Living Locurto - Free Printables, How To DIY Ideas, Crafts & Party Ideas.» Art & Graphic Design

Star Wars Wallpaper

Amy — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 13:03:06 +0000

Modern Star Wars wallpaper would make any home decor project fun! I was on Twitter and saw someone mention this so of course, I had to check it out. Anything Star Wars is a must in our house!

I was surprised to see that a former co-worker of mine from Fossil, Brian Flynn, designed this! Brian a talented designer, started a Japanese inspired toy store in San Francisco called Super 7 and is now a pretty famous guy in the design world! He was even featured on Apple. (Yes… the Mac Apple.)

From Super 7′s blog:

Originally created by Super7 founder Brian Flynn as unique decoration for his retail store on San Francisco’s historic Haight St, the wallpaper was noticed by Star Wars super-collector and author Steve Sansweet, who took note of the high-quality and striking presentation. Super7 then contacted Lucasfilm to turn the one-of-a-kind wall art into an officially licensed product.

I’m always amazed to find out where my talented design friends have ended up. There are so many of them doing such big and inspiring work. Makes me proud of them all. I miss the days when we were all in cubicles together, before the internet, iPhones and when drawing with markers was what everyone did.

Way to go Brian! Love your work. I’m sure it will be on my son’s wall very soon.

Check out Super 7 for more fun goodies!

Be sure to join Amy on Facebook for more fun!
Also, be sure to check out Printables by Amy! Find easy and affordable digital files to download and print at home or at your local quick print shop. Each product is custom designed by Amy, a professional graphic designer. Amy makes do-it-yourself projects a breeze!

Think About Your Brand

Amy — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:00:09 +0000

I was recently on a speaking panel about graphic design at Blissdom. We discussed blog design basics like, less is more… white space is good, avoid using more than two types of fonts, keep photos to 500-800 pixels wide (depending on your column width) and other things like keeping your number of posts at three max because it slows down load time of your site.

My specialty is branding and design. So I spoke about the difference between a logo and a brand. Here is a small snippet from my talk. I hope this helps you get noticed and grow your blog!

Brand vs. Logo

• A brand is the experience and impression you give your readers and customers. It expresses value and the value you provide. Your brand basically represents YOU!

• A logo is just one aspect of a brand. It is used to identify your blog or business. You want to make sure your’s stands out and different from any other logo in the same niche.

The subject of a logo could be almost anything… if you blog about food, you don’t have to have food images in your logo.

I have little owls that represent my family on my blog. Then a chicken in my company logo, I guess I really like birds! But most people recognize those as my brands. Plus, I get asked a lot about my Atomic Egg business name and chicken, so that’s a good thing! FYI- Atomic Egg’s tag line is “Creating Explosive Ideas” get it… the chicken makes eggs… the egg is an idea. Making sense?? hee. Basically I just wanted something fun for my business with a name that people would remember. Plus I liked chickens. It works for me!

I think with so many blogs popping up, you not only need great content, but a really great brand to stand out. Use your brand consistently over all areas of the internet like your Twitter background, avatars (you can put your logo under your photo), Facebook fan pages and any forum where you hang out. Use that brand in all printed materials as well. See these business cards for examples.

Don’t be afraid to ask a designer for help. Be prepared to spend over $300 if you choose this route. The amount of time and money you put into your brand will be worth it in the end. A good graphic designer will make suggestions you never thought would work. I’m using a comment from Kim and Kris from The DIY Dish about their brand.

“We have to tell you, that when we were first getting a logo designed, the graphic designers came back with a rough sketch of this one plus several others. Our immediate reaction to this was a very easy, “No way.” The thought of having our “faces” on there as part of the logo was just a little awkward for us. We almost went completely in a different direction. However, after some thorough talk on branding, we decided that this would definitely be the best way to go. We’re really glad we did now, but it definitely took some convincing in the beginning!”- Kim & Kris

5 Questions to Ask Yourself About Your Brand

1. How would a new reader describe your blog? Is that in line with how you see your brand?

• What are 3 areas you need to work on?

2. Does your branding stand out in your area of blogging?

• is it recognizable, memorable, original?

3. Do you have a consistent theme on all social media and marketing materials?

• Think about places you should make revisions.

