Merry Christmas

Couldn't let the year end without designing our annual Christmas card. This year we decided to go with custom illustrations since we didn't have a current family photo (rounding up 6 people is just as much work as it sounds ;)) Thankfully Billy lovingly painted each of our little faces to produce our 2013 card.

rough sketches

love all those little faces!

final files, front & back / printed onto watercolor paper

Thank you to all of the wonderful businesses, organizations, and individuals who supported our small, local business this past year. We are so grateful to serve you. We wish you all a very Merry Christmas and we look forward to what 2014 holds. 

hope point

Thought it would be fun to post a "before and after".

Hope Point is our home church and we recently had the honor of doing some design work for the church. During the process we decided to update the church's previous logo.

We wanted to keep the same color palette and concept behind the original design, but clean up and modernize the design.

Here's the final result. The top is the before and the bottom is the after.

If you are searching for a home church, we would love to invite you to try Hope Point.

the blue umbrella

How beautiful are these "rejected" poster designs for Pixar's short film The Blue Umbrella? We love how each of these designs tells part of the story from The Blue Umbrella, though the text is minimal. It's true that a picture (or an illustration) is worth a thousand words. Often time businesses want to clutter their collateral or their advertisements with as much information as they can, but more often than not that line of thinking does more harm than good. 

"Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end, because once you get there you can move mountains.” -Steve Jobs

* unsure of the poster design credits, but believe they go to graphic artist Cassandra Smolcic

let's go for a ride

So apparently we took an unexpected break from blogging because I just realized a couple of months have gone by without a post! Not to worry, we were just designing as usual and soaking up the last days of summer with our sweet children.

Nonetheless, it's time for a blog update and we're excited to share with you some recent work we created for a new film company named Let's Go For A Ride.

Let's Go For A Ride creates scenic road trip videos featuring some of the most beautiful spots in the United States.

We were commissioned to create an identity design for this company along with business cards and a DVD cover for their first film titled California Pacific Coast Highway. 

DVD design

logo design

business card design

Let's Go For A Ride wanted their branding to embrace the nostalgia of days gone by, where families enjoyed quality time together cruising along, all while enjoying the beautiful scenery.

Shelly, Chris, and Emily we had so much fun working alongside you on these projects. Thanks so much for thinking Different By Design for your business needs! We can't wait to see where your next adventure takes you!

urban sketching

property of Disney-Pixar / Up artists painting scenery

So several months back we were watching the special features for the Pixar film Up when Billy was inspired by one of our favorite artists, Ronnie Del Carmen, who had a mobile water coloring kit. Billy decided that he would like to have one, so after some quick googling to identify what Ronnie Del Carmen was using, we headed over to the only art supply store in our hometown, Michael's, to see what we could find.

While we could not find the exact same Winsor & Newton "field" kit, we did find something comparable and we ended up purchasing it (it didn't hurt that we also had one of thos Michael's 40% off coupons, either).

Since purchasing the compact water coloring set, we've been having lots of fun walking down as a family to our neighborhood park and enjoying some time outdoors.

A couple weeks ago Billy decided to paint our favorite home in the neighborhood...he plopped down in the park grass facing the home and began sketching...

We spent about an hour and a half playing at the park while Billy got everything inked in before we lost all our light and headed back home. The next day we returned for another hour or so while he began to add watercolor to it....

On the third and final day we came back and Billy completed the illustration. What was really neat was that when I had instagrammed a photo of Billy working on this, someone knew the woman who had grown up in this home (her father designed and built the home and still currently resides there) and it was actually someone that we distantly knew, and she was so sweet she actually reached out to us and offered to purchase the painting to gift to her father for Father's Day.

While Billy had initially planned on keeping this painting (we adore this home! The modern lines remind us vaguely of The Incredible's home), we were thrilled to see it go to the home owner himself.

Since picking up the compact watercoloring kit we've actually purchased a few more items to make painting on the go easier for Billy...I will have to share those fun purchases in a future blog post! 

All in all, it's been very relaxing to step away from the computer, or the iPhones, or the TV screen and go create some art in the great outdoors....even if this was just down the street from us. :) 

meg arnold photography

You may remember our friends Matt and Megan from Tandem Web Solutions? We actually did the logo design for Tandem and Matt has been our go to web guy for all our coding needs. 

Well, Matt recently accepted a wonderful job offer (still web coding) in the Bay Area and so off our friends the Arnold's went to start a new chapter in their lives. 

We are so excited that part of their new chapter includes Megan fulfilling a lifelong dream and taking her passion for photography to the professional level. 

And of course we were thrilled to create the logomark for her new business venture. Megan wanted a professional design that would be timeless and simple and so Billy go to work creating these custom letterforms for her new identity. 

We can't wait to watch her journey unfold out in the big city and you too can follow her right here. 

Congratulations to you both, Matt and Megan. Your success has been well earned and while we already miss knowing that you two are just down the street, we can't wait to visit you in your new hometown.

mother's day.

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there! We hope you all feel extra loved and appreciated today.

Watercolor cards I woke up to today from my husband for Mother's Day. 

SketchCrawl

Hi everyone! Yesterday, Saturday the 13th of April, was the 39th SketchCrawl and Billy participated for the first time! SketchCrawl is "a world wide drawing marathon event that gathers artists from all around the globe." It was started by Pixar storyboard artist Enrico Casarosa who also happened to directed the cute short La Luna.

We found out about this SketchCrawl through twitter the day before the event, so we already had previous commitments, however Billy did his best to sketch and watercolor wherever we were at. Feel free to follow the link to see a few pieces from the end result... and if anyone in Yuba City wants to get together for the 40th SketchCrawl in July, hit us up! The more the merrier!

Literacy Workshop Posters

Posters we designed for the Giving Voice to Children's Literature workshop sponsored by the Sutter County Children & Families Commission.

We had so much fun working on this project. We love a good challenge and with this poster we had a short deadline and we also needed a way to communicate a playful feel however we obviously did not have a license to use well known, copyrighted children's book characters...and we also didn't have a photo of the speaker, Francie Dillon to work with.

To solve this problem, we decided to just create our own little characters and we love the way the little boys (and overall design) turned out.

Once again we kept with the Sutter County Children & Families Commission color palette to reinforce their branding efforts...we kept the copy brief so the poster remains clutter free, making it easier for the reader to retain the information.

We watched some youtube videos of the speaker before we started working on this project and we just have to say that she looks like so much fun! The workshop is free and open to anyone who would like to attend.

There are countless benefits to reading to your children (expanding vocabulary, art appreciation, exercising the mind, increased concentration...etc.)...so if you have any children in your life (your own, nieces/nephews, kids you babysit...) do yourself (and them) a favor and attend this workshop!