Blog

Glowing Centerpieces

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 22:29:00 GMT

We have missed blogging but have a good excuse: our clients have kept us pretty busy lately with an assortment of very cool projects. We adore the variety of work that comes into the Studio, from purely digital projects to crafty projects that require us to take out rulers, knives, and glue.

For this overdue blog post we want to share a few images from one of our more crafty projects. We created custom centerpieces for a New Profit event that were lit up inside with LED lights. The effect was beautiful, colorful, and glowing! Thank you to our clients for allowing us to truly work in multiple mediums.

Giving Thanks

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 20:20:00 GMT

Thank you to all of our friends and clients for being creative with us. We are so grateful for the really great client partnerships we have formed, the interesting and challenging projects work on, and the fact that we get to basically do arts and crafts all day long!

PS: bonus points go to whoever figures out what project we recycled for our hand turkeys.

Creepy Kearning

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 12:24:00 GMT

Things can get downright spooky here in the graphic design world... from creepy kearning to scary page bleeds, haunted hairlines, screaming serifs, hair-raising hyphenation, ghostly grids, alarming alignment, and zombie clients. All we can say is eeeek! (Wait, we don't have any zombie clients, do we?).

Happy Halloween to our clients and friends!

Trade Show-off

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 20:35:00 GMT

Our design work traveled to Las Vegas a couple weeks ago, courtesy of our wonderful clients at Agency 3 and Copley Focus Centers. We were thrilled to get a digital photo from our client to show us how the actual box booth looked when set up.

We love how this design came out. The project surprised us by being more challenging than one might think at first glance... We worked hard to balance two different locations (one urban and one suburban - with two different logos) and still make sure the entire booth had a strong Boston identification from a distance. This booth is eye catching from afar and has useful information about the services when you get close.

We hope this gets lots of usage beyond Vegas!

Land Movers

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 20:58:00 GMT

We've had quite a busy week here in the Studio... lots of wonderful projects keeping us out of trouble. We've been tied to the Studio until this afternoon when we glanced out of the window and to our delight discovered a giant excavator sitting on the side lawn.

Hmmmm.... time for a little work break?

Yes, sitting in the bucket is kind of dirty... but worth it for giggles. It is settled: if the design business fails us we are going to become "J Sherman Earth Movers." Jenny will be the lead excavator.

Save the Margins!

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 11:33:00 GMT

Dear clients: we are on a mission to save your margins and preserve white-space. Why? Because our designs look better that way! No seriously, it is because we care about your content and want your audiences to be able to read and digest what you have to say.

We understand the desire to try to fit as much as possible on one page. We know you have lots of great information to share and you want to get it all in there. However, you hired us to make your content look great: to showcase it, make it easy to read, and help communicate whatever your story is. So it is our job to help you understand what kind of impact these requests have on the overall piece.

We are often asked to make the margins smaller so that we can fit more words per line. Yes, that can often bring the page count down but usually at the expense of legibility and we'd love to explain why. Many of our design decisions are intuitive and aesthetic... however there is some logic and science behind these decisions:

In general, the average number of characters (which means letters) per line of text that readers prefer to read falls between 35-55. For 9-12 point type this generally creates a column width of three to five inches.* Longer lines are more difficult for the eye to 1) stay on the line and 2) find the next line of text when it finishes reading a row. In addition, leading (otherwise known as line spacing) also plays a critical role in allowing your eye to get to that next line and not lose its place on the current line.

What do we recommend instead of making the margins smaller?

Edit your copy down. Sometimes less is truly more.
Add a page or two: it might be worth it if it is going to be easier for your audience to digest.
Break up your content and create sidebars, these can help fit more varied content on a page (and great for readers who skim).
And hire a good designer who will fight for your margins!

*from "Universal Principles of Design" by William Lidwell, Kritina Holden, and Jim Butler.

Sweet as Honey

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 17:36:00 GMT

Sometimes our work is just so sweet... literally! We are thrilled to share images of the stickers we designed for Shelterbelt Farm's honey. These simple oval stickers are easy to print internally and fit perfectly on the bottles. Yum. We'll work for honey anytime.

Field Trip and an iPad!?

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 18:57:00 GMT

What a fun day! We trecked all the way to Charlestown this morning to attend a special event that Alphagraphics Boston hosted for their clients. We got to hang out with Kelly Mastracchio (our beloved alumna who has recently moved back to Boston), with dear friend Abby Rischin, the founder of Step Into Art, and we got to see some really lovely clients of ours from Root Cause and Kor Floral.

We learned all sorts of fun new marketing things (QR codes galore), meet members of the U.S. Sailing Team, see a real life Olympic gold medal (and medalist), AND Jenny managed to win the iPad!

Was it worth being away from the Studio all morning? Just ask Jenny.

Thank you Alphagraphics Boston.

Under Construction

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 11:18:00 GMT

Why haven't we been blogging much lately? An image tells a thousand words, right? Well check these photos out...

We have wanted to blog, but we have a lot going on right now with our physical workspace.

For the past three weeks we have been temporarily set up on card tables downstairs with most of the office packed up in boxes and scattered all over the house. Why? Because sweating through the summer and shivering through the winter just isn't fun. We had air conditioning installed and insulation blown in. Now the Studio looks like it has a case of the chicken pox: it is polka dotted with holes that are punched every foot for the insulation. And we have these very lovely silver air conditioning tubes in the back where we plan on creating a wall and then a floor to ceiling bookcase to cover up.

We hopefully move back in this weekend after we fill in and patch the holes, then repaint the whole Studio. Then the fun begins with trying to figure out where to unpack things! Never a dull moment in this small business (and we admit to feeling jealous of larger businesses who contract out for support on stuff like this as we lug boxes all over the place). But we are very excited for a more climate controlled workspace.

Can We Take Your Order?

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 21:05:00 GMT

We love our clients and we love their projects. We always look for awesome client relationships over specific projects. But sometimes we crave funny, very particular projects. One day we might wish to design a wedding invitation for an Indian wedding, or another day we want to design packaging for a gourmet box of truffles.

Today we are in the mood for menu designs. Today we wish a creative, design-oriented, visionary restaurant would knock on our door and hire us for everything from the signage to the coasters... and of course the menus! Where is this urge coming from? Seems to be something in the air.

A few weeks ago Julie visited Chez Panisse cafe in Berkley, CA and drooled over the creative menu designs that paper the walls: beautiful woodblock prints of turnips, garlic scapes, and so much more. Then we discovered the art of the menu blog where there are many menu designs to drool over. Finally, Miriam stumbled upon and purchased the new Taschen book: Menu Design in America which has pages and pages of inspiring and often amusing vintage menus.

What do we love about menus? Function and storytelling all in one! Typography, visual heirarchy, alignment, organization... and mood, feeling, inspiration.

Please come bring us a yummy creative menu project! We don't care what cuisine it is, as long as the design can be fabulous and fun.

Oh, and Jenny is off eating every flavor of gelato possible in Italy, thus the inspiration for our image today.

Fresh Take

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 22:17:00 GMT

Have you ever had the experience when you've been working on something for a long time that you just can't see it clearly? Perhaps you are writing a story and you get so stuck on a single sentence that you can't remember what the storyline was about. Or maybe you are shopping for a perfect lamp for your living room, and by the time you find options you can't remember what your living room even looks like?

Sometimes we find our clients get stuck in figuring out what they actually feel about a design. They blow right by their gut reaction and start methodically and objectively analyzing the design. Before they know it they can't figure out what they think about the design at all!

This happens to us as well: at the end of the day, when we've been pushing type, colors, and pixels all over the computer screen we can no longer evaluate what we are doing. We need to see it fresh.

What do we recommend to our clients when they get stuck (or to ourselves when we get too close to a project)?:

"Print it out and leave it in a place where you will 'happen upon it' during the day"

We typically leave design projects that are in progress on our project table so when we pass by as we head out for lunch or back to our desks we'll realize exactly what the work needs. Much better than sitting and staring at a design while getting frustrated.

Final Approval Matters

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 19:46:00 GMT

When you give final approval you are approving everything about the design: the way color bleeds off the edge of the page, the alignment and cropping of the photos, the size and color of your headline font, and so on.

Why bother proofing carefully before you give final approval? Because...

it is your responsibility (assuming you are the client),
it helps ensure you will be satisfied with the end product,
you have the privilege of providing final approval,
you avoid embarrassment if you catch a crucial typo, and
you can save money by not having to have something reprinted or redone.

