Caitlin and I always like to work in a little craft session or ten throughout any given year, and what better time than the holiday season to put our skills to use!? Thus, we decided to wood burn some FUNtastic Christmas ornaments to gift to our families. It helped keep our Holiday spending budget within limits and also allowed us to rekindle our childhood pastimes as "master wood-scorching artisans."
Read MoreAfter making some big decisions in 2014 and accepting a job offer in California, both Caitlin and I picked up and moved nearly 3,000 miles away to San Francisco's East Bay to explore west coast life. And explore we did! 2014 and 2015 were filled with unforgettable travels and the memories to last two lifetimes. We immersed ourselves in the many rich cultural experiences California has to offer, from new friendships, endless winery tours, spectacular city views, and hiking in Yosemite National Park, to the wintery wonders of Lake Tahoe, the excitement of Los Angeles, and all those offbeat towns and adventures in between.
In addition to my full-time position at E&J Gallo Winery for the year and a half we lived in the East Bay, I continued to take on more (and more) freelance as I have done for the last ten years—often averaging 65+ hours a week when all was said and done. (Where did I find the time to do all that exploring, right?!)
While in California, I was hired by Todd Parsons of State Street Honey in Redwood City, CA to create an exciting brand identity and package design for his award-winning honey. What a fun project this was! Not only did I enjoy the entire process of working with Todd to create an impressionable and lasting logo for him, but I've also enjoyed seeing the design earn prestigious recognition in the creative field ever since, as it's garnered "buzz" on TheDieline.com (among other design blogs) and earned a GDUSA 2015 award for logo design. I'm really looking forward to designing his ever-growing product line and continuing to help turn his business into a full blown apiary extravaganza in the coming year!
Below is a sampling of some of the logo and package design work I've developed in 2015.
While we cherished our time in San Francisco, we had certainly left our hearts in Philadelphia when we moved...So we came home to reclaim them. Since our move back east in October, I've officially taken the plunge into "Full-Time Freelance Design" and Caitlin Riley continues to work with me to provide her invaluable copywriting services to a variety of clients—masterfully sculpting and giving brands their voice. Check out her creative and copywriting work at cbriley.com, and check back in with Jess Glebe Design in the near future to see the latest work I've posted to my portfolio.
I am excited to share that my logo for The Food Project was selected out of over 22,000 logos to be published in LogoLounge Vol. 9. The logo was designed as part of a college branding class many years ago. The Food Project is an existing non-profit organization which everyone should check out. This identity is the second of my designs selected to be in the LogoLounge book series, and I hope it is not the last!
We are pleased to announce judging for LogoLounge 9 is complete and all winners have been notified by email. More than 22,000 logos were considered this year and only the top designs remained. Winning logos will be published in one of the best-selling graphic design book series in the world, which will be released by HOW/F+W Media, Inc in early 2016.
We would like to thank our overly talented and hard working panel of international judges for this years competition: Kendrick Kidd of Shepherd Agency, Matt McCracken of Doublenaut, Sebastian Padilla of Anagrama, Ian Paget of LogoGeek, Tracy Sabin of Sabingrafik, Christopher Simmons of MINE, Matt Stevens of Design Office of Matt Stevens, and Alina Wheeler of Designing Brand Identity.
Thank you to all LogoLounge members who participated, and for your dedication to continuing to push the limits of design and create beautiful, inspiring art to be enjoyed across the globe.
I had the great pleasure of watching one of my previous clients, Erica Barrett on ABC's Shark Tank (Episode 520) lastnight. She has officially teamed up with Barbara Corcoran to take Southern Culture to the next level! I am proud and happy to have had the chance to work with Erica on her Brand Identity and very first SKUs in her ever-expanding line of pancake products. See my work here. Congrats to you, Erica!
My package design for Southern Culture Pancake Mix Design was featured in Oprah Magazine's September 2013 O! List. The product really seems to be gaining traction, and I'm pleased to have been a part of it's beginnings. View project here.
It has been my utmost pleasure and honor to have been able to design Amber & Mary's wedding invitations, RSVPs, and collateral for their August 2013 Ceremony. Having known the couple for over two and a half years, I can say without reservation that these are the perfect invites for them. Read more about the inspiration behind the design here.
I've been excited about these puppies for a while now. I finally got up the nerve to have my business cards printed the good old fashioned way—letterpress. Thanks to Rise and Shine Paper, my precious (insert creepy Lord of the Rings Gollum voice here), beautiful little business cards are here. I'm thrilled to have them in-hands, and proud to put them into the hands of my contacts and potential clients.
We all have mobile devices which offer about 100+ ways to save and store contact information, but nothing will ever replace the tactile awesomeness that is letterpress.
Cards printed 1/0 on 600gsm Crane's Lettra with Painted Edges
Design is fun. Drawing is fun. But doodling is the best. For old-school, fun-loving little moments where I feel like reminiscing about childhood and all of the fun I had sketching to the beat of my own drum (or crayon nonetheless), I break out my set of Shower Crayons.
They keep the magic of imagination alive...even for adults like me! And apparently I'm not alone in this—exhibit A; an adorable blog "How to Make Love Stay" highlights the magic of Shower Crayons in "The Shower Crayon Chronicles". Enjoy!
As if designing day and night weren't enough to fuel my "design fire," I also recently took up soap making. Not only does it allow me time away from the computer, but it also allows me the opportunity to stimluate my other senses. I can create something both visually satisfying and olfactorily-fascinating. I just coined that term—I'm pretty sure it won't show up in the dictionary just yet. Give it time.
In any case, I wanted to share some of the soaps (and subsequent packaging which i simply had to create for them). I'm only sorry you can't smell them from here.
Have a look at a blogpost I wrote a while back for Bailey Brand Consulting These things still hold true:
I get excited about the little things in life. And I think that’s pretty amazing.Sounds, places, tastes, thoughts, people…you name it, I’ll probably start hopping up and down about it like a hyper-active rabbit. Take nature, for instance. Now THAT’s something to write home about. Yes, good old mother nature takes my breath away just as easily as it does the next tree-hugger (though I usually consider myself to be more of an avid iMAC-hugger).I’ve had a thing for little Miss Nature for as far back as I can recall. Always amazing, never falling short of impressing, and constantly inspiring me to create. It’s no wonder I frolicked down the path of design as I did. It’s in my nature to design—to see the beauty in details, make order out of chaos, communicate on a multitude of levels…the whole nine. It’s not everyday that people walk outside and actually feel the air on their face, stare up at the clouds reveling in astonishment, or listen to the trees conversing around them (let’s not discount those dang chipmunks, either). I’ll never stop pointing out the clouds to my friends, pulling leaves from trees to stare closely at their teeny tiny veins, or yelling “Do you smell that?!!?” with a smile as I drive by honeysuckle bushes.To just stop and drink everything in—that’s exciting for me. It is this excitement for the little things, and probably a plethora of other influences no doubt, that inspires me to design. And that, my friend, is pretty big.