4. Are you promoting/utilizing your brand in all applications?

• Discussing what you specialize in on Facebook or Twitter to establish yourself as an expert

• Watermark on photos

• Logo in Twitter Avatar

Did you notice all the people who added the Blissdom logo to their Avatars while it was going on? Good branding idea from the Blissdom founders!

5. How could you reinforce your brand beyond your blog?

• local mom’s groups
• conferences and meet-ups
• contributions to other web sites, guest posts
• newspaper, TV appearances
• social media sites and forums
• being involved with other blogs outside of your area of expertise
• speaking engagements

I usually need to write down my thoughts to make things happen. So here are these branding questions in a PDF file for you to print. It’s never too late for a re-brand!

Great Business Cards from Blissdom

Amy — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 14:21:47 +0000

I love creative print pieces so much, that I’m a bit of a business card collector. Well, I collect the really good ones and stash them away for design inspiration.

Today, I’m featuring some of my favorite cards I received at the Blissdom blog conference. If you are attending any type of event to promote yourself at a large event such as this, think about doing something different. These cards will give you some great ideas!

Of course my own were one of my faves!! I actually designed four circle cards, one for each of my blogs, one for my partner Angie’s photography business and one to thank our sponsors. I then spent hours tying them together with ribbon (it wasn’t too bad since I did it while watching Lost). My friends at Ussery Printing printed these for me. They have a nice digital press that is very affordable.

This card by The DIY Dish is so great! Kim and Kris are twins and after seeing this card and them together…. I definitely wanted to visit their web site. They seriously wowed me with their branding!

You don’t have to be a graphic designer to wow people. Tip Junkie made bookmarks from shrinky dinks! The label on the bag says “I hope you’ll “bookmark” www.tipjunkie.com and be inspired everyday.” • Mabel’s Labels attached their product to a post card with a photo of Caitlin “your Mabel’s BBF (blogger best friend). When you are at huge events, having a photo really helps you remember who was who. The larger format keeps you from loosing it and helps it stand out. Great idea!

And speaking of photos, I absolutely loved J.J.’s card! You can tell I had it in my pocket the night we met Harry Connick Jr. and danced. ha! This was such a cute and memorable card that I couldn’t throw it away. It fit her personality to a tee! The back had a questionnaire: We met at… We Talked About… Great job J.J.! I’m hoping to see this as her new blog header soon.

Next week I will fill you in on the workshop I spoke at during Blissdom. I’ve got some tips to help you with your own branding and design for your blog. Standing out from the crowd is a good thing!

Now that’s a nice font!

Amy — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:21:08 +0000

I don’t know where I’ve been… but I just discovered The League of Moveable Type and had to share it with you.

Caroline and Micah, the founders of The League, have a calling to raise the standards of the web-design world by contributing high quality free typefaces.

Here is what they state about the font usage:

“Everyone is welcome to browse, download, and use our collection of hand-picked typefaces. In the spirit of sharing, all fonts made available by The League are subject to SIL’s Open Font License. It means that you’re allowed to use these fonts personally or commercially, as long as you credit the original creator.”

Here are a few of their wonderful fonts. Now go use them!

I Heart Faces Book

Amy — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:30:23 +0000

Back in July, I ? Faces (my other web site) teamed up with Blurb to have a “Best Faces” photo contest. Angie and I went through hundreds of photos and chose over 60 to be in the book.

I’m the graphic designer, so naturally I was the person in charge of this project. Little did I know what a BIG job this book was going to be!! Needless to say, after hours of organizing photos, emailing people to get the correct type of files, designing and proofing… this bad boy is finally done!

We are so excited to announce our “Favorite Faces 2009” which displays the beautiful winning entries by over 60 remarkably talented photographers.

Seeing all of our reader’s photos together makes one amazing work of art! Anyone who enjoys fine art photography will love this book.

Thanks to each one of you who entered a photo and especially those of you who’s photos made the book!

We hope you’ll enjoy this as much as we do! What a wonderful Christmas gift this will make!

Now what are you waiting for? Go visit Blurb and read all about it!!

Blurb provides a software platform to design and self-publish retail quality soft or hard cover bound books. These books can be photo albums, wedding albums, business brochures, novels, non-profit fund-raising media, or what-ever imaginative idea that Blurb customers create.