A few projects lately....

Just wanted to share a few little design things that have been keeping me busy lately!

Bespoke Poster Design:


Above: This poster was commissioned By Keri Bainborough, for her and her husband - on their wedding day, the A4 poster is now framed and sits on their living room mantle piece for their friends and family to admire (below).


Above: A poster design commissioned by Lauren Setterberg - of her and her boyfriend - who is a third eye blind fan and avid hiker!


Above: Megan Hartwig contacted me for an A4 poster design of her and her daughter Zoe. She wanted to include words that were special for her and her daughter as well as a fun doodle border.

Above (and below): Lulu Johnson-Becker asked me to create a custom poster of her and her husband for their one year "paper" anniversary. I created a bespoke illustration and a variety of poster layouts for her to choose from - including special moments from their first year together as a married couple (below).


Illustrated Wedding Stationery:



Above: Theuns and Leanie, an afrikaans couple from South Africa, contacted me to create their wedding stationery with an illustrated feel. The Save the Dates (above), featured a bespoke cartoon of the couple including a landmark of their wedding venue. The Save the Dates were sent out electronically to their friends and family, whilst the invitations (below) were sent out via mail to their respective guests.



Above: The wedding invitations included a cartoon frame which highlights the couple's love story. The airplane motif and the bespoke cartoon couple were two elements that were carried throughout the wedding stationery design.

Illustrated Logo Design:


Jen, the founder of Dogs love walks - commissioned a cartoon based logo design for her new dog walking business. The client sent through photographs of her and her dogs which helped to create the perfect logo.

Positive Postcards

I was browsing through my draft inbox and came across this post from a little while back - I honestly thought that I had already blogged this... but clearly I hadn't! Enjoy!

Before I headed off to The Blogcademy, I knew I wanted to create some memorable business cards.

I started by creating makeshift business cards, then I attached them to my DIY business card holders. Because my aim for attending The Blogcademy workshop was to get some advice and direction on starting up my own online (stationery) business - I decided to design a few little "things" that I could attach to my business cards that would give people a better idea of the kind of stationery I will eventually be selling/my style/vibe and something fun that they could take home or pass along to others.

Since it was the first time that I would be meeting many of these people - I decided to opt for a theme that could easily apply to anyone as well as being in line with the co-operative spirit of the workshop -

"Positive Postcards"

(perhaps this was too much of a South African reference - haha)

I had these printed via Moo Cards - and the quality was really awesome. They actually arrived on the day of the workshop and I was already "in class". The husband took his lunch break to mission across London and drop them off for me and he didn't even get to see me because I was busy gettin' schooled. What a guy.

I had a lot of fun dishing these out and I think people had as much fun choosing the designs they liked. It was also good feedback for me to see which designs went first!

What do you think?

Inspiration: 7 Creative Packaging Concepts

I was recently asked on twitter to share some of my favourite people-to-follow in the realm of creative packaging design. I could look at brand packaging for HOURS, mainly because it's kind of like gift-wrapping for companies - and we all know how much I love a good gift wrap.

There are way too many people that I could recommend you follow - either the designers themselves or the sites that collate their work (often without linking back - grr) So anyway, here is a collection of a few of my faves and you can see which ones you like and hit them up on twitter if you so wish.

ABOVE: The anti-theft Lunch Bags - created by the. company from two designers Sherwood Forlee and Mihoko Ouchie. Sherwood actually grew up in Zimbabwe (woop Africa!) I love this design - so smart. AND... sneaky.


ABOVE & BELOW: This is one of my favourite brand identity collections - partly because it's cartoon all over it and partly because of the amazing hue of colours. Designed by Isabela Rodrigues. In fact, all their brand packaging is pretty awesome - definitely have a look at their website.




ABOVE & BELOW: This packaging design was created by May Tsui - it's a collection of CDs packaged to look like slices of bread. I'm a complete sucker for "alternative" packaging design.

Once, when I was living in South Korea - I stumbled across a set of notepads and cards that were shaped like a milk carton. I had absolutely no use for the milk carton note-set but I bought it anyway because I. couldn't. help. myself. Asia really does have the greatest packaging of all time.

I need to go back.

(ahem, husband.)

Anthology of Bread, anyone?

ABOVE:  These little "Jooze" cartoons were created by Yungyeen Yong as part of her student design portfolio. They are targeted at kids - but let me tell you, if I came across one of these in the shop, I'd buy it based on the packaging alone.



ABOVE: These tea packages were created by Jaeyoung Ha. What did I tell you about Asian Designers? Or maybe those are just the designs I'm most attracted to. Whatever, it's beautiful.



ABOVE: I am a huge fan of packaging that makes use of the product itself. Above is a perfect example of what I'm talking about - designed by Lo Siento. It makes the audience feel part of the design experience - which is of course, always a win. ("HAHA! Look at me! Look what I did! I pulled this bread out and gave this little gnome a hat! Look at me - I'm so clever!") Nope, that'd be the designer - but.... you have your two seconds of glory and go ahead and buy more bread to show your friends.

Design Win.

(Another excellent and completely harrowing example of this is from the Landmine Campaign - I haven't posted it here because it's quite hectic - but you can see it posted on my Creative Packaging Pinterest Board)

ABOVE: Packaging is always good when it evokes some kind of feeling. For me this embroidery style milk carton design by Peter Gregson does exactly that. When I look at this embroidery pattern sitting so perfectly on this milk carton - I immediately think of some lovely Swiss cows that are grazing in the lovely Swiss Alps in lovely little knitted jerseys. No?

