Over the weekend, I stopped into Juan Pelota, a cafe inside Lance Armstrong's downtown Austin bike shop, for an espresso. As I was waiting for my drink, I noticed this wet floor sign.
This hilarious banana peel wet floor sign provides a serious design upgrade to your standard clapboard sign. I did a little Googling and found the source here. Kudos to Banana Products for their brilliant design!
Design Sponge, one of my favorite daily reads for design inspiration, has a great new series called Veterans and Startups that interviews newbie and veteran makers in the same creative area. Last week, the blog profiled Jonathan Adler as a veteran in the world of ceramics.
In the post, Grace mentions Inspiration Point, Jonathan's new web series on AOL. I checked it out and loved the short videos of Jonathan sharing a behind-the-scenes look at where he finds inspiration for his company and life. He also meets and interviews a number of other creatives in their studios and homes, too, to talk about their creative visions and motivations. See it here.
Today I thought I'd share some behind-the-scenes images of my new Mother's Day card since the holiday is just a week away! The idea for this card was conceived during a major creative session last fall. I knew I wanted to do a card with an all-over floral design, not just a repeat. It started as a light pencil sketch on drawing paper, then I went over the design in pen. Like the majority of my work, the design developed as I drew it - I didn't have a set plan for what the "blooms" would look like.
I left space in the center for a sentiment, and eventually decided that this feminine design would be perfect for a Mother's Day card. The size of the space worked perfectly to pen "You're the Best Mom Ever."
After scanning my design and doing some minor clean up, I decided upon a purple color palette, using a lighter lavender shade balanced by a darker purple for the outline. And after a lot of focused work, the final product!
South by Southwest, the huge tech/film/music conference that takes over Austin every March, has been going for a week now. While I didn't shell out the big bucks for a badge this year, I was happy to see that many of the keynote speeches have been posted online. I just finished watching one from Tina Roth Eisenberg, the creator behind the design blog swissmiss, "designy" temporary tattoo company Tattly, and the Creative Mornings series. In her talk, Tina outlines the rules that she lives by personally and professionally. I found her talk so encouraging for a creative business owner like myself - acknowledging the joy that comes in being about to do what you love and confronting the inherent risks, challenges, and opportunities that arise. Check it out!
This week's doodle - an exercise in hand-lettering - was inspired by a quote from Tina Seelig, who serves as Executive Director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. I just finished Seelig's book, What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World and boy, was it chock full of amazing insight and advice about tackling creative challenges, achieving success, and coping with failure. This particular quote resonated well with me as there is so much uncertainty when you start your own venture and you have a choice to embrace the uncertainty and see it as an opportunity or to run from it. I can't wait to start her latest book, inGenius.
I thought I'd pull back the curtain a bit and give you a peek inside my creative process. Each of the cards you see in the shop is originally drawn by hand - by me! So just how does a design go from an idea in my mind to a sketch to a finished card? Here's a glance at the different steps in my creative process.
Doodling
I find myself doodling a lot. My sketchbooks are filled with random drawings and words. Some go nowhere, some turn into the cards you see for sale on this site, and some I revisit months later with renewed interest. Here's some recent sketches I've done.
Pen to Paper
Usually I'll take a preliminary sketch I've drawn and create something in ink. Sometimes I sketch out the design first in pencil; sometimes I just go for it with ink and hope I don't make a big mistake. Armed with some very fine black ink pens, I'll spend time drawing the motifs or patterns on drawing paper. I'm lucky to have a very steady hand.
Here's the original ink drawings for Thanks Vines, Busy Flowers, and Zinnias. With both of the designs for Busy Flowers and Zinnias, I didn't have a set design in my mind - each piece just grew as I went along.
Clean Up and Color
I scan my artwork and use software on my trusty computer to smooth lines, clean up mistakes, and color the artwork. I love playing around with different color combinations and seeing the different possibilities.
The End Result
The final products printed, scored, and ready to be sold!
I've been a spending a lot of time lately mulling over creativity and what it means to be creative. Much of this thinking was driven by an awesome new book called Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer.
Lehrer examines the science of creativity and where our creative ideas come from, how we confront mental blocks, and how we discover and share new insights and breakthroughs. As an artist, new ideas can sometimes come quickly and I find myself trying to capture on paper what's happening in my head as fast as I can. At other times, I can feel very "un-creative," as if there's a roadblock preventing the free flow of ideas. Fortunately, as of late, I've had a lot of new ideas for both products and designs popping into my head. After spending so much time on the business-side of things in preparation for the National Stationery Show, it's been a welcome change to devote more time to drawing, doodling, brainstorming, researching, etc. My favorite quote in the book comes from graphic designer Milton Glaser (known for coming up with the iconic "I Heart NY" campaign). Glaser says:
"There's no such thing as a creative type. As if creative people can just show up and make stuff. As if it were that easy. I think people need to be reminded that creativity is a verb, a very time-consuming verb. It's about taking an idea in your head, and transforming that idea into something real. And that's always going to be a long and difficult process. If you're doing it right, it's going to feel like work."
After finishing Lehrer's book, I stumbled across two items on the web related to creativity. First, The Design Trust's article on boosting your creative thinking gives brief but important tips for getting creative as well as ideas for creatively thinking about you run your business. Then, I saw this short motion graphic video from the 99% Conference comprised of short quotes from well-known thought leaders about the importance of hard work, goal setting, and overcoming obstacles. All three of these pieces have really inspired me to think more about the creative process in general and my own process in particular.