Black Cat Studios Design

Sweet Adeline’s Print Ad and Photography

June 5th, 2011

As I was drafting my last post and looking through my Facebook page, I realized I completely missed blogging about the Sweet Adeline’s photo shoot and print ad that I did way back when (before I had my sweet 2 1/2 month old baby).

One Saturday a few months ago, I loaded up my photo gear and headed to Sweet Adeline’s. I took photos of the art classes, and then set up a few shots of the store itself. However, the real reason I was there was to take photos of Adeline, the inspiration for the store. After Addy warmed up to the camera, I got several very cute expressions from her.

addy

The print ad design uses the graphic element of Sweet Adeline’s logo to highlight Addy’s happy face.

sweetadeline's horiz

Have I mentioned how much fun it is working with a toy store?

Posted in Children, Design, Photography, Print | 1 Comment »

Write Robinson Logo Redesign

May 27th, 2011

My friend and client, Angel, contacted me a few months back with a request to redesign her logo. Her company is Write Robinson and she sells couture stationery. Her stationery reflects her love of paper, pattern and color. She was working on a website redesign and thought it would be a good time to update her logo as well. She’d had her logo for five years and was ready for a fresh look.

Here’s her original logo:

She wanted to change the shape of the logo and wanted to keep the wrought iron. I went on a hunt to find the perfect wrought iron pattern and did a few designs using the wrought iron. Then, we decided it was just too much. She wanted something simpler, something classic but not boring. I decided to incorporate a handwritten feel to her logo to make her logo reflect her business. I also did two formats–a square format and a horizontal format so it could easily be used in different ways.

I’ve been waiting a while to share the logo with you. She recently unveiled the logo on her Facebook page along with the new packaging she designed for her stationery. The new website design is also coming soon. I’m looking forward to seeing it.

Here is the new logo and new color:

Thanks for letting me work with you on your new look Angel. You are a pleasure to work with and I look forward to more projects in the future.

Posted in Design, Logo | 2 Comments »

Green Kid Crafts

February 1st, 2011

I was excited when one of my son’s tutors told me about her new business venture, Green Kid Crafts. She and her partner were in the planning stages of starting their business and were very interested in having me do their design work. I love their concept: Eco-friendly craft kits for kids. They sell subscriptions online and will be putting craft kits in some local stores as well. We all agreed the logo needed to have a global feel, but still feel like a kid product targeted company. We started out with big ideas for the logo. And as I started to put those into play, I realized we needed to scale back to a much simpler concept. I knew I wanted to involve my son in the process. He’s got amazing handwriting for a 4 year old. So, I found a font that I really liked and had him trace it for me. And that is the typeface for the logo. The handprint is also his.

At our first meeting, I knew what I wanted the website to look like. And luckily, we all agreed. We wanted it to feel natural and incorporate art supplies. We wanted to make the technology look, well, crafty. I scanned in different papers and textures and objects to work with. I designed the business card first, and that morphed into the look for the website.

I should note here, that this ended up being a much faster project than we’d anticipated. Green Kid Crafts had a really good networking opportunity coming up and needed to have the logo, business cards, and the basic website up within a little over a week. I completed the logo over a weekend and then the business card at the beginning of the week. Then, I put together the website template and put up all the basic pages. And we met our deadline. Then, we started adding more photos and pages to the website. I got the shopping cart working to take online orders. And last, but not least, the craft ideas blog is up and running.

Be sure to check out the whole site at www.greenkidcrafts.com. And if you have kids, try a subscription to their craft kit service. They provide 3 environmentally friendly craft kits a month targeted to a specific age group.

Posted in Design, Logo, Print, Website Design | No Comments »

Behavior Matters

January 28th, 2011

Back when we moved to Alaska in May, we came not expecting to have ABA therapy for our son, who is on the Autistic Spectrum. Luckily for us, in July we heard that another military family had moved here, and that the spouse is a certified BCBA (someone who oversees ABA therapy). We were so lucky to meet Beckee and have her work with Dylan. Since she started with him in August, her company has grown to include several tutors and soon, another BCBA.

I’ve been working with Beckee on a logo design for her company, Behavior Matters. My challenge was to incorporate elements that would show Beckee’s personality as well as the professional aspect of her business. She also wanted to include a silhouette into the design and preferred a more script style font. Here is what we came up with for her business.

Thanks Beckee for entrusting me with your company’s image. We love working with you on Dylan’s future and on promoting your company.

Posted in Design, Logo | 1 Comment »

Sweet Adeline’s Web Banner

January 27th, 2011

I discovered Sweet Adeline’s Eco-Friendly Children’s Store in one of those coupon books that come in the mail. I was excited to see an Eco-Friendly toy store here in Anchorage and went to check it out before Christmas. The store is welcoming and friendly, as is the owner, Jessica. I’m very excited to be working with Jessica on ad designs for Sweet Adeline’s. The first one is an animated web banner that can be found at alaskadispatch.com. And here, of course. This was my first Flash Pro animation, and I’m happy I had a chance to get it all figured out. It took me way back to the days when I did animation for a Television Production company (and I do mean way back). And luckily, some of that knowledge is still in my noggin. I do love seeing what I see in my head come to life in my design work.

If you’d like to learn more about Sweet Adeline’s, check them out online at http://www.sweetadelinesonline.com or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/SweetAdelinesAlaska. If you live in Anchorage I highly recommend you stop in for a visit. Take your kids, she has a fun play area set up just for them.

And if you missed seeing the animation because you were too busy reading, just reload this screen and the animation will restart.

Posted in Animation, Design, Web Banner | 1 Comment »

Sweet Bella Bakery’s Website

January 17th, 2011

sweetbellaweb

After designing a logo and business card for Sweet Bella Bakery, I got to work on their website. Amanda (the dough-diva) was all set to do her site through blogger, which is where she set up her blog. But, once I realized that blogger could only have the blog page as the front page, I decided to go with the more traditional route and built the website using Dreamweaver and made the blogger blog match the overall design of the site. The website also includes a flash gallery of cookie photos and a form for cookie-lovers to place their orders. Check out the whole site at www.sweetbellabakery.com. (And thanks Amanda! As always, it was so fun working with you!)

Posted in Design, Website Design | No Comments »

A Tour Through Time: An Architectural Guidebook to the House of Macon, Georgia

January 3rd, 2011

cover

When the Historic Macon Foundation approached me to design a new architectural guidebook to Macon, I jumped at the chance. I haven’t lived in Macon, GA for 6 years, but I still think of it as one of my homes (I lived there for 13 years). Macon is full of architectural magnificence and that is one thing I miss about living in a “new” state like Alaska.

This book was a challenging project. And I do love a challenge. The author’s initial layout grouped together houses and time periods along with extra tidbits of information. My charge from the client was to make the book as userfriendly as possible. They wanted to include a map of the city with the houses marked on it as well as three tours featuring different areas of town. The book features photography by Walter Elliott and illustrations by the author, David Frazer Lewis.

The first thing I did was separate the houses from the other information by using sidebars. This way, the houses are easy to locate within the book. Each house has a number and a color. The number corresponds to the position on the map, and the color to the part of town where you’ll find the house. The maps were designed by Ric Thornton and I worked a little design magic to make them mesh with the style of the book. The map legend lists each house by number and also shows the time period and page number of the house. I located the map as a foldout behind the cover so it is easy to find and large enough to read.

The other organizational feature I added was the color coding of each time period featured, so that as you are flipping through the book, you can easily identify the time period. There are headers on each page to show the overall time period and the architectural style featured on that page.

Thanks to the Historic Macon Foundation for entrusting your book design to me. You were a pleasure to work with and I’m happy the book has been successful.

A Tour Through Time is available from the Historic Macon Foundation online or at the Sidney Lanier Cottage in Macon. The Kindle edition is also available from Amazon.

The fold out map and legend.

This is one of the tours featured in the book.

A spread from the Antebellum section.

Another spread from the Antebellum section. This one shows how I incorporated some archival photographs into the book.

A spread from the Victorian section showing the author’s illustrations.

The opening spread of the 20th Century section featuring a timeline of each architectural style. Each section of the book opens this way.

A spread from the 20th Century section of the book.

The back cover.

Posted in Book, Design | No Comments »

Shay

January 3rd, 2011

Just six days after Sal’s maternity photo shoot, baby Shay was born. I spent the afternoon with Shay and her mommy and daddy and took lots of photos of her when she was 2 weeks old. I had some new props to use and she was a good little poser (and then she fell asleep). :)

DSC_5029-2

Posted in Babies, Photography | No Comments »

Sal’s Maternity Photos

January 3rd, 2011

Since moving to Alaska, I haven’t done too much with the photography side of my business. However, this winter, my friend Sal asked me to do her maternity photos and then her newborn photos. It was nice to pull out all my photo equipment and get to work behind the camera again. We’ve known Sal and Shane since we lived in Ohio at the same time and they are a fun couple to work with. First up are the maternity photos, which we are lucky we took when we did. The next week Sal went into labor and had a beautiful baby girl.

Posted in Maternity, Photography | No Comments »

Sweet Bella Bakery

November 3rd, 2010

My friend Amanda has gone into the cookie baking business. She asked me to help with her logo, business cards and website and I was happy to jump in and take up the challenge. She wanted “clean and modern, but maybe girly and whimsical or a little retro”. After going through several logo ideas she decided on what you see below. The logo ended up being more on the clean and modern side, but the business cards incorporated some of the retro whimsy she likes. We are still working on developing the website, and when that’s complete I’ll post all about that here. And in the meantime, if you want cookies (or just want to see more of her cookies) check out Sweet Bella Bakery’s Facebook page.