April 2, 2012 2 Cent Tuesday #12: The Process
I have an exciting project to share! I recently finished working on a project for a new Etsy Shop and Blog called The Farmers Shop. Cyndey contacted me a few months ago - she used to work as a buyer for Urban Outfitters but because her and her husband moved to Ohio she decided to open an Etsy shop selling vintage and antique home wares. This project was really fun to work on and I am excited to share that the The Farmers Shop is now open for business!
Many of you have asked what my process is and how I get from start to finish so I thought for today's 2 Cent Tuesday this would be a fun project to share with you and let you see inside my head a little bit. When I start working with people I ask them to create a pin board on Pinterest to collect their favorite images, color schemes, typography and inspiration (Cydney's featured above). I think it is important to point out to clients (because usually they are not designers themselves) that they should look for similarities amongst their pins and try to pinpoint a single direction. I also ask them to weed out any distracting images that they might really love but can see doesn't really help their overall vision. This little pointer has helped a lot of clients narrow down their focus and direct me in a more specific path (which you know is REALLY helpful in the beginning!)
For this project I mocked up a couple different design concepts into two different PDF documents. They both had logos, fonts, color schemes and accent patterns. The first one included this pig (above) as the primary icon for the logo. Cydney loved the pig but after seeing it was compelled to tell me a little back story about her shop.
The Farmers Shop is actually named after her God Mother who's last name was Farmer. It had less to do with literal farmers than I had initially assumed and more to do with a beautiful woman who inspired Cydney and loved Hippos! We went back and forth about changing the icon from a pig to a hippo a few times but ultimately decided the deeper meaning behind the hippo won. Every time. So we went with that.
I do most of my design work in Illustrator. I'm not sure why but I prefer it over Photoshop in every situation. I am faster and more proficient at it. That's not to say Photoshop isn't important I'm just a whole lot better in Illustrator. I mocked up a basic blog design that I wanted for Cydney's wordpress blog in illustrator and then got to work customizing. You can check out her blog here and her Etsy shop here.
When working with people I like to show them what their brand could/should look like in more than one situation. If someone hires me for a blog I try to show them what some of there print collateral could look. If they hire me for print collateral I try to show them what some of their social media buttons or blog header could look like. In this case Cydney fell in love with the rubber stamp idea that I presented and went ahead and contacted the girls at Our Paper Shop and had that made. It usually takes you 10 extra minutes to slap a logo on a business card or envelope to give your client an idea of what things can look like. I try to take that extra step when I can.
Reader Comments (3)
Love it! The hippo is just the best thing :D
This looks wonderful! Also cool that you shared your process-- I'm always intrigued by the process of other creatives. I love it.
lovely work and love that pig. Thanks for the peak into your process.