So why don't we provide final approval for you? Because we are designers: not mind readers (and not copy editors)!

We might assume that you prefer the old English spelling of "colour" over plain old "color."
We might not realize "Jon" is missing his "h" and should be "John."
If you have supplied content with inconsistent punctuation we might assume there is actually a logic to it.

So what should you proof for?

EVERYTHING.
EVERYTHING.
EVERYTHING.
It is that simple. Check your spelling, check the alignment of elements, check to confirm we implemented your last round of edits properly, and so on.

The good news is design projects include edit rounds before you give final approval. Take these rounds seriously, because once you provide final approval it will cost you extra time and money to fix things.

Can I Have A Hug?

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 18:03:00 GMT

Sometimes very tiny projects bring us the biggest smiles. We were thrilled to help one of our corporate clients give her very good friend a meaningfully designed gift.

Our wonderful client Jacq gave her good friend Becca a surprise to bring with her to a Paul McCartney concert where she had prime seats. Yes, we helped design the poster below! We set it up on a black background with bright colors so that it would stand out from the audience when the lights were low.

The results? No hug, but lots and lots of attention from Paul himself and also from her neighbors in the audience. And while Becca did not get a hug, Paul said he loved her in concert! (Maybe even better?) In Becca's words: "During the concert there I was with the sign. Ask the people around me, he was smiling and nodding at ME! People were high fiving me and when I shouted to Paul 'I love you Paul' and he responded back to me, the woman next to me put her arm around me and said she was so glad to be sitting next to me because Paul was so attentive."

We are so thrilled to be part of such a happy, fun story. Thank you Jacq and Becca for making us part of your fun!

Chefs Collaborative Summit

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 20:43:00 GMT

We love projects that lend themselves to fun imagery. Chefs Collaborative brought us that opportunity recently (and still ongoing) in designing a logo for their 2011 National Summit in New Orleans. Designing these logo concepts made us hungry as we dreamed about crawfish, beignets, and muffaletta sandwiches. Perhaps Chefs Collaborative will want us to travel to join in the summit: clearly they need their designers on hand, right? (Oh wait, we'd just want to eat if we go there, not work.)

Check out our final logo on the left and some of the "runner up" logo concepts on the right.

We are now designing some of the event materials. We have more to do, but check out a couple small web banners and also our tote bag mock up!

Thank you Chefs Collaborative for allowing us to briefly dream about food, travel, and all things New Orleans.

Seeking Inspiration

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 15:55:00 GMT

We admit it. Sometimes we have trouble feeling inspired. Occasionally we get stuck staring a new project. Sometimes we struggle on an ongoing project. And sometimes we'd just rather be running, rock climbing, hiking, cooking, shopping, painting, anything instead of sitting at our desks and trying to design.

We LOVE what we do, we CARE about our clients and making them happy, but sometimes we get STUCK. So what do we try when creative inertia hits?

Design crush: We look outside the studio at other artists and designers. We have a library of fun books to pour over. We subscribe to several design magazines. We follow a zillion blogs and we "pin" things that we think are cool on pinterest.com. We also love perusing websites like the Book Cover Archive for ideas and amusement.
Play musical chairs: When one of us spins on a project we often hand it over to the other person. Getting frustrated and feeling stuck just makes it worse. Many times a new set of eyes can see potential (or identify what isn't working) much faster than working alone.
Storytime: Sometimes we need the client to retell or reframe the story their project is trying to tell. While we have great kick off conversations, sometimes we realize we need more information or clarification once we have dug in. Other times we realize that we need to try to retell the story to ourselves... sometimes that inspires new approaches or new imagery (and other times makes us realize we need to talk to the client because we are confused).
Stand on our heads: Get a fresh perspective and look at things from another direction. We print things out, look at them upside-down, take them into another room, look at them in a new context.
"Tomorrow is another day," as Scarlett O'Hara famously put it in Gone With the Wind. Most times if we are stuck we just need to take a break. The next day it always seems clearer what needs to change.
Take a popsicle break: It is 98 degrees outside as we write this post, so if you read this in December please swap out "popsicle" with "tea" or "chocolate." If we can't wait for tomorrow (sorry Scarlett), we try to at least walk away for a few minutes and have a popsicle. The sugary goodness usually inspires fabulous design work before the sugar low happens.

What are your tips for finding inspiration?