My latest creative baby

I wanted to come up with an in-expensive format that would have a lot of value so I developed this box which will be $8.00 on the table. There will be 24 cards, printed envelopes and seals. I have been a fan of Trey Ratcliff for years, if anyone has been to my house, I have many of his photographs framed on my walls. You can discover more about him here: http://www.stuckincustoms.com/

This is the prototype I developed to sell Trey and the company on my idea. After reaching out to Trey’s people with this mock up they were excited but cautious. It took a lot of convincing to get them on board. The end result will change a bit but I was very excited to pick through Trey’s amazing collection of world photography! I decided hat it would be fun to have the envelopes look like old maps and have the sticker envelope seals look like old wax seals with a compass on them!

I can’t wait to see this one finished.

Creating an emotional connection with graphics

This is a catalog I designed to sell some of the cards I art directed. Our target market for this is women. I wanted to create a “cupcake shop” kind of feel with whimsical backgrounds, photography and color theme. This creates an emotion when you look at it. Emotional connection is the biggest component to any kind of marketing, when you can look at something and it creates a special memory or feeling.

I took the photography in various places around Louisville, Colorado. This shot was one of my favorite ideas. It took a lot of time to find the right settings where I could find two trees close enough to hang the cards like a clothes line with a nice background where I could also hang up the paper lanterns. and get some of the cute picket fence in the background.

After I had developed my base photograph some of the other ones were easy to combine, I took shots with some simple props I had at home. The pink birthday cake was complicated because I wanted it to look more symmetrical than any cake I could bake myself, it is actually two hat boxes I frosted with whip cream and wooden circles.

Here is the finished page with the tea party/spring emotion I wanted to evoke:

Business cards

Every once in a while I’ll design business cards for friends. Here is one for a friend of mine who owns a catering business.

Best Sellers Brochure

Imagine Nation Books used to mail out one spread brochures featuring books that were overstocked and easy for them to get so this it how I chose to feature them. I made the covers look like an old book, the color would change throughout the year and the inside would look like old book pages but I would dress it up with characters and fun but easy to read layout. I would edit out the characters by taking photographs of pages of the books and correct them in Photoshop.

Retro Rebo Card Box

This beautiful set was designed by artist Connie Haley. I directed the project and designed the box format and the stickers. The quality of everything came out great, I’m hoping that we sell this item to QVC as well!

 

Daycare Brochure

This is a daycare book & gift catalog that I designed for Imagine Nation Books. I love those floating books, I still use them on lots of materials. Just showing a few pages, I tried to make each spread fun to look at and used color codes and buttons to help the reader navigate the catalog.

 

Accelerated Reader

Accelerated reader has a rating system on children’s books that helps the child and parent know specifically how complex the reading level is on a particular book. I made “The Reading Jungle” when AR teamed up with Imagine Nation Books. It’s an inexpensive quarterly brochure that features best selling books. I designed it to go from kindergarten to 6th grade. I wanted it to be easy to use by putting the age groups on different pages with a cute animal holding a sign. I didn’t have a lot of space to work with so it was a bit like working a puzzle trying to find the right space for the right item. It came with a bookmark and poster to hang up in participating schools.