The above Saint Valentine’s Day card, made for our beloved client Carrie Contey, is not the only place we’ve been feeding our enchantment.

The studio literally just wrapped up an identity system for the Austin Office of Sustainability’s Rethink brand. Included with the more formal logo type created is a system of 21 hand drawn (by me) words, that visually juxtapose and emotionally support AOoS’s mission. And despite our highs from the influx of Sharpie off-gassing in the studio, we had enough sense to NOT attempt to execute a custom logo for our client, a Los Angeles-based Psychotherapist. For this we were inspired to hire calligrapher Nancy Howell. More about both of these projects after their official launches.

The hand drawn influx we are experiencing is feeling good.

Even Chelsea got into the act, lending her hand to the lettering project for Carrie’s Valentine’s Day card. For this project, we attempted to capture and equal Ms. Contey’s fondness for the coterie of families that she works with. But knowing Carrie, as lovely as they are, they don’t hold a candle to her affection for them.

Image: Chelsea Fullerton (dot com)

I’m talking walking the walk.

I’ve been a fan of Link with Love—a most excellent organization that advocates for intellectual property rights—for a while now, then just this week I advised a friend about this very issue. Skip to the very next day where I stumbled upon the flowchart below…well, that’s enough of a prompt for me. Though my heart was in the right place was I actually supporting the proper way to share art, photography, design, words, etc. in the digi-verse?

Are you?

Viewers Like You believes whole-heartedly in, and makes all efforts to, credit the creators who’ve conspired to create the images that have inspired (and support) our posts. However, I am human, which sometimes includes exhibiting absent-minded behaviors. It also means I can be precise, obsessed and passionate, so if at any time you see work that is improperly recognized or you know the original source, send me a note and I’ll gladly/promptly/faithfully, update/correct/attribute accordingly.

OH, and PS. Same goes for typefaces, but I’ll save explaining why we pay for all fonts used, and require our clients to do the same, for a future post. Until then…spread the (linking) love!

Image/Design: Pia Jane Bijkerk & Erin Lochner

This isn’t a post about my affection for Tracy, or lack thereof. Rather I want to highlight something I heard her say in response to the popular critique that Anderson shows contempt for her audience by not ‘cueing’ in her classes or videos—not giving them enough information. I am paraphrasing here but, in her reply (brushed off in a most effortless, efficient way) she explained that this is a deliberate, professional choice. She doesn’t direct or talk much when she instructs because she finds it keeps you in your head, and out of the body. That her voice is one more distraction. She wants you to watch, mimic and figure it out, kinesthetically.

That makes perfect sense. More information is just more! And isn’t an effective way to get you closer to what you want, or even knowing what you want.

Ready for the segue?

With our client’s wholesale spaces we wanted to make the experience for Buyers align clearly with how Conni Reed, creator of Consuela, wanted her customers to feel: spacious yet abundant. This design challenge was a one that provoked us to explore Consuela’s brand identity most intensely.

What we advised for the showroom is one of buyer intrigue. This was a departure from the way the Consuela showroom had been staged, where all Consuela products are available on first sight. This staging felt abundant, like a bountiful bazaar, but ignored the “spacious” aspect that was also a critical brand attribute. Wanting buyers to see Consuela with fresh eyes and heart, we suggested a radical break from what was expected and contrast from industry/market norms. Set the stage so that the buyer gets less upfront and winds up craving more, feeling inspired to “dig” a bit deeper:

The showroom as workshop.

Here the buyer is transported into a mock-workshop and gets to “play” designer, digging though drawers of fabric and embellishments, encouraged to create combination of their own. Tangibly feeling more invested in Consuela’s offerings, Feeling included in the behind-the-scenes aspects of product creation would translate into Consuela setting a new platform in which to grow the brand. Not to mention sales.

This requires editing. A lot. Consuela has a myriad of product offerings—hundreds, if not thousands, of SKUs per season. Not showing them all at market was a hard sell. And we are inching our way there for Summer 2012.

Studies show that whether we’re buying a pair of jeans, applying to college, or my personal bugaboo; picking a carton eggs from the 36 varieties that Whole Foods offers… everyday decisions–both big and small–have become increasingly complex due to the overwhelming abundance of choice with which we are presented.

We assume that more choice means better options and greater satisfaction. But beware: choice overload can make you question the decisions you make before you even make them, it can set you up for unrealistically high expectations, and it can make you blame yourself for any and all failures. In the long run, this can lead to decision making paralysis, anxiety, and perpetual stress. This is the “Paradox of Choice”. Where options are a problem instead of a solution. In his book of the same name, Barry Schwartz illustrates how our obsession with choice encourages us to seek that which makes us feel worse. Now why would you go and do a silly thing like that?!

You can’t argue that feeling worse is so very un-Consuela. Or, that devotion to pitch-perfect editing is so very the method of Viewers Like You.

