Work this Week

I had an epiphany recently about how I work, or rather how I want to work. I had been feeling like I was waiting for something to happen in order for me to move my own creative process forward. I had made a list earlier this year in my notebook "be the thing you want to be" and "enjoy what you are doing" were two directives I had written down.  The thing I want to be is boundlessly creative and to follow it where it takes me. Make and do without worry. "Enjoy what you are doing", had a question mark after it. I was asking myself the question. I used to separate my activities and my time, everything was either work or not-work. Not-work played second fiddle to work and I wasted days feeling pissed off instead of inspired. Well I feel done with that notion.
 
So if work looks like painting type on a wooden cabinet in my carport all week I have decided that is valid. If it means sewing a suit of clothes to attend an event, then it is valid. If it means designing elaborate promotional pieces teaching a curious public how to deal with graphic designers, then it is valid. If it means feeling joyful all day, then it is valid.

So in the interest of total authenticity and integration between my multiple creative selves and wanting to work the way I enjoy working every day, I embarked on an unusual project for the Bellingham Farmers Market. I volunteered to freshen up the market's information booth and signage. The first phase was to reinforce, scrape, and paint the base cabinet. With a fresh smooth surface to work on I transferred the projected type onto the cabinet, and tomorrow I will fill in the all the letters. When that is all done I am sewing some bunting flags to hang above the piece and below the overhead sign. The flags will be up-cycled from tea towels made for our 20th Season last year.

It's been glorious in the afternoons for working outdoors and we keep getting little glimpses of the enlightenment that comes with summer and personal evolution.

P.S. I could not have done this project without my partner in crime, he took the pictures too.

My Way

Christmas is looming on the horizon. I get near daily reminders from my young protege that the countdown is on, the expectations building. I used to be into buying gifts, long ago in a land called Los Angeles when plastic filled my wallet. I recall distinctly staring into my medicine cabinet at 5 or 6 matching bottles branded perfectly for my particular demographic, cleanser, toner, moisturizer, fixatives. I felt completely complete staring at those frosted bottles with their signature grey tops. I had graduated from the green kind and would soon be onto the next iteration but something happened and I stopped consuming, stopped feeding that internal emptiness with stuff. The cards got paid off and the accounts were closed. I feel no ill will toward the consumer society that surrounds me, my lack of consumption is not a political act I just don't want to buy stuff for the sake of buying stuff. My budgets are pretty tight lately and so I can't rationalize a spending balloon at a time of year when I need things like heating fuel and warm sox. I look around my studio and house and I have mountains of supplies waiting to be put to good use, an excess of raw materials. I like giving gifts and I like making things and I like to keep my hands and brain busy when the nights grow long. This year I have decided to embroider some small pieces for the people on my list who I know already have more stuff than they could extract quickly from a burning house. I do like Christmas and one of the things I like best about it is decorating the tree, hanging all the ornaments that various people have given me over the years. I unwrap them carefully one-by-one from the tissue beds where they have been laying dormant waiting to spark my memory with warm thoughts about their origins. This year as I have done in the past I set about creating those memories for others and in the process I feel full and warm and I am pretty sure that's a valid experience for this time of year.

Here's a finished piece that has already found a home next door with my good friend. She was quite pleased with it and I was too. Mission accomplished.

New SIte!

…and it's live. The website I have been working on for the past year or so is finally here. The plight of the Shoemaker's barefooted children is true. I spend way more time on client work than I do on my own promotional efforts but like most things I set my hand to, they do get done, eventually. It is with great pride that I launch my fourth website associated with my own company. One tip, it works more like a book than a website. Enjoy!

Refueling

I feel like I have been on a treadmill for the past few months. I am grateful for the work of course but I do get burned out. In an effort to squeeze another hour out of my day when I am at my sharpest I have been getting up to work at 5am. This means I have not been doing my usual morning writing. I don't like to complain but it is hard doing what I do at times, being creative everyday and pumping work out often leaves me feeling a little blank and heavy. Yesterday though I had a nice little reminder of something positive. After being pretty productive all day I found myself at loose ends in my office at the end of the day. I am redesigning my website and the CMS is done now, thanks to the good men at Viscocity. So I spent some time playing with the interface, I added a few images and migrated some copy and was able to think clearly about what I want to do with this new site. I realized while scanning this old bookcover from my ephemera collection that I was suddenly feeling energized. There it is, when I feel like I have nothing left to give doing a little project for myself fixes me right up. It's counter-intuitive because my reaction to exhaustion is to want to curl-up but the answer is to make something new. I had completely forgotten this.

