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Professional Designosaur
I have been a designer for a very long time – 40 years or more. Today I realised what a dinosaur I am. Recently as I was working on a client project, I encountered a strange way of indicating bleed in an Illustrator template – a layer of 20mm rectangles on the edges and overlaps…
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Farmpark Koi Nobori
Today I participated in a children’s festival at the newly opened Soil to Soul Farmpark. The weather was perfect, there was a huge turnout and 23 people made koi nobori at my stall. I sold almost all the large fish and about half the small ones, which was opposite of what I guessed I’d do.…
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Package design
When I was a younger woman, I was fascinated by package design. I loved the way cardboard boxes could be fashioned in surprising ways to safeguard their contents. Tetrapacks were lovely little puzzles which I finally solved; see my Tetrapocket pattern from 2006. I seriously considered a degree in industrial and package design. In my…
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New “headshot”
I’ll be leading a couple of workshops at FEW Japan’s FEWture Conference on June 7th. It’s a one-day extravaganza for women executives in Japan and this year’s theme is diversity and inclusivity among women. Today they needed a bio from me and a headshot. The bio was easy; I love writing bios for myself and…
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Reworking my portfolio
Do you know when is the best time to rework your portfolio? When you are looking for new clients. And since I am, I’ve given my Work page a once-over. It had grown into a cluttered, overwhelming mess over time. Like all decluttering activities, it was challenging. Almost all of my jobs are interesting in…
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Audience over Product
Your audience is more important than your product or service – especially if you are an artist. As entrepreneurial creative person, it doesn’t matter what you are selling, making, or offering. If you are trying to make a business from creative endeavors, whether as a side hustle or a full time income, you absolutely have…
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Anchovy disambiguation
I don’t write a lot about my work here, which is mainly random design projects for small business clients. My most active client is Rainbow Tomatoes Garden, my family’s tinned fish business. I design fun things for them from package labels to infographics and beyond. My brother-in-law, Dan, has a million cool ideas and I…
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The old days of design
I started my design career in 1988 doing layout for a national wholesale food collective. Most of my work was preparing grocery fliers for the member companies. I also designed ads for food manufacturers, did graphics for events, and did page layout for magazines and programs. There were two of us in the desktop publishing…
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Gorgeous logotype
I felt nostalgic when I came across a stack of old Family Circle magazines at Soro Soro Bread Studio. Family Circle was a staple of my childhood reading, full of home economics articles and recipes. It’s been years since I’ve seen one, but it went on without me and finally stopped publishing in 2019 after…
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Repurposing illustrations
I have a few clients who come back to me regularly(ish) for illustration and design work. I was excited yesterday to get a mail from one of them, asking if I had time right away to do some work on a short deadline for a corporate video animation. When we were discussing the details of…
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