! PS - You can click on the image to see it larger.

Typefaces

Looking over the items that I have chosen to include in this blog made me start thinking about font choices that I have made. I go through phases with typefaces with a few all-time favorites. All time faves include Helvetica, Mrs Eaves, Engravers Gothic and Bickham. I also really like Vectora, but it really isn't a "stationery" font. Current faves also include Fling, Bodoni (thanks to my cohort, Jen), Trajan and Ministry Script. I am currently really dying to purchase Feel Script, available at http://www.veer.com/ but I'm essentially too cheap to cough up the $99. If I still love it 6 months from now, I will probably break down and buy it. It has the best ligatures and alternate characters. It's one of the most girly fonts I have ever really liked.

Tuxedo Notepad Collection

Another item I've been working on is a set of notepads in acrylic holders - eight in each set. This first set is black and white and here are a few of them. One of the best ways I've seen someone customize these is to put "From the mom of" and then the kids names at the bottom with check boxes. Other options from the collection include a herringbone pattern, swirls, dots and lattice. These notepads are available for purchase from http://www.stationerystudio.com/.

January 08 Release (continued)

Here is another invite for the January release. I think it's perfect for a rehearsal dinner or bridesmaid luncheon.

More Baby Photo Announcements

Here are two more of the baby photo cards. If you would like to purchase these customized for your baby or to see the entire line, they are currently available through Invitation Box at http://www.invitationbox.com/.

Baby Photo Announcements

I am a graphic designer with 18 years of experience and I have recently begun designing stationery products . . . invitations, holiday digital photo cards, baby digital photo cards, correspondence cards, folded notes and more. Previously, I worked primarily in the field of real estate development so this is a big move for me mentally.

This blog is designed to showcase my work. Hope you enjoy it!