A little Work

Inspired by a 1950's cookbook cover, this is the second in a series of two posters adapted for a newspaper insert for the Bellingham Farmers Market. For the background I painted a board with green gouache, scanned it and then darkened the edge in Photoshop. The type was a little too clean for me so I printed it out and sanded off some of the surface of the letters and then rescanned it. I bet there is a way to do this in Photoshop but somehow I prefer the old school simpler technique.

Tough Room

Had a slightly tough day at the office today. Of course you're thinking what is she talking about, she works alone, at home. Occasionally I do venture out to meet clients and make presentations and today was one such day. Normally I am on my own in these situations defending my process and product but lately I have been collaborating with a small team and I have to say I am enjoying it. When normally all the pressure is focused on me, for this project there are three of us and it makes a huge difference in the impact of the feedback we get. I am not even going to say it was negative feedback. I won't label it as good or bad, those are not useful labels. It was feedback and my plan is to rerun it in my head and do what I can to take it or defend our approach and remain committed to that direction (which I feel pretty certain is correct). When we get farther along I will share the project, right now though it is still an idea in it's infancy and it must be nurtured not judged. I'm tired. These meeting do take it out of me but when I wake up tomorrow and I have done my writing the ideas will flow again. It is a process, it is only a process and some people feel nervous at the uncertainty of it. I don't, I relish the excitement as you get to the brink with an idea.

Font Hunting

I'm font hunting. Specifically I am looking for a good script font and I feel like one of those bad clients who can't articulate what they want but knows what they don't want when they see it. I need something that will look good with a bold slab serif, it needs to have a bit of weight to it but not too much. I can't be cute but it should be a little playful and nostalgic of 1940's advertising. There are zillions of fonts available these days and I am amazed by how many of them don't appeal to me, at all. What is wrong with me, what is wrong with typography? I'm not sure. I watched a bit of Helvetica again the other day. It's so soothing and reassuring to see. In my perfect design world all my design problems could be solved by the 21 weights of Univers, or some similarly austere germanic font. Alas this is not to be for even I get bored occasionally and feel the urge to friendly it up a bit. Today the perfect script is what I need, back to the search.

This Week In Design

Meant to post this poster last week but I was preoccupied with designing the matching newspaper insert and various other things. (Basically I am really grateful to have lots of work at the moment.) This piece was inspired by the Hatch Show Print exhibit and Sustainable Connections' Michelle Grandy. I saw the show a little bit ago in Seattle, all that "Live in Person" stuff really got to me. I had the big lino cut sun in my arsenal of images and added to it a bit. For some reason the original cut did not have a perfect circle at the center, what was I thinking. I was happy to get out my ancient compass, draw the circle and re-cut the little dahling. I like cutting lino blocks, it enables me to be super obsessive which I kind of dig. I go at it so hard sometimes it makes my hands ache. The concept for the poster was Michelle's idea, the Ring the Bell game one might find on a Fair midway. I have been a long time fan of anything remotely circus inspired. I always love Michelle's ideas, she has good eye and we work well together. I devised the copy to fit the concept. Devised the copy, I hesitate to say wrote. I often write a little headline for these pieces based on the direction I get, it all comes together seemingly out of the ether. I proofed the elements on the press and then scanned them. Am pretty pleased with the results.

Shameless Self Promotion

This is a little example of the first in series of promotional cards I am designing and letterpress printing bearing quotes about marketing. With the economy contracting I thought it might be useful to remind potential clients about the importance of marketing their businesses. This subject hits very close to home here at DoubleMRanch. Two years ago I had more work than I knew what to do with and I became complacent about marketing. I had stopped promoting my company and the prospect of doing it became a bit overwhelming. When you are busy it is the last thing you have time for, running a small busy business there are lots of other more pressing tasks to take care, like doing the work for example. In the spirit of shameless self promotion I went back and looked at how I used to promote myself. I was reminded how much fun it was to do. I would come up with some little idea, print it on my letterpress and send it out to my list. Pieces ranged wildly, looking back it was a bit like the thrill I get from blogging.

…Work! The above piece, printed on a folded piece of vellum felt like a singles ad. I think I also included a nude painting stolen from a "Learn To Paint" pamphlet with the provocative line "would you like to see my portfolio". I was never above using sex to sell myself.

This little postcard ode to spring was a simple poem that came to me driving around the county one sunny spring day. I was never sure if people connected my design work to these pieces or if they just thought I was a nice quirky girl with a letterpress and time on my hands.

Just an O-Card a month is all I ask. It suggests I was praying for a mere morsel we called an O-Card back in the day which paid about $425. An O-Card was the official package name for a cassette single. Good lord, I am so old.

This last one was a better direction. It was the cover of a little folder that contained actual reproductions of my work and earned me the classification of rustic minimalist design, a wave I rode for some time.

