zoe organics: handcrafted organic skin care

OK, time for a shameless self-promotion here: I've branched out a bit in recent months, and am partnering with a friend of mine to start an organic skin care company. It's actually been pretty eye-opening for me; I've mostly been doing research about package design (and some web design, though I'm a bit timid to admit this, because I'm just clueless when it comes to the subject!), and I've been learning a ton: how things are made, where the materials come from, what the printing options are, etc. etc.... and I feel like I've only just seen the tip of this iceberg.

But some of the things I've been wanting to do (if I ever did start a company) turn out to be pretty hard, if not impossible. Using recycled glass to make the glass jars and bottles for the products – this I thought would be a piece of cake. Turns out, if you can only order small quantities of things and don't have the budget to custom-make your containers, you're actually very limited in your options. Oh, there are options – don't get me wrong – they're just not what I'm looking for, stylistically or aesthetically. (And what's more important than that??)

I read a book last year called Cradle to Cradle, and I feel like there's been a giant shift in my perception of what it means to live sustainably. Seriously – like what it means to recycle, and how being good by recycling isn't really good enough when it comes to preserving our resources. But what I love the most about the book is that it's not really a guilt-inducing, finger-pointing type of manifesto; it's actually pretty inspiring, and makes me want to try to create totally new ways of making things. (Try! I said.) The sweet spot here is to find a way to manufacture your product so that no waste at all is produced (or, I should say, the "waste" that is produced can go back into the system as a benefit for something else). It's all a system, after all, this world we're living in, and currently severely out of balance.

I'm paraphrasing here, and pretty awfully I might add, but that's kind of the general sense of the book. Anyway, it's become quite a buzz phrase, "cradle to cradle," and not to jump on the bandwagon or anything, but there are companies out there who are making major changes in the way they manufacture products – and how amazing would it be to actually initiate change on this level? Hm.

All that to say, I've been inspired by this book. And I hope to have the chance to do some things differently, when it comes to the making of our packaging and products. There are lots of things to consider, of course, and believe me it can get overwhelming, but I've finally accepted that this is a process, and I'll just continue on this road, and see where it leads.

Change is hard. But often, a very good thing.

Oh, and by the way, here's the link to Zoe Organics. Cheers.

re-branding time

Alright, so as a freelancer in these economic times (yes, we've heard it all before), it's not easy to get new work coming in. Pretty straightforward. And I've never been truly satisfied with my logo/identity for Oratia Design. It's always been on the back burner, for years now, and every once in a while an idea will pop into my head and I'll sketch and/or play around a bit in Illustrator. Well, nothing during this time has stuck. And, to be honest, I already have something, even if it's not what I'm happy with, so it's been pretty easy to let it slide and remain in the background.

Until now. I'm feeling the pressure to get something new out there, some sort of self-promotional piece/printed portfolio that I can send to prospective clients. Really start the promotional push that I've been lacking so far in my business. I've been fortunate, actually, that all my clients have come by word-of-mouth, so I haven't really needed to do any sort of organized self-promotion. But now, it's time. I need a new logo/identity package for my studio, as well as a printed piece that's first of all cheap, and despite the price limitation, well-designed and effective. Because that is always the bottom line, after all, isn't it? Good, cheap and effective.

So lately I've been poring through design annuals, best-of compliations and other design books, spending hours in Borders with my piles of books and Americanos, trying to take it slow and really trying to dissect what other logos are made of – how they became what they are. I'm really inspired by the process that other designers go through, how they get from a blank piece of paper to a printed piece of letterhead, complete with logo, colors, paper choice, printing options, everything.

And through all this, one thing has remained perfectly clear: designing a logo for yourself is probably the most difficult thing of all. I know it is for me.

I'll post more of the process when I have something semi-solidified. And until then, I'm off to make some more coffee. Nose to the grindstone! Off we go!

web screenshot project

Last week I had the chance to take some (badly needed) time off, for a short Christmas/anniversary trip to Prague with my family. And before that, work had been as busy as ever (when it rains...). Thus the lull in blog postings so far. I haven't even had a chance to keep up with my fledgling blog yet! We're off to a good start, then.

Anyway, the latest project I completed was a single entry page for a website – not my usual thing, being a print designer and all. But I thought, well, it's really not even a layout or template for a website; it just has to be a single page where it can be unstructured and just... well, if you'll excuse the arrogance... art. Not that I'm asserting my work is art, mind, it's just the frame of mind I had to be in to tackle a project like this, being out of my element. And this suddenly became an exciting challenge.

I was given a page as a sample, that my client really liked and wanted theirs to be modeled after (yozzan.com):



Of course, I couldn't just swipe this designer's idea, even if I brought original images into it, because a. that would still be stealing, and b. that wouldn't make me a very good designer. So I had to come up with a similar idea but still with its own look and feel. My client loved the idea of a door as an entry way, and she mentioned having a coffee-shop feel, being warm and inviting. She also loved the grunge look (which, after lots of small self-prescribed experiments through the past recent months, turns out to be much harder than it seems). So these rules of guidance, along with some specific lines of text to be included, were more than sufficient to get me going on my way.

My first mistake, as happens more than I care to admit, was that my excitement over the project outweighed the practical need to start with a pencil and paper. So I gathered some images, fruits from my labor of web-trolling and scanning, that I thought would work nicely, and just dove right into Photoshop. Here's what I came up with originally:



I only added the diagonal lines in to give it some sort of anchor, but the overall effect was pretty bad, and I think you'll agree this was far from the finish line. But after several hours of work and not lifting my head up, I felt pretty good at this point, so I sent the first draft over to the client (cringe). She did like it, but mentioned it was a bit too feminine – something I had failed to see myself. How right she was. Way too feminine, no anchor or balance, and just a plain mess to the eye. Time to take a step back.

I worked on this a while longer, taking out the most feminine aspects of the piece, and adding in some hand-drawn elements. The image was still a big mess, but at least I got all my ideas down on the page (or screen, to be literal). Keeping that in mind, I'll show you where it now stood:



Yep. A GREAT big mess. So finally I did what I should have done in the first place, which is to put pencil to paper and start sketching out ideas. Here is one of those sketches:



To be fair, I did take quite a few notes actually, as the first thing I did, even before opening Photoshop. But that was a close second.

The sketch provided me with the answer to my dilemma: some sort of balance to the page. I opted to give the feeling of a third dimension; instead of the flat front-facing door, I thought a diagonal horizon might provide an anchor point, as well as a little movement and energy. I ended up skewing the door image and pathway a bit in Photoshop as well, which gave it that little bit of extra dimension my first two drafts were badly lacking. Anyway, many hours later, here's what I finally arrived with:



The door was actually taken from a photo I took while on holiday in Prague (oh, the paradise of beautiful doors!), and as you can see I dropped the idea of the arrow; it just wasn't working. There's a balance here between making it visually interesting and original, yet making the piece have simplicity and meaning as a whole (ie, you can't just throw things down randomly and hope they work, without having a reason for them to be there in the first place). Oh, the endless struggle... what else sucks time down the drain like this noble pursuit?

Of course, at some point there has to be an end to the endless abyss of tweaking, and it always helps to give myself a final hard deadline for this reason. The client was happy, and I could finally say I was happy with the final outcome as well.

So this has been my process for this project. I always enjoy seeing other designers' layout of the process they use to get from point A to B (and all the bits in between), so I thought I should share as well.

And in what other career are there new challenges all the time? I love my job.