Go check out the rest of Top - Notch Type over at Emmadime!
Recent Brand : Ember Grove
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
I'm excited to share a recent brand launch with you, Ember Grove Photography. Rachel Yoder wanted her brand "to provide beautiful, natural images that portray the light, laughter, joy community, and love of relationships and life." Rachel's focus was on nature and wanted to incorporate hand drawn elements within her logo. She also wanted a couple options for watermarks in addition to her logo, to use for various sizes and needs.
Spaces // Molly Jacques
Monday, August 20, 2012
I'm happy to introduce Molly Jacques, as she gives us a look into her workspace! Molly is an all around creative, as you'll find out, but she is killer at calligraphy and hand lettering. This girl has serious skills and her space is just that, amazing. Once you learn a little more about Molly, head over to Design*Sponge, where the rest of her home was recently featured!
Tell us about yourself as a creative.
I'm an illustrator, calligrapher, designer, etc. etc. I do quite a few different things as a creative freelancer but what I'm best know for is my hand lettering and calligraphy. I work from home so I enjoy having my space to spread out and really dig into the whole process.
Describe your creative journey.
I've seriously always been into art. My parents encouraged me as a child to pursue my talents in drawing and I guess it eventually turned into a career! While living in Detroit for four years, I received my BFA in Illustration at College for Creative studies. There, I was able to learn the basics and I also met my husband Cody!
After college, my husband and I moved out to LA where I worked at a small but amazing stationery company called Sugar Paper in Century City. While working there, I found a passion for beautiful hand-made items. I fell in love with calligraphy at that point and it just stuck. When Cody and I moved back to Michigan last year, I worked a part time job at a print company and spent my nights slaving away with freelance work and perfecting my skills. About seven months ago, I went completely freelance (woohoo!) and it's been a crazy ride ever since.
I absolutely love what I do and am extremely thankful for all the support I've had from my family, friends, fellow artists, and typography-lovers.
Share a little bit about your space.
My space. First off, for any aspiring calligraphers out there looking at these photos.... I beg you, do not work at a flat table like I do! I love the way this formica one looks, but I'm looking into investing in a great drafting table. My back is feeling the pain these days after spending hundreds of hours hunched over my work.
That being said. I do indeed spend hundreds of hours here so it's important for me to feel inspired, happy, and encouraged when I enter my work space. We rent our place, so I wasn't able to take out the carpet, but the bright orange doesn't bother me. It' actually an uplifting color in comparison to the cool color palette throughout our home.
Moreover, I try to keep things fun with posters and prints from my fellow artist friends and some of my own work.
What's your favorite thing about your space?
My favorite thing about my space, hands down, is the fact that it's my space. Having my own workspace separate from the rest of the house is not only healthy in keeping boundaries between work and home life, but it also serves as a constant reminder of how I've been truly blessed with work, in general. Not everyone can work from home, and the fact that I'm able to have a full time job doing what I love, is truly something great. I love being able to sit down in my own space and really put my talents to good use.
What's one thing you think every creative needs in their space?
Inspiration! Because I'm way into typography, I often use word inspiration. But any sort of images, colors, textures, whatever--it's all good.
Check out that chalkboard! So beautiful.
Thanks Molly!
Recent Inspiration Boards
Friday, August 17, 2012
In the past couple weeks I've started a few projects which of course means the fun part -- inspiration boards. Here are a couple and I'll try to share a couple more later, otherwise it may be image overload!
Happy Friday!
All image sources can be found on my 'clients' Pinterest board.
Cigarette Cards -- How to Swim
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Before my love for design, there was my love for swimming. On last week's Top Notch Type I shared why swimming is near to me. So, I got SO excited when I came across these beautiful Cigarette Cards on how to swim. How cool are they?? Check out the rest of them here.
Lauren Moffatt Swim
Monday, August 13, 2012
Feel so inspired by Lauren Moffatt's new swim line -- rich with colors, textures, patterns, shapes. So beautifully done. Makes my pattern obsessed heart flutter.
via Refinery29
New Work : The Rustic Modernist
Recently finished up some work for Heidi of The Rustic Modernist -- head over to her blog and check it out!