Nowadays I am selling my services in earnest. Design for Marketing is what it's all about. It's what I do best. So watch for a little series of these cards to come. I am back baby!

Wrapping Paper or Art

Jason and Sarah's dining room

I designed some wrapping paper last year using letterpress printed elements. I used my super extended slab serif wood font which I love and a series of small metal futuristic dingbats. Layering the elements with varying levels of transparency to mimic the letterpress effect I created these oversize compositions. My good friends photographer Jason Koski and his lovely wife Sarah Koski bought some of it via Etsy. Here is a picture of the series of 3 designs adorning the walls of their circa 1850 farmhouse in Trumansburg, New York. Nice I thought.

Feel free to dash over to Etsy and buy some too I have 1000 of each design and could really stand to free up some space in my office. Happy Sunday!

This Week In Design

It's that time of the year again when the Bellingham Farmers Market poster gets done. We have a pretty limited budget for art so the onus is on me to come up with the visuals. This year I tried a few different things based on the new Market Directors direction and ultimately this one was chosen. I like it.

This week I also got to watch the movie Helvetica. I am pretty sure non type lovers would find it all very interesting but for me it is like having someone articulate an affliction I have been suffering from. There was not one thought expressed that I have not struggled with myself. So nice to hear these elegant european men speak of the meaning of typography and how we got to where we are using the vehicle of the almighty Helvetica. And of course I felt vindicated because many of these guys admitted to being bored with contemporary type and leant more toward a few basic faces time and time again. This is how I feel. I try to look at new fonts but the forms are always saying the wrong things in the wrong way and it makes me uncomfortable. I yearn for sensible friendly, sans serif fonts that help me organize the information I am requested to by my clients.

Of course being an artist means contradicting yourself wildly and using nothing but slab serifs in the work example shown here. I like those too for different reasons. For one thing they are easier to sew... I can't believe I am now starting to sew type. It's an affliction and I am trying to embrace it and see where it takes me.

2009 So far

So it's a new year and I am putting it out there re the projects I hope to complete this year. This is some nice pink wool I picked up at NW Handspun Yarns in Bellingham. I plan to make a hooded jacket for Pearl's newest cousin in her birthfamily. I had never knit anything for a small person and I am looking forward to it going quickly. I am doubling the wool up to make it extra thick. It seems like I rarely knit anything with the wool that was intended for the pattern. I also want to knit a blanket for Pearl's new sister who will arrive in May via her birthmom. I'd also like to make a few more of the little hats I am currently wearing (I know you can't see but trust me, it's orange and the wool came from SpinCycle).

Next on the list are a series of small quilts. I make no promises about this one as it is a true journey of exploration. I plan to create a small piece (8-12" sq) every two weeks containing the capital letter R (Clarendon to start with but that could change and there may be words worked in, we'll just see what strikes me). I came across this book, The Uncommon Quilter and it just thrilled me. So off I go on that tangent.

I have decided to stop vending at the market in Bellingham which I am hoping will give me some more free time to write. I have my moms story I need to finish as well as a few others.

Stay tuned.

What got done this week

This is the cover of a 16 page insert for the Bellingham Herald advertising the upcoming Buy Local Week. I started on it Tuesday by designing the cover which was approved with little revision. I designed the rest of it on Thursday and Friday morning. It's gone to the printer now. I did do a little on work on the insert Wednesday but the press was calling me. The UCU show is coming up in 2 weeks and I am cracking the whip. I printed and glued and collated for about 4 hours in the middle of the day. I enjoy the process of producing these multiples, the trick is making time to do it, clients work most often comes first, then of course there are all the other obstacles to work. Bathing, dressing, chopping wood, speaking with the hens, it all takes up time. Today feels good. I worked efficiently on this piece and I like how it came out.


This is a lino cut I made for Jamie Bichler of Laughing Raven Designs, she makes jewelry with words stamped into various metals. I carved this the weekend Becky visited us. I parked myself at the dining room table, ate slow cooker ham and carved away. You have to go easy with it, it's very tough on the hands. I took a lot of snack breaks.

So Buy Local now and then, okay then.

For All You Design Geeks Out There

This is fun.

http://fontgame.ilovetypography.com/hall-of-fame/

How much would you pay for a higher education?

This was in my email today and I love it. I realize it's a mistake but what a wonderful one, it offers a whole new way to read and you feel challenged while you are doing it and so you are obviously worthy of the fake degree. It feels like a wonderful meaningful college typography exercise, a non-poem. The new word groupings are fantastic, makes it impossible to scan and read quickly so instead you notice the shapes of the letters and the lines and groupings they make and it becomes a whole picture instead of a paragraph. I love when I can notice my brain switching from verbal to visual.

That's what I saw, what does the internet see?


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