A PB&J Every Day (in May)

Today I noticed a pattern in my ridiculous lunch break behavior. Every day at noon, I franticly race out of the office to both escape the stressful confines of my cubicle and to hunt down something yummy. I used to bring a lunch every day to enjoy quietly indoors like a good little girl. Over time, I stopped grocery shopping almost entirely, except after midnight when I’m no longer a danger to everyone in Green Hills. (Is it necessary to chat on your cell phone, block the whole aisle, and walk at a speed of -50mph simultaneously? Cue instant Amazonian rage.) Now, I hit up restaurants and local shops at lunch time like it’s my job. I spend between $5 and $10 every single work day. That’s between $100 and $200 each month— insanity—and I suddenly feel nauseous. My best friend, Dave Ramsey, would be so ashamed. (Although we aren’t technically friends, we did take this super sweet picture together.)

Thankfully, I am not a Negative Nancy that’s going to cry about it. I’m going to challenge myself, and my buddy Hayley, to bring a random cheap sandwich for lunch every day and not go out. We can still be outside enjoying the Southern sunshine, trying to make friends with the deer that distract us during meetings.

Think we can do it? I have my positive pants on, and I say yes!

Poster Party

It’s been a goal of mine lately to dedicate some time to playing with fun new fonts, colors, and textures. I spend the majority of my day creating clean, corporate designs and, although I enjoy it, I force myself to take occasional Pinterest breaks to avoid artistic suppression. Clients don’t always want to see the paint splattered styles and quirky layered fonts that I have come to love, so I decided to create some posters for fun!

You can visit my Etsy shop for more details, but below are 3 examples of my experimentation. I’m a sucker for bright colors and little quotes that carry a big message.

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You can find all of 5 them on Etsy or on my website. I hope to add some more soon and keep the shop going! If you have a quote that you’re dying to see on paper, shoot me an email so we can chat!

Bridal Shower

As my brother’s September wedding date starts to sneak up on us all, I took to dreaming about the design elements we established for their save the date. (Literally.) I created a bridal shower invitation for them in a dream, and was excited to create and present the concept in real life. Thank you, happy dream land, for supplying this fun invitation:

Next up will be the wedding invitations, bachelorette party invitations, programs, table cards, and favors. I can’t wait to photograph all of the pieces together at the end. This summer is going to fly by and soon we’ll be celebrating at their wedding! Now if only I could dream up designs every night…

Lover of Wit & Robots

Hayley Farmer is a talented writer, PR specialist, world traveler, and lover of wit and robots. We have been happily working at 2-Com together for about 8 months now, and the entire office knows that her nickname for me is “Little Buddy”. One night, over an extremely caffeinated after-hours Starbucks work session, she agreed to let me design a website and business cards for her future endeavors. The excitement that ensued was partially due to my fall pumpkin spice latte obsession, but mostly due to the pure joy that I could design a brand focused on Hayley’s personality and skills!

The resulting brand is a combination of a cheery robot, warms colors (yellows and browns), quirky fonts, and wood textures. The business cards came first, just in time for our networking adventures at BarCamp Nashville:

Next will be the website launch! It will tie everything together and serve as a jumping off point for Hayley’s resume and blog. Even though it won’t be a huge site with tons of pages, having a web presence is really important when connecting with new people and promoting yourself. Here are some sneak peeks of Hayley’s website design:

Stay tuned for the website launch! I’m so grateful to be collaborating with another talented, determined friend.

Save the Date: Round 2!

Save the Dates are quickly becoming one of my favorite design projects to work on! They are always fun and happy, while allowing for a lot of creative freedom. I was really excited when my brother-in-law’s future sister-in-law (now that’s a mouthful) asked me to design their Save the Dates. They are getting married this fall in Nashville.

With a theme of “country sheik and legos” and a color scheme of bright pink, yellow, and blue, I was a little apprehensive to tackle this project at first. It took me a couple weeks to figure out how to tie all of this together, when the solution was under my nose the whole time: don’t. Simplicity is a beautiful thing, and I opted for a subtle, charming approach:

I found this beautiful, free photo online, which I chopped up and edited until I got the composition above. Adding their initials carved into the tree seemed to fit in with the “country sheik”, romantic theme. The type treatment is made up of these three fun fonts from dafont.com:

I’m going to miss working on Save the Dates all week. It was a great project, and they have been the sweetest people to work with. I’m a lucky designer!!

Proof Imaging Website

I launched a new website at work last week! I’m pretty pumped about this design and project. Proof Imaging is a new uniform company that needed a complete branding system created from scratch. Michael Puckett and John Grimsley collaborated on their new logo, and I worked on the website design. It’s so fun and rewarding to see a brand come together based off of nothing but a few sketches on notebook paper from the client!

The main goal was to create a very clean, easy to navigate website design. I focused on making fun feature boxes and arrows throughout the pages, while keeping a ton of white space. The bright blue and grays tie the content together. Because they do not have a lot of content yet, it was important to create the pages in a way that they deliver important lines of information without feeling sparse.

Below is a collage of the website design. You can check out their new site here.

I definitely learned a lot from this project, as I had not worked with iframes or created contact forms before. It was a great opportunity to work with these guys!

Getting Social With Pinterest

With Pinterest’s popularity and user base growing every day, it seemed like a good idea to keep up with the trend. I spotted a cute “Pin it” button on a recipe website last week, and shared this discovery with Catie Moss. Her website, Catie Moss Productions, just went live recently, showcasing beautiful paintings, drawings, and cupcake designs.

Giving Catie “Pin it” buttons will increase the social awareness of her talent, promote her brand without spending a dime, and gain new potential clients. It didn’t take me long at all to add the code, and they look super cute! Check it out:

So Pin away, Catie Moss fans! The internet is a beautiful thing for creative individuals, and I’m excited to keep working on her website.