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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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!)

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.