Design + Style : #16
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
I thought I'd change this week's Design + Style up a bit and share with you a tumblr I recently started. I wanted to do something that was less related to work or specific to design and more relaxed, chalk full of all the things I love (specifically, design & style related). Sometimes you just need to step away from work related design and into a new creative outlet.
Check it out: Design Swell
Spaces // Zoe Rooney
Monday, August 6, 2012
I want to begin this week's Spaces feature by thanking everyone who was been apart and will be apart of this column. I have had so much fun learning all about so many amazing artists, designers and the like. Our workspaces reflect our work and our lives and each has it's own character. And this week, I'm excited, yet again, to share another talented creative, Zoe Rooney. Zoe is an amazing web developer, who also dables in various forms of design and art. Be sure to check her out, and if you're a designer in need of some mad code skills, Zoe is your girl. Enjoy!
Tell us about yourself as a creative.
I'd say I'm about 60% "serious" front-end web developer and 40% creative experimenter. I just love anything visual, from cooking to design & typography to interiors to fine art, and so I kind of flit around doing all of those things at once in my very limited free time and getting none of them done with any kind of speed (but having a ton of fun along the way).
Describe your creative journey.
I've been coding since Geocities (I first started learning HTML in middle school, just because I was curious), I also have a background in visual arts and design. After bouncing around between departments, I ended up majoring in art in college mostly because it was fun and it eliminated final exams for most classes. While in that program, I focused on painting but also got to dabble a bit in screenprinting and sculpture. After college I joined Teach For America and taught for two years here in Philadelphia, and then worked for the program for 4 years designing training materials for new corps members.
I'm always trying out various forms of art on the side, but my primary focus right now is on bringing other people's designs to life via code (a whole different art form, in my opinion). I've been doing freelance web design and programming for about two years, and just recently quit my full time job to be a full time programmer! I'm hoping that this move will let me free up more time for my family and for other creative pursuits (I recently broke out my paintbrushes for the first time in years).
Share a little bit about your space.
I feel very fortunate to have an entire room in our house as my office (plus a sunroom, which is just storage and needs to be renovated but eventually will make a lovely art studio). I've worked from home since my first son was born (he's now 3), so it's been important to have a door I can close so that I can talk to clients or designers on the phone and really focus in on a coding project. That said, my space needs a lot of work - it's only partially painted, the floor is a mess under the rugs, there's a random door to a guest bedroom that I'd like to close up, and the desk is basically an assemblage of plywood and 4x4s, hastily attached to each other and the wall with drywall screws. I also am a total hoarder of random stuff, especially art, and it ends up stacked everywhere waiting for a frame or a spot on the wall somewhere in the house.
What's your favorite thing about your space?
There are four things I especially love about my space: (1) it's at home, so I get to see my boys whenever I want throughout the day (a blessing and a curse, really), (2) I built the desk at bar height so that I can stand and work when I get tired of sitting, (3) the vintage Moroccan rug, which was a gift from my father who brought it back from a hitchhiking trip in the 70s, and (4) the door, to shut out the aforementioned boys and their noise.
What's one thing you think every creative needs in their space?
On the one hand I am kind of a maximalist and love to have tons of craft and art supplies stashed nearby, but on the other hand I think the most amazing thing about creative work is that all you really need is something to write on and something to write with. Of course I also couldn't live without a computer with internet for all that code.
Thanks Zoe!
Photos by Zoe Rooney.
Oat Creative : Bondir
Friday, August 3, 2012
I have been coming across so many amazing branding jobs lately that have been so inspiring and beautiful. Oat Creative did an impressive job for Bondir -- the raw hand drawn type mixed with the delicate classic type and design elements, is so gorgeous. I'm a big fan of mixing exactly that.
She Was Only
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Beautiful branding job by UK based design agency, She Was Only, for photography studio, Motel.
The typeface Motel combined with the various paper types and textures is so perfectly executed.