Moving On

As you may have noticed it has been a while since I posted. I decided to migrate all of my posts to a new blog so check my recent work out here!

– Amy

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

The first time I saw a CD case calendar I was interning at Parcel Design. I thought they were so handy, well designed and clever. I realized later that they weren't actually reusing old CD cases and that they had bought them specifically for this purpose, but I still loved them. When I joined Reich+Petch the following year I found out that Parcel wasn't the only one and that other companies had caught on to this calendar trend.

Below is the calendar I designed for Reich+Petch as well as the accompanying e-card that they sent out prior to the holidays to all of their clients.

Take Note

My main task as junior graphic designer at Reich+Petch was to design proposals to win architectural and exhibit design jobs. I also had the chance to design a few marketing materials for the firm including the notepad below. We had a short time line so we had to get creative with the resources we had. Instead of sending them off to a big printing house we printed the pages in house then took them to FedEx Office to have them bound and backed with cardboard. I was nervous both about how they would turn out and the timing but was pleasantly surprised when I got them back from FedEx. The final product was very professional and we were excited to give them out to the attendees of the AMA Conference last fall.

Precision and Order

My largest printed project to date is the fall catalogue I designed for Novalis. In the past they had hired a freelance graphic designer for larger projects, but after a few months I convinced them that I would be a great alternative. Much of the catalogue was templated but we decided to do a new insert to highlight all of the school and parish resources. In this section I was able to come up with the look and feel, a new grid, and help direct the photography.

I was very satisfied with the final product and I think my team was too. Together we were able to come up with something very different for the special insert and help to move the catalogue forward and away from the standard template. One of the most exciting things for me was that it was error free. I can hardly take credit for it, but with the help of an amazing copywriter and editor, I think we found them all before printing, a huge achievement.

Bringing Me Back

As I mentioned in my last post, when I worked at Novalis I was able to do a bit of design work for Owl Kids. Probably the most exciting thing I did for them was a booklet for itikes which was stitched into the September 2012 issue of Chirp magazine. I would have been excited regardless of the client but doing something for itikes was especially cool because I grew up playing with Little Tikes. The product offering has drastically changed, now they offer neat hardware to turn phones and tablets into safe (both for the children and the device) toys for children.

Take a look below at the little book I designed in collaboration with the Owl kids team.

Chirp Chirp

During my time at Novalis I occassionally did work for Owl Kids, another publication group under the Bayard Presse umbrella. Owl, Chirp and Chickadee all had lean teams, only one designer for each magazine plus their production designer. When they didn't have enough time I was able to help with house ads and any promotional materials that they may need. Below is a promotion for a couple of Owl's best selling books. While it was a simple execution, I was excited to be working on something that would be in a magazine and even more excited to be working with the art director. I really enjoyed working with someone who had a ton of experience in my field and could help bring out the best in my design work.

 

Handy Dandy

There are many things I love; cheesy sayings, television shows about renos, candy...  but more than any of those things I love lists. The only thing that ruins a great list is forgetting to bring it with you somewhere. To help thwart this issue I started using Google docs to keep all of my thoughts together.

I frequently update my movie, book and restaurant lists but I also make lists for special occasions. In this case it's a holiday list! After forgetting my notebook at home this weekend when I went to visit my parents, I decided to type everything up so I could share all of the things I want to do on holidays with my Mom from anywhere at any time. I'm extra excited again after reading everything. My Mom and I will be in London for four days, Split, Croatia for seven days then a little less than three days in Zagreb, Croatia. Some of the things I want to do include seeing Buckingham Palace and Stonehenge in the UK, sailing and hiking in Split and visiting historic sites and markets in Zagreb. I'm sure we will have a great time.

Look Ma, I did it!

During an interview you want to put your best foot forward, sometimes that can cause issues later on when you get the job. Case and point, when asked if I had any web experience I said yes, a bit, not realizing that the eblasts they wanted me to design were quite different than the websites I had experience with.

While this could have gone badly, my enthusiasm and willingness to learn saved me and my employer decided to send me to web school. Most of my classmates were at a different (I'm not sure they knew how to use computers) level than I was so I found the course a bit slow. I also found that I needed to put my web skills to use before I had a chance to brush them up. I MacGyver-ed my way out of it and came up with the eblast below. In addition to this custom eblast I also improved upon the template they had for monthly blasts and designed a template in Mail Chimp for my co-workers to use on a weekly basis.

Keep on Truckin'

If feels like I'm flying through the list of projects I wanted to talk about, luckily my new position at Toronto Life is providing me with lots to share. Today I submitted a couple of great advertorials for the June issue, by the time it comes out I will hopefully have made it through the rest of my past projects and be able to feature something more current.

