Tweetup at Tooley's

I created this video with Judy Kinney. You can follow me on Twitter if you so desire!

Post-it Love

Client Spotlight: LA Commons

Trekking LA 2009 E-Flyer

I have been working with LA Commons for three and a half years, doing grant writing, research, and graphic design. It has been a wonderful partnership and I feel truly grateful to contribute to this innovative and dynamic LA non-profit arts organization. I met the executive director, Karen Mack, when she was the interim program director at The HeArt Project, another amazing arts organization where I worked for three years and continue to do freelance work.

Several years ago, LA Commons, in partnership with UCLA's Department of Urban Planning, launched Uncommon LA, an initiative to bring attention to the cultural treasures of the neighborhoods where it engages artists and residents in public art projects. Uncommon LA's signature event is Trekking Los Angeles: Local Adventures in A Global City, now in its third summer. I have been involved in the design since the inception and have had a lot of fun watching the project - and the resulting graphic identity - evolve.

Cover, Trekking LA Guide, 2007

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Trekking LA website
Site design by Khari and Akia Scott was informed by Trekking LA graphic identity.
I designed the map!

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Front and back of postcard for 2008 Trekking LA BBQ series. I was very inspired by this project, partly because I love working with food images. For the background image on the back, I took a picture of ketchup that I had squeezed onto a paper towel.

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A final food + design tidbit: I used okra and peppers from my mother-in-law's beautiful summer garden (in Ohio, not LA. Don't tell anyone!) for LA Commons' 2008 gala invite and program.

Okra and Peppers

Uncommon Angels Invite (inside of invite)

The Wonderful World of Online Color Resources

I love color. I love names of colors, especially paint colors. Dill Pickle, Olive Branch, Barley, Sea Urchin, Burnt Peanut Red, Cool Lava, and Sweet Butter are a few succulent names I just pulled from a Benjamin Moore color guide.

A quick guide to color for graphic and web design: There are two different color modes - CMYK and RGB. RGB (the red-green-blue light emitted from a monitor) is the mode for computers and internet. CMYK represents the four inks - cyan, magenta, yellow, and black - that are used for four-color printing. Here is a good article explaining the differences.

You may have heard the term "web safe colors," which refers to the 216 cross-browser color palette, created to ensure that all computers would display the colors correctly when running a 256 color palette. This is not as important today, because most monitors can display millions of different colors. W3 schools.com is a great resource for HTML colors.

An important color system to know about is the Pantone Matching System (PMS), a standardized color system developed in the 1960s by Pantone, the "global authority of color." Pantone sets color trends, each year selecting a color of the year. The 2009 color of the year is PANTONE 14-0848 Mimosa, representing "hope and reassurance" during tough economic times.

Here are a few online resources for choosing colors for a project.

Kuler is a beautiful Flash site from Adobe. Themes have five colors each. You can browse and rate themes created by users, create your own themes, download themes to use in Adobe Creative Suite applications, and even use color extraction tools to generate themes from your favorite painting or photograph.


Color Schemer and
Color Schemer Online
You can browse through hundreds of color schemes created by users (for free) or purchase their software. I have never used the software myself or downloaded schemes. I just browse through the schemes as a quick reference. I noticed they have a free Galleria dashboard widget that I will probably try out. (I like widgets!)

Visibone Color Lab
This is a fun visual tool for browsing the 216 web safe colors. Each color also includes RGB and CMYK values.


Please let me know what online color resources have been helpful to you. Happy color journeys!

Going in the Right Direction

I appreciate the feedback I received on my last post. It is becoming clearer to me that I want to use all of my social media tools - blogs, Facebook, Twitter - to promote my work. I also need to work on an expanded description of my work/services and what I bring to a project (thanks Alice, for highlighting this). I have been nervous about listing all of the things I do for fear that people may think I am scattered and not focused. To turn this into a positive, I bring a diverse range of experiences to my work and can view a project holistically. For example, because of my writing experience I can edit text in the middle of designing a piece. Finding a balance between copy and design can be challenging because the client may not want to sacrifice any text but too much copy can be overwhelming to the reader. Because I am both a writer and designer, a client can entrust me to design and edit simultaneously!

It feels uncomfortable to be writing so much about myself - I prefer to write about other peoples' ideas and projects - but this is an important part of my journey. I recently had a conversation with Judy Kinney, a Law of Attraction Life Coach (check out her website Dream and Flourish Coaching) about making money doing what you love, and as a result we are going to host an event on this very topic. Just being open to this possibility has already helped me to shift my attitude.

So here I go down this road. Hope to meet new companions along the way!

Self-promotion and Micromovements

I have a hard time promoting my paid work. My "volunteer" work or community arts initiatives I have no problem talking about, pitching to the media, etc. But when it comes to my own graphic design, grant consulting, public relations, it is tough for me to sell myself. I am thinking perhaps this blog could come in handy for this.

So I am putting out to the universe that I want to grow my business and get new clients.

Here are some questions I have for myself:

- What do I have to offer a client?
- What am I looking for in a client?
- What is/are my ideal project(s)?
- How do I convey this in my promotional materials (website, business card, etc.)?

Possible action steps:
- Create e-newsletter and email list of past, current and potential clients
- Gather testimonials from past and current clients

I consider writing down these thoughts "micromovements. I found this concept years ago in a book by Sark. "Micromovements are tiny, tiny little steps you can take towards completions in your life. I'm a recovering procrastinator, and I have a short attntion span, so I invented micromovements as a method of completing projects in time spans of 5 minutes or less." (The Bodacious Book of Succulence, 1998)

My goal is to blog about my process, ideally encouraging me to move forward and help manifest my goals. I'm also interested in what others have to say about this!

Confessions of a Twitterer

Ok, I confess! I have forsaken my blog for Twitter. Can you blame me? Twitter offers bite-size chunks of information all day all the time! For a highly-distracted person like myself it is very appealing. Plus you can meet people from all over the world that you would never find on Facebook and that you would have to spend hours searching for on the internet. On Twitter, they just pop up, out of the blue, and you have a new source of information.

That being said, I have been reminded of the importance of blogging from my friend Margie, who launched her new blog recently! Yeah Margie! She acknowledged me as one of her inspirations to start blogging, so I do not want to let her down.

So I am recommitting to blogging. At least for today. :)