Designing

Computer design has been a big part of what’s happening around here lately. Logo design, pattern design, font and brand exploration – it’s all giving me the tingly-fingers.

I thought I’d show you some of what I’ve been up to instead of finishing ANY JEWELLERY EVER. Eep. Ahem. It’s still productive if it’s tangentially related, right?!

First of all.

Did you know that Illustrator can AUTOMATICALLY create UPDATING patterns for you?! WHAT. THE. HELL. I think my whole weekend might be shot while I move one element and watch it update across the whole pattern. Look at this. Only the top left corner has any artwork in it at all but it shows the whole pattern! eeeeee!

I might die of excitement. ANYTHING CAN BE A PATTERN DID YOU KNOW

For instance, I took a cellphone photo of this meeting doodle that I keep on my monitor at work.

When I got home, I turned it into a vector pattern with very little work. And my mind was blown.

I’ve also been exposed to Design Cuts, which…. I may need to be cut off from. Yipes, there are some beautiful elements in here, and friggin’ cheap, too. You may have noticed watercolour elements being slowly snuck in to my website – they’re mostly from design cuts, although I did follow a couple of designers on to Creative Market and buy individual pieces from there, too. Playing with those led to making things like this for my fans and friends and customers:

So many amazing pieces to play with. Let me show you some!!

Watercolour textures and illustrations:

Brushes and banners and illustrations:

(all of which can be adjusted using the watercolor textures)

And fonts. Oh, the delicious fonts. This Allegretto with the many swashes and alternates might be my favourite:

Only SOME of the amazing work from Nicky Laatz:

and some more of my random favourites:

I might drown in the amazingness on my hard drive. Don’t send help. I like it here.

The other big thing I’ve been working on, of course, is my new brand. You may have noticed? It’s not finished yet, not by a long shot, but the logo is and that’s a start.

It makes me sort of deliriously happy. I went through MANY ideas and iterations before arriving here. Including the most adorable little squid (I’m still kind of sad he was completely irrelevant)!

I did eventually decide on the feather as the most representative of my new artist’s statement, which came about from a LOT of soul-searching and brainstorming. The main ideas are Colour, Change, Community, and I feel that the feather (aside from the obvious pun) supplies enough metaphor for all of those. The community part has to do with writing tutorials and sharing ideas, for which the feather is a quill; change is when feathers molt to allow new ones to grow; and colour is, well, pretty obvious :)

Even after deciding that, there were like a floppity jillion major and minor adjustments and nudges and delicious font choices before I was pleased. I KNOW THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME TO YOU but it had to be EXACTLY RIGHT. Shush.

In addition to the logo, as mentioned, I started a bit of watercolor-ing my brand, including a couple of sub-brands for my various lines. I’m not sure they’re done yet but take a look so far!

for these kinds of items, which are made from real grasses and flowers in my neighbourhood:

and this header, made from another doodle of mine:

for these kinds of items, which are made from zentangle-inspired stamps, many of which I’ve carved myself:

OK. I don’t know about you, but I’m sort of exhausted by now! I’m gonna go actually do some more of these things instead of showing you about it. Hope you enjoy your weekend! :)