a little inspiration

Every once in awhile I see an idea or project that is so inspiring and touches me so deeply that I urgingly wish I could have been a part of it in some way. I recently came across wee see, a collection of short videos designed for infants to help "introduce" them to the visual world. Their website is super, and you can watch a few samples.



I don't even know where to start explaining how much I adore everything about this. the concept. the simplicity. the music. and especially what it teaches. During my freshman year of college, I was considering going into art education, and I completed a research paper on "art" as an integral part of the development of children into fully functioning cognitive and emotional beings. For me, these videos are an amazingly beautiful way to introduce visual thinking and expression to young minds, and to set a foundation for their creativity.

Among principles and elements like composition, shape, direction, symmetry/asymmetry, pattern, motif, etc., I was especially impressed with the animator's use of figure-ground relationships. I may make it a regular routine to watch one of these whenever I sit down to design a logo. :) Oh, and did I mention the music/sound is adorable and genius as well? It is.

While I'm on the topic of kiddie stuff, I got pretty into children's fashion while I was working on my redesign of Milk, and I'm super stoked to see this collection when it's released. And I was delighted by the beautiful surprise Hello on their website. "Feminine minus the frilly and pretty without the precious." yup.

Milk

Magazine redesign for Milk, a children's fashion magazine.

smashbox

Packaging project!! For summer packaging class, we worked with Brett Traylor from ThinkSo. He gave the assignment specifications and then traveled down here to meet with us and critique our work. We were even on their news page. Super fun.

My client, Smashbox Cosmetics, is a company based out of LA. They began as a photo studio (and still are) and started manufacturing consumer cosmetics developed by their in-house makeup artists. I drew a new logo and developed the packaging for a line of basics.

Thanks so much to Jessica for photographing these. They look beautiful!

Gilt

I know I don't have time or money for these things, but I've become an obsessive Gilt Group stalker. Gilt is a website that takes high end clothing and luxury brands and knocks the price down to, well, still expensive but not outrageous. Right now, I'm wishing I had a hundred dollars to invest in this: