BEFORE AND AFTER: Stakmore folding chair

This summer, I've been spending time on working through lists of to-dos. One overdue item was to recover this old Stakmore chair I found in my basement. Old Airstream trailers were apparently stocked with Stakmore furniture. While the cane was in perfect condition, it desperately needed a rub-down with some teak oil and new foam and fabric on the seat.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

IDENTITY: selling vintage on etsy

My aunt has decided to take a foray into selling her vintage wares on etsy.com, and I offered to create a banner for her shop.





I hope she is able to find much success and community on the site.  Click here to see her treasures.

IDENTITY: Campaign for Southern Equality

The beyond amazing folks at The Progressive Project (TPP) needed a logo for a new project they are launching in North Carolina to assert the full humanity and equality of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in American life and to increase public support for LGBT rights.

They were hoping for something clean that would compliment the TPP logo. Here is what we ended up with:

Click here to read more about the Campaign for Southern Equality.

INVITE: celebrating 15 years of change

Here's the latest invitation design that I put together for The City School's Celebrating Change 15th anniversary event:

EVENT: photo banner

One more post from Abbey & Scott's party about one of my favorite features. We wanted to have photographs of the couple but didn't want to do the typical PowerPoint slideshow. Instead, I made photo banners that hung on the fireplace wall.

EVENT: reoccuring notions

A few years ago, when working on an event for a dear friend, we jokingly came up with the concept of "reoccurring notions" as a way to build a theme for an event.  Since then, we have used the term and technique over and over again and picked one or two elements to repeat for all our events.

Here are some "reoccurring notions" from Abbey and Scott's party.  Yes, we knew it kind of looked like a Chinese restaurant but we liked it!  Shown below: prosperity banner, double happiness sugar cookies, fortune swizzle sticks, double happiness cocktail napkins, and more.

EVENT: boutonnieres for Abbey & Scott

We wanted Abbey & Scott to be able to wear something special for their party.  Flowers seemed dull so I made personalized boutonnieres, or "buddhannieres" as Scott's became to be known.  Here they are:

 

And here are Abbey & Scott wearing the boutonnieres!

SOCIAL: more couple's stationery

These ones are for Abbey & Scott so I picked up a few Asian elements from their announcements. And a grungy olive version to match their personalities.

INVITE: tying the knot

Vicki Jeane wanted a nautical themed invite for her son's rehearsal dinner.  We did it up with nautical flags for the "C" and "M" and rope details for the ampersand and envelope labels we needed for the navy envelopes!

EVENT: cranes from the archives

I'm on an archive kick, and also excited about a lot of pieces I'm doing for my brother's wedding party. So pulled up these from another favorite wedding of mine.

Cranes (in the manner of Sadako) were the reoccurring notion at this wedding. We used them on the seating cards for the reception, which were hung with clothespins around a tree.

Family and friends created over 1,000 paper cranes for the decorations.  We use colored ones to brighten up the white tent and had white ones strung from the chuppah for the ceremony.

INVITE: do gooders from the archives

A huge part of my work is for friends, colleagues, and organizations that share my values.  Graphic design is as much a part of transformation and revolution as anything else!  So here's two designs from the archives.

SOCIAL: from the cutting room floor

Lots of times draft designs never make it past the first proof stage.  Here are two samples I put together for Maggie and Josh that we ended up not going with.

SOCIAL: stationery for the new couple

Getting married means a lot of things, one of which is the necessity of thank you cards.  Maggie & Josh wanted white, flat cards that they could both use.

INVITE: envelopes from the archives

Recently I was going through some old design files and came across a few envelopes from jobs past.  The details on these still really work for me.

INVITE: Asian wedding announcement & party

My brother has been living in China for the past 10 years.  He recently got married to his long-time girlfriend Abbey.  Which created the need for announcements and also a party to celebrate stateside!

We created a simple announcement using the traditional double happiness with their names in Mandarin characters.  The matching party invite enclosure has a photo of the happy, giggly couple on their wedding day.  And the envelopes were lined with luscious Yuzen (I know, Japanese not Chinese but it's stunning!).

IDENTITY: Lucy Stone Cooperative

A remarkable group of folks are planning to buy a house in Boston and create the Lucy Stone Cooperative - a cooperative house based in Unitarian Universalist values.

We worked together for many months to create a logo that symbolized UUism (the flame coming from the chalice roof) as well as "home" (the roof line). Here's the final logo.

The Lucy Stone folks also threw a party in November to raise funds for the down payment on the home.  This was their party invitation - again, using a roof line to represent the house.