Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Logo Concepts for Jesse Billauer's new clothing line

About a week ago, my brother-in-law, Mike Cox was browsing around facebook and saw a post from Jesse Billauer, saying he was looking for a logo and clothing designer for his new clothing line. (For those of you who don't know who Jesse is, DEFINITELY check out his bio here because his life story is incredible; Pro surfer at 17 years of age, suffered a complete spinal cord injury after hitting a shallow sandbar, leaving him a quadriplegic, and is now a motivational speaker and founder of Life Rolls On- non-profit foundation dedicated to raise awareness about spinal cord injuries.... yeah, pretty amazing, to say the least!!) After Mike called me up to let me know about Jesse's post, I emailed him no more than a minute after I found his site and read his story. I definitely wanted to help out!

He got back to me right away, and after a totally refreshing conversation with him, I got to work on his new logo within the hour; Jesse told me he wants his new clothing line to not just be directed at surfers but towards athletic, outdoorsy people, both guys and girls... and wants it to have a totally unique and just rad feel to it. I was pretty excited when I heard that because anything athletic is right up my alley. And on top of that, knowing that it would be for an inspiring guy like him, I was totally excited to see what I could cook up for him. So, here's what I came up with:





So we'll see what comes of these. Thoughts and comments are welcome, as always!

Another point I wanted to mention in this post... Jesse also said he's interested in seeing just a ton of people's ideas and that he's open to just about anything... that for him, it's not about limiting his new line to one certain look, but it's about encouraging all kinds of ideas and creativity and seeing what different people have to offer through art. Again, pretty amazing, to say the least... especially from a designer's point of view!!! :) So if anyone is interested in coming up with some designs for Jesse's new line, send me your contact info (email me at sarah@huddydesign.com).

Lastly, big thanks to Mike for passing along the info- I always appreciate a recommendation! :)

Friday, July 10, 2009

Wedding Invitations - a whole new challenge!

Well, our wedding is quickly approaching, and it's almost time to mail out our invitations. :) From the beginning, I wanted to design the entire invitation from start to finish for a couple reasons. One being I love to design. No doubt about it. 2- It would be another opportunity for me to flex my creative muscles, taking on a new challenge. And naturally, anytime we take on a task, we learn something new. So this time, I'd learn even more about print design. The 3rd and biggest reason: Ryan and I have always been a completely unique couple and always will be. And we're definitely unique individuals (which I see as a good thing, for sure!) so having that said, I was highly doubtful we'd be able to find a template or pre-designed invitation that would suit us perfectly anyway. So there was no question about it- I wanted to design our invitations!! :)

2 months later.... I finally finished the designs. I did NOT think it would take me so long to come up with a concept but at the same time, all designers know that personal projects are always hardest and I guess I forgot about that along the way! It was pretty challenging for me to come up with just 1 idea that felt true to our personalities, that fell within our budget, and that I could expand on easily throughout all the pieces. The number of combinations one can concoct is INFINITE when it comes to just paper alone (especially when you're amped on customization like I am!), and then mixing designs in with whichever combination you come up with just complexes it more. So although I never fell short on ideas for the graphic design end of it, I definitely learned a lot about paper and print design from this process. which I'm now grateful for. :)

The paper source I ended up going with was Mountain Cow, which ultimately provided the widest variety I could find at the most affordable price I could find. I made my selections from their "Envelopements" line... the punny name might have had something to do with my immediate liking of them. :) All in all, it was a pretty smooth process once I found them. I even got the entire order within 5 days of ordering- pretty impressive with all the custom-sized card tocks I ordered.

Anyway, below is the winning design! I have to say that I got the concept from a piece by Mika78 and made some changes to it to match our colors, paper dimensions and personality a little more. And yeah, I know I said before that I didn't want to use anyone else's pre-designed template but the concept of this particular one was great, so I made it our own. :)

obviously I'm a visual person, so I drew up this handy-dandy illustration to see what different colors would look like together. It totally helped as I played around with all the swatches that mountain cow had to offer.

so here's our final paper selection and color scheme Ryan and I decided on:


outer envelope:


backflap of outer envelope:


the invitation!! (will be mounted onto the tan backing, by itself on the side withOUT pocket):


directions card, will be tucked into pocket, behind response card and response envelope (the map seriously took me forever... haha):


response card:


response envelope:


so there you have it, folks.

This week I also did some research on home-office printers since it was time for me to upgrade anyway; I needed to get a fax at some point for business, so I found a really awesome deal on an HP Officejet all-in-one. Printer, scanner, fax, copier, annnnd wedding invitation printer!! :) So now that I've got it all set up and tested (ran all kinds of envelopes and custom-sized papers through it.. and thank god- it took them like a champ!), next up will be printing everything out verrry carefully and then setting up round 2 of "wedding arts and crafts time" hopefully with my mom, sisters and Patti (Ryan's mom) to bring it all together.

Hope you guys like it!!