This project was pretty fun for me because I don’t use photoshop for creation as much as i could.  I found some fun brushes on brusheezy.com for wood and made my own boards and posts. I drew the little screws in photoshop too… pretty easy with a gradient fill, then an emboss to make it look sunk into the board.  I used a technique with several steps to burn the logo into the wood, too.  Then I saved those images as tiff files and did the rest in inDesign.  The “Pig Xing” sign is an actual photo from the ranch, so playing on that I drew the sign for the name, phone # & web address using just the rounded corner effect on a rectangle from inDesign.  The background is a 3D rendering I downloaded (can’t remember where from).  I actually designed this business card after I did the elaborate brochure (below).

When I did my brainstorming on what I wanted this brochure to look like, I kept thinking “outdoors” but “clean”.  I think the background image really lends itself to that idea with the blue sky and all… Again, in photoshop I made a separate file for my little screws so I could place them in the layout using inDesign.  (click on the brochure image to see it larger – those screws were so freakin’ easy!)

I wanted all the photos of the hunters to look like they had been posted on a wooden pole with the screws kinda like drying freshly developed photos (old school).  Repetition of the boards at the top for the titles reinforced the theme of the wood, and just to be different, I drew scotch tape (in inDesign) and taped my little “note” in the middle of the brochure.  I probably spent about 3 to 4 hours on this project, and the client was so surprised with the design.  He said he didn’t expect something so unique!

New to Palo Cedro: a summer flea market!  This design wasn’t that challenging, except for the challenge of keeping “clutter” out of it… i.e. images or clip art of “flea market finds” or piles of “yard sale” junk.  I just wanted some natural background to suggest the location in the country, and I had to have a cute little mascot to represent the title.  I actually found him on google images, and drew the tag hanging from the string on the ‘R’ in market.  The background and the wooden sign are both vector stock from vecteezy (my fav site).

I hit the nail on the head (so to speak) with this design, the client approved it immediately, she loved my mascot flea, and thought the hanging tag was a “fabulous” idea!  I printed a bunch of these 11×17 posters, and I have seen them plastered all over town!  I also converted the entire thing to greyscale & printed a bunch of flyers on various astrobright colored papers.  She (the client) was so happy, she said she wants me to do something similar for the upcoming “Certified Farmers Market” in Palo Cedro. Yae!

Memorial Card - Front Only

I do a lot of memorial cards, and 99% of the orders are due the same day or the next day because of the circumstances with the funerals.  I thought I would share this card I did recently because although I could have used photoshop to remove the background on the picture, I used a little trick in inDesign instead.

I created a clipping path using the pen tool & edited my anchor points to crop her out of the photo.  I placed it over the image of the clouds, and gave it a white drop shadow so it looked like she had an outer glow.  For the heart with her name, I just drew a heart, typed the text, then converted the text to curves (or outlines).  Then I subtracted it from the heart like a compound path.  This card really was simple, and the family just loved it.  They thought I spent hours on it, when in fact, the whole job only took me about 1/2 an hour.  This card has a 1/4 inch margin on all sides, I was able to get 2 cards out of 1 sheet of cardstock.  Had I done this design with bleeds, I would have had to charge more to print on oversized stock & cut down to the finish size.  I try to keep the costs down on memorial cards because I know how costly funerals can be, and if I can save the family on the printing, I will– even if it means sacrificing my paycheck a bit!

Palo Cedro Barber's Biz Cards: Old vs. New

These nice folks asked me to “reproduce” their business cards because they had run out.  I love redesigning old stuff that’s so generic it’s sickening.  The old design probably came from a template at office depot or something.  Soooo obvious what to do…  Give these old school barbers a fresh look, but keep it clean.  I put together a reproduction of their old one, along with the new surprise design (yeah guess which one they picked haha). They went with digital business cards, and I had them ready the next day.  Clean and simple just like their old card, with a little more color.  By the way, this barber pole was a freebie I found on vecteezy a long time ago… not sure if it’s still there (see my favorite places links).

Rack Card - Front & Back

So it’s no secret I do graphics.  It’s also no secret (on my part) that I do graphics for 3 other small print shops in the area.  I don’t feel like we are competitors, we are friends who help each other out and scratch each others’ backs when needed.  I got a call from my friend Deb, who I’ve known since I was 4 years old.  Her daughter and I went thru elementary school together, and we are all in the same Bunco group, too!  Anyway, she needed some help with client supplied artwork that was not print-ready.  It was slightly worse than I expected, it wasn’t just a matter of cloning in some art to make bleeds so they could produce it right.  I had to redesign the rack for several reasons: 1. the supplied file was 4 x 9 and the order was for 4.25 x 11; 2. the photo on the front was sloppily cropped from it’s background obviously with the magic wand tool in photoshop (big rookie move); 3. the backside was typed out in size 6pts font with serifs (a huge no-no when you go that small– I guarantee arial or verdana is easier to read at 6pts than times or goudy); 4. the “layered” photoshop file they supplied was NOT layered, in fact– each file had 3 layers, two copies of the background (the entire artwork flattened & rasterized) and the 3rd layer was a white box (wtf?); last but not least, and certainly the most important, 5. the whole thing was riddled with typos! (wtf to the 8th power!!!)

They were unable to get the person who supplied the files to work on them again (not sure why).  So, in my Mighty Mouse voice… “Here I come to saaaaaaave the daaaaaay!”  I really enjoy working on political stuff now & then, because not only do I learn something about a candidate, I get the feeling of pride that my design is going to be viewed by so many eyes in our area (even if there is no shameless plug for me at the bottom of the ad).  When that solicitor comes to my door with one of those, I can say “hey, I designed that”… and my friend Deb can say, “hey, I printed that”!  Thanks for sharing your work with me guys.