February comes from the Latin word februare meaning to purify
In ancient Rome, great festivities were held to reestablish the empire’s focus on clean living
February is the month of purification
download our February 2012 calendar to print or for your desk top here
Truth be told, I’m not a huge fan of pies (except pumpkin with homemade whipped cream), but I am a big fan of the branding designed for Emporium Pies by Foundary Collective. I love the color, in particular, but everything about it is pretty fabulous! Thanks to designworklife for sharing.
How fun is this? It’s silly but not over the top, and it makes me smile. I have to admit that I cannot remember where I originally found it, but I do know that it was designed by the wonderful illustrator, Jessica Nielsen, and you can download it here.
I love, love, love these posters. I came across them on the Square Inch Design Blog a while back and have been meaning to share them ever since. I think my favorites are Rapunzel and Goldilocks, although The Princess and the Pea is pretty great, too!
Childrens Story Posters | Square Inch Design Blog.
Via the HOW Magazine Blog and by dentist/cartoonist Grant Snider.
getting a letter in the mail that looked like this?
or this?
Wouldn’t it make your day? or your year, for that matter? I mean, really, look at those fabulous noses, the expression on that baby’s face, the little bug off to the right, not to mention the hand-lettered address!
These are from a new and delightful looking publication entitled Floating Worlds: The Letters of Edward Gorey and Peter F. Neumeyer. Published by Pomegranate, it reproduces the never-before-seen, typewriter-transcribed personal correspondence and illustrated envelopes between Gorey and renowned writer Peter F. Neumeyer as they collaborated on several childrens books, between 1968 and 1969.
If you had the opportunity to work with any writer or illustrator, who would it be? I think I’d have to say Mo Willems (of Elephant and Piggie, Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and other fabulous kids books fame), or perhaps Ian Falconer (of Olivia fame, of course).
Thanks to Imprint for sharing!
December’s calendar was difficult for me. Not only is it my last one (I’m passing the torch to Margaret for 2012), but I struggled to come up with a concept that felt right to me. I didn’t want to focus on the holidays, because, to me, December is about so much more than that. I tried a sled, but it wasn’t visually interesting. I hit on snow people and designed some lovely, perfectly rounded snow folk. They were fun, but they were too perfect. Finally I realized that if I was going to do snow people, they needed to look more like the ones we make. And we make a lot of snow people at my house. Every winter, there’s at least one that’s really special. The two shown here are a snow cyclist from a couple of years ago and a snow princess we made last year. In the photo, the snow princess is wearing a real dress and scarf, sunglasses, and a tiara. She was a piece of work! Now that I look at them together, the cyclist could easily represent my husband (the bike shop owner/bike racer) and the princess . . . let’s just say that I can display some fairly royal tendencies from time to time. Regardless, they represent one of my favorite things about winter in the Roaring Fork Valley – getting outside and playing in the snow!
Happy Holidays and Happy Snowpeople Making!
The ideas, images and ink for the month are:
ideas wonderland, snowy silence
images mini skiers, untouched snow
ink winter white + stormy blue
Download our page for your desktop or to print.
Recently I attended my local high school’s career day as a presenter on the field of graphic design. I gave three, hour-long presentations. We talked about what graphic design is, what types of work one can do, places to work, types of schools to attend and we took a look at work my firm has completed. Then we got to the heart of it…the brainstorming. At ithree graphic design, we brainstorm new projects and before we brainstorm we get our creative juices flowing. So that’s what we did about half-way through my presentations. I divided the students into groups and before we talked about the design of three ads that appeared in a local paper, we got into our creative space. In order to make sure we were prepared to speak critically about the ads, the groups drew monsters. The process started with the first person drawing a monster body part, then passing the paper to the next person, where they would continue to build the monster based on what the last person drew. I alleviated some pre-drawing jitters by reminding the students that since monsters don’t really exist, there is no right or wrong way to draw one. By the end of each drawing session, the students had come alive, they were all smiling, talking amongst themselves, laughing at the monsters they were drawing and had awakened their creative minds. I can’t tell you quite what that was like for me…getting to see those kids engaged and willing to participate. All I can say is that it was really cool and on occasion, I still smile to myself. We ended up with some really out there monsters, some silly monsters and some scarey ones and I can’t resist sharing them here…maybe they’ll make you smile too. Thanks Basalt High School!
I love winter [which is a good thing, since I live in the Roaring Fork Valley, close to Aspen], so I’m pretty happy when November rolls around each year. It’s partly because I love to ski, but I’m a home body at heart, so I like the balance of time spent outside with nesting time inside that winter brings. November means winter, and ski season, is not far off; it means time spent with family and friends, the rich colors of late fall, and cozy evenings at home. This month’s calendar design was inspired by gourds, which are plentiful at this time of year, and their amazing and varied shapes.
The ideas, images and ink for the month are:
ideas winter’s calling card + quiet evenings
images naked trees + swirling leaves
ink autumn gold + burgundy wine
Download our page for your desktop or to print.