Image: Michael Falco for The New York Times

Ready for Consuela with a shake and twist of candied ginger? Look Good. Laugh Easy. Live in Color.

Feelings about color can be deeply personal and are often rooted in one’s own experience or culture. Consuela, known for their bold use of color and texture in accessories and textiles, engaged our studio to re-invision their brand and set them on a course to go (inter)national.

Viewers, through Consuela’s Spring 2012 Lookbook, re-conceived the brand as a playground where a client could better understand how seasonal and core palettes can be used to affect moods, feelings and emotions. With all their new sales and marketing materials we proposed, Consuela will now not only usher their clients to choose color for nourishment, as an opportunity for personal expression or a powerful communication tool—but will represent their ethos more acutely:

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
- Walt Whitman

Also, to reflect Consuela’s strong yet intimate corporate culture, the lookbook was designed to place emphasis on their creative and production processes, highlight conversations with clients and staff, as well as offer a plethora of behind-the scenes photography, by the wildly talented Alexandra Valenti.

Like I said, HUGE!

Images: Chelsea Fullerton (dot com)

Alex Codlin is the creator of the incomparable condiment and she has been tinkering with, refining and relishing her brew in private for a bit now. But based on the wildly enthusiastic reactions she’s been getting from her friends, myself included, she knows she’s got something special. And she’s gunna give the people what they need!

And so we have arrived. That naked mason jar needs a vehicle in which to drive its supreme contents. A name, a logo but more importantly, a brand. Alex has engaged Viewers Like You for just this reason, to develop her brand. And smart cookie that she is, she began her process by scheduling an In Tandem session with our studio. This way, together, we could get real clear, real inspired and deeply establish a real course of action, BEFORE design directions are considered.

An In Tandem session is similar to the once private, beginning stages of design development Viewers explores with each new project. We’ve formalized our process and opened it up to intimately include the client in a two-day discovery session. Making conceptualizing even more dynamic, strategizing more potent. The secret ingredient here is the client!

With Alex, there was “home”work, brainstorming, collecting, illumination, mistakes and many a tangent—that all conspired to allow us to face true north. A week later we delivered to Alex a dossier that reviewed all we unearthed and created, as well as included a customized and diverse list of resources from the concrete to inspirational.

In Tandem is Viewers Like You, in a nut shell: pragmatics as delight. Never and afterthought or too much of a good thing.

Image: Chelsea Fullerton (dot com)

Sounds reasonable. But something isn’t right in this picture.

Giving multiple directions, well, sucks! Yup. Even giving 2 directions is painful most times, because really all that is needed is one good resolution. And really, that is why you hire a designer: to resolve a problem. That’s what we do. So while our design process is chock-full of directions, why do we offer multiple options to our clients? No, that is not a rhetorical question, I am legitimately asking, why?! I cannot begin to tell you how many times we have been disappointed by a client loving a perfectly good solution, but not the “best” one. And by “best” I mean the one we love best. And if your designer loves a direction THAT is the one you should want too. Because if you don’t trust your designer’s opinion implicitly, you picked the wrong designer. Yes. This is our dominion, expertise, passion, metier—what we have academically and professionally prepared for. And why, we trust, you were compelled to chose our studio in the first place.

No, design resolutions are not like children, they are not loved equally by their parents. Some are better than others, even if they all work/look/feel darn good. Yet, sometimes offering multiple directions honors the project’s needs and design process. In these scenarios multiple options are not an exercise in showing the client “Look, I am busy working hard for you!” Or, sometimes we can’t choose a direction that delights us more, resolves the challenges better, than another. In those cases we gladly design multiple options and enthusiastically go back into a dialogue with the client to root out more minutia. We love the minutia!

Not being able to choose a direction was the case with our client OCDC, but with a twist. When Keith and Shannon returned to us to resolve their packaging and stationary system, we were from go, gung-ho. A great client with a killer logo,—the brief was “You have creative freedom.” Cool. We proceeded with the usual multiple direction exploration, and when it came time to present round 1, we were torn. We did have a deep affection for one concept over the others, but any of the three would serve the project’s needs and not disappoint us if chosen. When Shannon and Keith picked the “wrong” direction we, without skipping a beat, went back to the drawing board to refine that concept. Like I said, we liked them all, it was a perfectly lovely direction, just not our favorite.

Fast forward 2 rounds, nearing the end of the production schedule, things always moving towards more clarity, and there is a pause. We’re really really sorry, but could we go back and explore that other direction, the “label” one?

You mean our favorite child? The versatile one, the one with the best personality and plays nice? Yes, yes we will gladly go and dote on it some more. Thank you.

Sure, a bit frustrating. But more so for us, illuminating. Why do we continue to offer multiple directions? Because of some notion we have about a standard protocol? To make sure our clients feel like they are getting a good value? To show we are really good worker bees? The question should be: what is the best design practice and how do we best serve our clients? All signs are directing us to “one”.