So those are a few of the package designs that I love -

If you want to follow any websites that do a good job of collating these kinds of designs (and since a lot of these personal designers accounts tweet in foreign languages)

I can recommend:

The Dieline - curation of interesting package design
Lovely Package - packaging design from around the world
Behance - a collection of design portfolios
Eight Hour Day - mainly design and illustration with the odd packaging concept thrown in.

You can also follow my Creative Packaging Pinterest board for some visual inspiration.

Happy Monday everyone

x

printed love

some printed love from around Etsy -

eva juliet

RowHouse 14

HappyDappyBits

Westmama

pumpkin and butterfly

RedLetterPaperCo

4Four

Desktop Wallpaper project

Need an awesome new desktop pic?

Check out the Desktop Wallpaper Project from The Fox is Black

(available to download in a variety of sizes. olleh.)

Cape Town. FTW.

i love all things designery, artsy, craftish etc and now Cape Town has been selected as one of three potential candidates for the Design World Capital for 2014, up against Dublin and Bilbao.


Last year, the World Design Capital was Seoul and I got to see a whole bunch of exhibitions, galleries, innovative design ideas and the works of super creative and talented people. (You can check out two old posts HERE and HERE.)


You can read more about the bid on the official committee website here and grab one of the supporter badges for your blog or website :)

The Fringe on Kloof

(illustration credit: Estee Steyn)

The Fringe Arts is known for its pop-up shops that feature local art, design and illustrations from a variety of local artists. Each piece in the Fringe Arts collection is handmade, conceptualised and manufactured in South Africa. I visited one of their pop-up stores last year September at the V&A Waterfront and was not disappointed. The Fringe Arts concept was created by Chantal Louw and Thessa Bos who direct The Fringe Arts as well as curate the vintage range, Frintage.

From June 16th, The Fringe Arts pop-up movement is opening in a permanent location at 99B KLOOF STREET, CAPE TOWN as THE FRINGE ON KLOOF. So use your youth day off and take a trip down to this little artsy haven :) You can also enter The Fringe Arts Competition and stand a chance to win a cracked heart pendant by Cape Town jeweller Eon Hoon. You can find out more about the competition on The Fringe Arts facebook page.

Louw says, "Hearts and eyes are turning to the local scene and discovering not only a sense of quality but an amazing abundance of knowledge garnered from our parents and their parents and so forth. From dolosse to vintage, South Africa has a rich history of upcycling"

Viva la Local! Happy Youth Day South Africa.

Birthday Invitations

It's my lovely mom's birthday in May and I'm making a trip home to join the celebrations!
Naturally my mom has asked me to design some birthday invitations/stationery for her.

* * * * * 

Dear Che,

Please could you do some invitations for my birthday celebrations for May. 

I think I want to have a 'Jeans and Jewels' theme - you know, pretty casual but still nice, you know a dash of something fancy.

Let me know

I can't wait to see you!

Mom

x

* * * * *

Dear Mom,

Yay! I'm so excited! That's a great theme for you! 

I've made some invite samples for a pretty "jeans and jewels" theme which i've attached - I'm not sure about venues or times - so the text is all random. I also have some great ideas for making it casual but still pretty and beautiful! YAY!

Let me know what you think and I will make changes.

love

me

Dear Che

Actually, I've changed my mind. I think it's going to be "just jeans"now - nothing fancy or glitzy for me.

Also we might have it in a barn - so maybe you could change the chandelier for another picture. There are no chandeliers in the barn. Nothing fancy or beautiful or anything like that.

Love

Mom

x

* * * * * 

Dear Mom

WHAT?! Why are you changing the theme? It was nice for you! I highly disapprove of this change. But anyway I have changed the invitations and chandelier pictures accordingly to fit your new 'barn-theme'.

Let me know what you think.

Che

* * * * *

ps. Don't get me wrong - events in barns are AWESOME. 

but they should still be a touch of fancy....

source: green wedding shoes

 

source: Cap Classique

source: 100 layer cake

PS. We eventually went with a 'cartoon-style' invitation, which pleased us both. haha. Will post pictures of it soon - I'm sad I didn't get to spend mother's day with my wonderful mom yesterday - but I will be home soon (6 days!) to celebrate. YAY!

I hope all the moms had a lovely day yesterday :)

Springleap Competition

* * * * *

* * *

Anyway my lame-attempt at comedy is not the point.

The people over at Springleap have asked me to give a word-up about 2 new design competitions they are currently running. The first is the 

"Stepdog Powered by Music Design Challenge"

"Designers are requested to listen to the band's 6 songs & read the lyrics on the website, let themselves be inspired, and design Stepdog's new band t-shirt using their logo and illustrating how music can power their life and creativity."
Turbovite is sponsoring prize money for winning designs. (yeah.)

The second competition is the

"Special Ingredient" Design Competition
This comp is sponsored by Hansa pilsener who are offering great prize money (R10 000/ US$1250) for a "Springleap designer who dreams up and delivers a design that illustrates life's special ingredient."

For all the Information and competition details head over to the Springleap website.

Get designing.