Two ladies who know what to do with sugar

As I think I have mentioned before, I like to make a song and dance about cool local businesses and this one has a personal touch. Meet Robots Love Cupcakes an entrepreneurial start up by a good friend and neighbor, and her best friend… two ladies in sugar crime. Robots Love Cupcakes is an online baking store, everything is made fresh and delivered to your door, just place your order.

I have to admit they make some mean cupcakes, but also so very alarmingly good marshmallows. Now if you haven’t had the good fortune to have fresh home made marshmallows you need to hook yourself up with a fresh order from Robots Love Cupcakes…they are  to die for…needless to say they don’t last long in my house.  And parting is always sweet sorrow where those marshmallows are concerned.

OK so enough getting gooey, I mentioned this one was personal…in more than one way. These lovely ladies took the plunge with my design for their logo…they said Robots, I gave them Robots. I think they are still working on developing their official website but here’s a link robotslovecupcakes.com

A cute little fella ain’t he.  Well the story thickens, Robots Love Cupcakes girls recently had a big launch with a big tasting party, full of lots of yummy tasties…including those marshmallows. Their tasting got the attention of Katu and a lovely photoshoot by Bill Roberson, Photos from Robots Love Cupcakes taste testing party | KATU.com – Portland, Oregon | KATU Photos .

Marshmallow Heaven

Robots love cupcakes what can I say…umm marshmallows..get your order now before I gobble them all up!

Photo credit to Joi Smith

Blast off with email….getting the word out there

Interning with Tarot.com continued.. I have been introduced to some new concepts for marketing. In particular the ‘Email Blast’ a means to get those click to link numbers, in Tarot’s case for love compatibility and all things Tarot. The neat thing here is the success of the blast is based on the strength of the design, did it make the readers click to find out more? The pressure is on!  As a medium the email blast is  replacing a lot of the direct mailers that we would otherwise receive in this digital age. So much for paper we may save those trees yet!

Anyway, aside from the brief explanation moving on to fun designs to show..here’s what the fuss was about that earned $5,000, something to be proud of; thanks Tarot for letting me have a stab at designing your email blast. The chosen design was the second comp. with the (brown background), although personally my favorite still lies with comp 1 (blue/green background). The header tag line was changed up to a subtler pitch in the review process. Personally with my complete inexperience  I still voting for the blue/green…but what do I know, that’s why I am the intern right. All photographic imagery used was purchased by Tarot.com for use in these comps.

Internships

Well I have joined the well trodden path of many to gain the experience needed as a new designer. Although you may consider my path alittle strange, you’d be foolish to dismiss these guys. In truth they are professional and patient to new interns like moi.  OK so my internship is with Tarot.com. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a mystical fairy, and am really quite clueless to which phase of the moon is retrograde with which ever planet it is anyways, nor do I care for patchouli oil, but I get the gist for design.  My role in this giant website with constantly changing elements, involves some soul sucking production, and other surprisingly fun design elements such as email blasts, as they put it…, which allows for some fun design freedom. As a newbie to the industry it is an eye opener as to the real world requirements of a junior designer, and an up hill learning curve which involves a balance of design and time, cost effectiveness, and ability to meet the needs of the target audience/client within the design. So far I am off to a good start with a series of designs that I admit aren’t going to make it to communication arts, but are in themselves a testament to doing design on a tight time scale of less than a day start to finish.  With the careful guidance of my mentor Jlee we are meeting that target audience with this photo gallery for their planetary personality profiles; feel free to browse. I have to admit it’s a brain twister with regards to the sheer amount of work these guys put out every day for this website; pretty amazing really.

well…I know it sounds a bit crazy, and off with the fairies but consider how much of an industry the astrological business is…how many of us have check out our star signs and rising signs online?  And with that I rest my point… it’s a big big industry not to be mistaken.

I hope to post more as I go along, and hopefully as they are a great team keen to developing new designer and trying new directions there will be some fun, superior design to come. Here’s to the time honored traditions of internship in which ever form it comes in.

One of the hottest movies out! District Nine

With the break of summer and school done, I have had the time to catch up on movies and raise my head above the sea of deadlines for awhile to view what’s out and new in our popular culture. One of the biggest and hottest things to come along and I suspect every one has been buzzing about is the district nine movie due to release on August 14th. And what a set up they have going too. Talk about viral marketing gone crazy,  done well with a strong story leading to many strong design concepts. If you haven’t already started to notice the many ‘no human’s allowed’ signs posted at cinemas and other like media based stores, then you need to check out the movie website for district nine produced by  Sony pictures. For all us new web builders and graphic designers, it’s an eye opener ….plus the supporting imagery and video is amazing!

I know I will be jumping in my seat when this one comes out.  Have fun all avid film goers, this one is going to be big!

OK This guy is incredibly talented – Johnny Kelly

I thought this link to ‘Talk#7 Johnny Kelly’ would be of interest to those still following the blog we set up here through our humble course at Mt Hood Community College. This is an interview of a graduate from England from a very prestigious school in England The Royal College of Art. Johnny who is featuring his amazing work, is a talented and funny animator, and the interview is a presentation he did that featured on it’s nice that, by Will. It is very interesting as he delves into his process and talks about how he came up with the concepts for each of his films, and a little bit about how he achieved the effect he was after. Pretty amazing for us still new to the industry, and inspirational too, so thank you to Johnny Kelly for sharing. I believe they filmed this at Sense Worldwide a melting pot of talented people that are working toward future trends and culture.

Anyways it is a bit long but it is really worth it.

Talk#7 – Johnny Kelly

Enjoy

Cyrus Highsmith- Font Designer

When looking into font design and promotional pieces I noticed this wonderful interview by Christian Palino featuring Cyrus Highsmith in Typographica. Cyrus Smith is a renown font designer living and teaching in San Francisco’s bay area. The interview interested me as he talks a bit about his thought, and work processes when designing. Fun read highly recommended.

This girl can’t sit still – handmade cards

OK so I just can’t sit still, after all the running around with portfolio and graduating I still have some pent up energy that obviously needed expending. As I was in need of a few lovely birthday cards of late, I stopped by paper source in NW Portland and found some truly lovely paper that inspired me to produce these cards.

Worth using unspent energy for the cause of birthdays. And cutting paper is always fun.

cathleen's hand made cards

Final show pictures

Well it’s all done for another year and off to the big bad world to find a job. For the class of 2009 at Mt Hood Community College Integrated Media: Graphic Design team, I hope to see you all out there at some point and look forward to keeping in touch with all your news. For photos of the final show group head to the flicker account listed below to get to the photo downloads for your albums.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28088641@N07/

Here's a few for everyone to see an over view from my end of the room:

Ross, Sheryl & Tasha

Cathleen, Jennifer and the perceptions book

The crazy hallway

Perceptions Book

After many a late night the final product is bound and finished! The book features some lovely poems, fiction, non-fiction, photography, and art submitted by many talented individuals. Perceptions creative magazine, or book for it’s many pages, was the largest this year it has ever been, with a huge submission turn out, and support from the Perceptions editing team the book came to life. As one of two designers on this project, we were fortunate to be able to implement some fun new laser cutting technology thanks to some folks in CA and guidance of our print contact Sue at Mt. Hood Community College. The laser cut ‘perceptions’ really worked out well as a visual play, fitting perfectly with the graffiti theme developed for the cover design, and layout. Here’s a peek at the result.

Thank you to all who helped support us during the design and development of the Perceptions book over this last couple of months.

Happy designers-glad to be done. Cathleen Green (left) Chelsey Brislawn (right)

Digital portfolio by Cathleen Green

Click on this image to get to my portfolio.