So while our studio moves to a system where it is understood that we are being commissioned to create one (appropriate, inspired, subversive, brilliant, strategic) resolution, we will continue to meet each project as an opportunity not only to fulfill a need but to rethink how it is we are engaging with our clients and the work. Coming to a place where we can purify the act(ions) of being a designer even further.

::  If you liked this post, your next move would be to explore here. And if you loved this post let’s purify this thing—the client/designer relationship!  ::  

Images: Chelsea Fullerton (dot com) 

And sometimes frustration.

The sheer amount of dead ends we encounter trying to connect all those dots is…well, endless. That, too, is what makes the project so satisfying.

A portfolio of past years’ cards can be seen here.

As you can imagine, after ten years of creating Holiday Cards, the studio has amassed its fair share of print overage. Stacks of 50 or so extras per run sit in a drawer, awaiting next year’s discards. We’ve had high falutin’ ideas about what to do with the detritus at some future date in time—most notably, to bind them together and create a book—but this year we figured it out!

Leftovers are the uneaten edible remains of a meal after the meal is over. Some leftover food can be eaten cold from the refrigerator, while others may be reheated, or mixed with additional ingredients and recooked to make a new dish.

New dishes made from leftovers are quite common around the world, but our favorite leftover concoction is simply frying an egg and putting it atop pretty much anything. We cannot think of what isn’t good with an egg on top. Can you?

Creating a hash out of Christmas dinner (ham or turkey, potato and some fresh herbs) or reheating latkes are two solid seasonal foundations for a fried egg. On January 2nd, we warm up some Hoppin’ John and sauteed greens then don an egg as the final flourish. Right?! But the genius of the fried egg topper is that you can absolutely improvise, just go all out for it, and it’s pretty much fail-safe.

Our bright idea for this year’s card, a bit less care-free.

1. We tested a sampling of existing cards to see if the ink would hold, and to determine coverage/legibility. Check, check/check. But we thought that silk screening the white base would be more successful.

2. Screens were burned for the egg white portion. Front and back of cards were silk screened, white.

3. Using a CNC router, we cut into a ¾″ MDF board to create the egg yolk shape. Then brought it up to “type high” to print on the press, yellow. (Check out some hot video action here! You might want to put your safety goggles on and ear plugs in…meaning: turn the volume down).

4. A polymer plate was burned for our holiday message: “put an egg on it”. We over-printed this on the white, on the back side, in black.

5. Hello corn starch! The cards took an exorbitant amount of time to dry due to unseasonable, but much needed rainfall… thus their late arrival. But isn’t that apropos? The cards arrived to their recipients AFTER the Christmas holiday.

Improvise. Imagine. Invent. Remnant. Remainder… what remains.

The drawer full of extra holiday cards. A refrigerator full off meals to be enjoyed again. It’s all grist for the mill.

Abundant holiday greetings for the copious holidays celebrated — Jennifer & David.

||||||  The Perfect Spanish Fried Egg (Huevos Fritos) ||||||  

1. Heat about 1/4 inch of olive oil in a very small, heavy skillet. Heat over medium-high heat until very hot; it should just be beginning to smoke.

2. Crack an egg into a cup or mug.

3. When the oil is hot enough, carefully slip the egg into the oil and immediately turn the heat down to medium-low.

4. Spoon the hot oil over the egg as it cooks.

5. Cook for no more than a minute and a half then take the pan off the heat and remove the egg with a slotted spoon.

6. Sprinkle with sea salt and fresh pepper and enjoy over ___________ immediately!

::  If you liked this post, your next move would be to explore here. And if you loved this post… fess up! What’s your favorite leftover meal?  ::  

Image: Diego Velázquez’s “Vieja Friendo Huevos” (Old Woman Frying Eggs), 1618  

But not today. Or this entire week.

Chelsea is in Atlanta attending Bri Emery and Max Wanger’s “Feet First + BlogShop”. This event is 2 workshops in one, where professional photographers like Chelsea are schooled on new ideas, philosophies and techniques for how to shoot, and how to use Photoshop to make those images extra ta-da! If THAT wasn’t enough, Bri holds the most fun, spirited workshops imaginable. Chelsea is here, and animated it looks a little more like this–or something really similar to it.

So I am jealous, wistful and missing her hard this Monday morning. Already.

Upon her return next week I can only image what a Design Love Fest the studio will be. We’ll be giddy drunk talking about thrifting and eating in Atlanta, design and image oomph-pah-pah, AND the all important show and tell, cause the schwag at Blogshop is killer. We’ll also begin to put to practice the infusion of Max and Bri, filtered through Chelsea, to Viewers Like You’s work. Next up? A handbag and accessory designer, a municipal sustainability office, a LA psychologist and NY public relations maven.

::  If you liked this post, your next move would be to explore here. And if you loved this post… let’s talk schwag!  ::  

Image: Angela Kohler, angelaandithyle.com