Angela and I are always flattered to have our work from Mint 102 featured on Style Me Pretty, but this time is just a little extra special to me. The Marshall/Dart wedding is featured on their Little Black Book Blog and Midatlantic Regional Blog blog today and we are so honored they found it worthy to share. Please check out the full blog post on SMP with all the details and more pictures of how our crazy, windy, awesome party in the OBX all came together. Also, feel free to visit our sister company, Mint102.com, to learn more about how Angela of Saffron Avenue and I joined creative forces to offer our custom wedding branding services. Lovely photos below taken by Brent and Amanda of the awesome Millie Holloman Photography.
Pumped to show you guys the new look for Salted Ink in 2 weeks. If you would like to be notified when we go live via email, we can make that happen. Just click here.
Calamia & Company Real Estate Group is the best of the best in domestic and international real estate in the Pheonix/Scottsdale, AZ area. They really wanted to build a unique and modern brand that would visually stand apart from their competitors and appeal to their higher end clientele. As part of the larger Berkshire Hathaway Home Services umbrella, they also had to be sure that their new palette would include the BHHS cabernet and cream colors, yet be able to stand on it’s own when needed. We started by combining a limited color palette of blacks, grays and kraft to the already set cabernet and creams to create a lovely starting point.
After we nailed down the color palette and overall feel with some angular patterns and tall clean sans serif fonts, we moved to the logo design portion of the process. The logo concepts for this phase are shown below:
We went back for a round of revisions to the initial presentation and the final logo incorporated everything that the Calamia & Co team wanted in their new look including a boarder, mix of sans serif and serif fonts, a slim inline font and a circular submark. A big thanks to Megan for choosing me to be a part of their team branding project and I hope you guys enjoy your new look!
So pumped to announce the launch of the new Salted Ink coming this Summer! One year ago this August, I took a huge leap of faith and left the comfort of my agency gig to hit the ground running full time with Salted Ink and Mint 102. It’s been a crazy year full of long days (and nights), branding madness, some seriously awesome clients, lots of learning – I couldn’t be more grateful for every single bit of it.
What better way to celebrate all this goodness than with a little makeover of my own? I can’t wait to show off my new full brand and site design on August 1st and I hope you guys come back to check it out. A special thank you to Dana Hawley Photography for the awesome photo above and more to be featured on the new site soon.
It’s been a busy week ’round here and I am so excited to launch this little beauty. I had the pleasure of working with Leslie, a senior photography guru and founder the popular Seniorologie, on her own personal photography brand styling and custom wordpress website design. When Leslie and I met, she already had an amazing “LK” mark designed for her by Ashley Jankowski of the so very talented Braizen design team, so she just needed a little brand styling and color palette decisions to go along with her already strong mark before we moved onto her custom wordpress website design. Leslie was amazing to work with and already had a pretty good idea of the direction she wanted to take her new home on the web. With a little collaboration, we came up with the design and my team of developers worked hard to make it super user friendly for Leslie on the backend…which is almost as awesome as the what you guys see on the front end of the site. Show Leslie some love and check out some of her amazing work at her new home, lesliekerriganphotography.com!
Just short of 13 years ago, I arrived in this lovely little beach town nervously awaiting the start of preseason as a new freshman on the University of North Carolina at Wilmington’s soccer team. Raised in Raleigh, I wasn’t too far from home but just far enough to feel like I was finally out on my own. Looking back, my 18 year old self couldn’t have possibly imagined how important this place would become to me, how many amazing friends I would meet, and all the awesome experiences that would mold me into the 31 year old I am today.
While I wish I could stay here forever, Scott’s medical school journey is taking us to Raleigh as he kicks off his 4th year and we await his Residency assignment in March of 2015. This move makes me even more grateful for my career and the fact that I get to take Salted Ink right along with us without skipping a beat. We are pumped for the move but we area already counting down the days until we can move back to our favorite little beach town. For now, you can find us heading up 1-40 West. Goodbye Wilmington…hello again, Raleigh.
Introducing the new Whiskey & White Events on this beautiful spring-like (finally) morning. Emily, owner and creative director, came to Salted Ink looking for an elegant new brand design for her event planning business and bridal boutique. With a swanky space in downtown Raleigh, she offers full service event planning along with the perfect spot for the bridal party to get ready before they make their grand entrance at one of the many surrounding wedding venues. I really enjoyed working with the limited/muted color palette and awesomely creative name of W&W. We are currently working on their beautiful new site as we speak and will be sharing it upon launch here in the next few weeks!
I am pumped to kick this week off with Hope Toliver’s new high fashion photography brand launch. Hope shoots gorgeous senior photo sessions out in Tulsa, Oklahoma and surrounding areas. To match her photography style, she was in search of a new brand that would compliment her high fashion edge and speak to the class of 2014 and beyond. Her logo translated beautifully onto t-shirts and watermarks and we are just getting started on her 2014 senior booklet coming out this spring. Check out a snapshot of our inspiration and output along with some beautiful photos provided by Hope below showcasing her lovely new watermark styles.
Say hello to the new Ashlyn Burke Events. Ashlyn is extremely talented event designer & coordinator and also happens to be a very thoughtful person and good friend of mine. We met back in November about her decision to take the leap and start her own company specializing in wedding and corporate events and I was super flattered when she asked me to design the look of her new business. She wanted a subtle coastal feel but balanced with a cool, colorful, modern edge. We worked together and created a hand drawn logo and complimentary submark that she can use on all her awesome branded swag. This is just the start of what is coming for AB Events and you can check out a snap shot of our process below. We are currently working on the website and can’t wait to show you her new home on the web in the next couple months.
As I navigate this lovely world of design, I have found a few things that seem to make my life easier and my clients happier. Hiring a designer and building a new brand is understandably a huge decision and a significant investment for any business owner. While us designers tend to think the design process is pretty straight forward { as we throw around our design lingo and talk about our turn times and such } it’s not always as easy for our clients to follow. Most of them do not live in our world and for some, the branding process is new territory. And even if this isn’t their first experience with a designer, all of us do things a little differently.
I strive to be as transparent and thorough as possible with my clients through my interviews, questionnaires, and proposals. And while I thought I ran a pretty tight ship with my branding process through email updates, phone calls, etc., I really wanted a detailed roadmap to give to them as we started our process together. I decided to design a one-sheeter pdf detailing my branding process to send to clients after their initial inquiry. I have found that keeping my clients informed of my process, explaining what each step entails, and showing them how we get to our final deliverable helps my clients feel at ease with their decision to hire me and leads to a smooth branding process. As my branding process grows and changes, as I’m sure it will, so to will my trusty little branding guide.
Designer side note: Not only does this make for a happier client, it also reigns in your focus. Establishing your own brand guide helps you zero-in on your own process, develop your own milestones, and most importantly forces you to stick to them yourself. We all know we could use a little more structure in our day to day lives and who better to establish that than you. And sure, not every client is the same nor every brand design, but this sets the stage for a beautiful end product.
The guide below is a screenshot of my process and the full pdf is available to view on my website. I hope this helps inform my lovely clients and inspire my fellow designers! { website design process pdf is in progress…stay tuned }