In the meantime, I will show off a high impact collateral I did for Weddingbells. This piece was unusual as most sales oriented collaterals are sent through email as pdfs or are single page print outs that we print in house. This collateral was a small eight page booklet that our sales representatives used to pitch to some of their most important clients. I was so excited when they decided to have a small number professionally printed to include in sales packages. Below are some shots of the booklet.

Childhood Memories

I remember having one of the Little Tikes plastic cars (the ones you drove around Flintstones style) when I was a kid, I also remember trying to fit into one when I was much too tall. The car then came into my life a third time when, as an intern, I did an illustration of the car for promotional materials for Canadian Family's birthday party. Below is the classic red car, a couple of the different items it was included on, as well as a camera I illustrated for the photo release signage at the event.

Hoping for the Best

One of the most important qualities of a good intern is to be accommodating, never say no just figure things out. One of my most challenging projects as an intern was to create a video for FASHION Magazine, they were a sponsor of the Calgary Film Festival and needed a short video to play at the start along with videos from the other sponsors.

I had learned the basics of Flash in high school and was re-taught again in college but my design background was almost 100% print and I had only made one multimedia piece in college. While this made me nervous, together with my boss I came up an idea that was fairly easy to execute in Flash and that tied strongly to the brand. I'm sure videographers and animators thought it was rudimentary but I was proud to have completed a project so different than what I was used to.

I attempted to upload the video but no longer have the program to convert it to a compatible file, instead here are a number of screen shots, you get the idea.

 

Intern Win

About a year and a half ago I interned for St. Joseph Media. When I first went for the interview I was worried I wouldn't be well suited for the role, but when I found out I would be assisting with the marketing for not only FASHION Magazine but also Canadian Family and Weddingbells I thought it would be a good fit. I worked full time hours as an intern for the next three months and was really happy that I came away from the internship with not only experience, but also a couple new things for my portfolio. Below is the brochure I did for Pacific Centre Mall in Vancouver. The typographic treatments and layout mimic FASHION and the content showcases items you can purchase at the mall.

Arts and Crafts

I love when design projects involve me making rough mocks out of paper. Whether it be a new folding technique, a hand sewn binding or a dieline, I love to try things out to see if they work as well in reality as they do in my head. For my redesigned Wite-Out package I was vehemently against using a clamshell package so I came up with a unique box that would make the Wite-Out easier to access and to store for the future. Additionally I streamlined the graphics and used a clever window shape to reinforce the shape of the product.

The Clincher

Through a great reference I was told about the opening for my new job. After speaking to others I knew at the company I found out I had already received a couple of great recommendations from my mentors when I interned there. While I am sure this helped, I also had the opportunity to show my portfolio. After a number of typical questions I was asked to show one of my best pieces, here it is, the clincher!

Fitting

I found it fitting that I read Mark Busse's article Travel IS School (about the importance of traveling for creative professionals) the same day I had planned to write about my magazine Arriba. When I was initially assigned this project I wanted to do a women's interest or knitting magazine. After some thought I realized that both had a much smaller audience and that a travel magazine would be a better piece for my portfolio. 

I took the majority of the photos for the magazine while I was on holidays in Barcelona and the Northern coast of Spain. The trip was amazing, a perfect mix of cultural attractions in Barcelona and Bilbao along with beautiful scenery during my hike along the coast. I am proud of the magazine from a design standpoint but I cherish it more for the memories it captures both through the photos I took and the articles I wrote about my trip for the magazine. 

User Satisfaction

I know I mentioned it a couple of posts ago, but I really like to think about how a product will be used, not just how it looks. In this case I found the book The Natural Pharmacy, hard to use, over sized and unnecessarily confusing. To deal with these problems I changed the book to a pocket guide format, and reconfigured how the text and imagery were organized. I chose this book because I thought the topic was interesting but also because I had the illustration style below in mind, I hope you like it!

Do-Gooder

It may seem like I love every project I post, but I really did enjoy this one. Create-A-Thon was a mandatory project that involved my classmates and I volunteering (I like to think that we all wanted to take part whether we had to or not) our design skills to help local charities. The head of my department along with a number of individuals from the KW design community organized us into teams and acted as creative directors throughout the twenty-four hour design blitz. To ease a bit of the stress we worked in teams that had been established at the start of the semester, allowing us to fall into our usual roles.

Three of my classmates and I were assigned to work with a designer from Two Blonde Chicks on print materials for the newly amalgamated Big Brother Big Sisters of Waterloo Region. The materials they had at the time were aesthetically outdated but also bore the logos of their old organizations. I am very proud of the work my team did and hope that the materials were successful in helping to attract new volunteers and raise funds for the charity.