Mom
Categories: Personal Work
Remembering Michelle
Categories: Personal Work
Shelby’s Snack Shack Game Story
Shelby is EI’s office pooch who works in the Educational Insights office with her mom Lisa Guili. She came to EI from Chicago a few years ago and has been scampering around the halls and offices long enough to have needed to file a W-2! When a group of us are bickering about packaging or how many stars/swirls/animal faces to add to a product, Shelby catches us all and barks and the person causing the most ruckus. Shelby typically singles […]
Categories: Design, Packaging and Design Direction, Product Design Direction • Tags: educational, games, graphic design, Packaging, preschool, pug, toys
J. Crew on Shoes and Inspiration
J. Crew is seriously focused these days on enhancing their brand personality through storytelling. But it’s not the, “Let me tell you a story” sort of tale. This shoe design video conveys the potency of design coupled with the fanaticism held by shoe devotees. And it’s well told. Wasn’t McCann-Erickson the agency who emblazoned “Truth well told” on their reception wall? Speaking of, I remember nervously standing in their NYC lobby at the age of 18 with my leatherette portfolio […]
Categories: Designers + Artists of Note, Inspiration • Tags: branding, design, fashion, inspiration, j.crew, shoes
Fabric
I’m starting to use toile textiles as a base for my work. I had leftover remnants from a chair project and have wrapped three canvases with material. This larger gold one is today’s project.
Categories: Mixed Media, Personal Work • Tags: fabric, illustration, mixed media, textiles, toile
Vintage Saturday
Up the street from me lives a tiny vintage store called Magnolia and Willow. It’s on the corner of Magnolia and Willow. I walked over this afternoon to get my vintage fix and was tempted by suitcases, wooden boxes, globes, vintage books, and so much more than I can even remember. I picked up these four items with a future purpose: 1. Child’s folding chair (plant stand?) 2. Green Craftsman toolbox (for the top shelf in my office?) 3. Awesome […]
Categories: Inspiration • Tags: DIY, vintage
Messiness
Categories: Inspiration, Memories of Imagination and Play • Tags: illustration, mantra, typography
We all deserve “I do.”
I created this mixed media piece in 2008 when Andrew Downin and I were lucky enough to legally marry in California. This October marks 20 years together, including the 5 years we’ve been legally allowed to use the word husband. Stand up for this human right and spread the love. Don’t be silent.
Categories: Mixed Media, Personal Work • Tags: equality, gay rights, illustration, marriage, mixed media
Coral & Tusk
Stephanie Housley and her husband Chris Lacinak are the thread and needle behind the embroidery sweetness of Coral & Tusk. I read about them in Martha Stewart Living and then stumbled upon their beautiful handmade animals and fabric badges at ABC Carpet and Home in New York. Housley uses the art of embroidery like an artist uses a pencil or pen. She draws with the thread and the end result is charming. Check out her video and see her entire […]
Categories: Designers + Artists of Note, Inspiration • Tags: Embroidery, fiber arts, sewing
Art Basel Miami
Every year in December, Miami and South Beach are transformed into an arts hub where the wealthy, the neon-clad, and those who are truly art-obsessed converge to see and purchase art from galleries around the world. VIP parties, tents the size of multiple city blocks, and fashionable attendees make this trip part social-gawking, part trend-watching, and part art-coveting. What a week! After watching an episode of Gallery Girls on Bravo a few months before, I convinced Drew to check out […]
Categories: Designers + Artists of Note, Inspiration • Tags: artbasel, artbaselmiami, painting
Let’s Run Away
Let’s Run Away, 2012 Acrylic, photograph, wallpaper, coloring book page, paper, and marker on canvas 30″ x 30″ My current focus on castles makes its way into this piece, which I’ve just completed. The dominant images are that of a castle, painted roughly and crudely, along with a doll head photograph I took in my 20s. A spider crawls across the doll’s face (gross!). The protection of a fortress with fortified walls and turrets that tower into the clouds is […]
Categories: Mixed Media, Personal Work • Tags: art, collage, mixed media, painting
The Shops at Target
Have you ventured to Target for dog food or Tide lately? Go! The Shops at Target feature a boutique called The Curiosity Shop…I scored these unvisited little gift boxes for a project I’m developing. Aren’t they adorable?
Categories: Designers + Artists of Note, Inspiration • Tags: Packaging
Vintage Fisher-Price Advertisement
Remember the Fisher-Price garage? I had this toy in the late 1970s really loved it. Oddly, I was never into cars or construction vehicles as much as I was into pretend play. This toy was magic! The car elevator was cranked by the child and at each level of the garage, a little stop sign would pop up. At the very top level, a ramp would rise up at an incline and force the car and its passenger out of […]
Categories: Inspiration, Memories of Imagination and Play
Product Design Direction: See-Through Compost Container
Don’t we all occasionally wonder how our trash evolves once we’ve tossed it into the rubbish heap? Imagine seeing the future life of each banana peel, magazine, and apple core you pitched. The See-Through Compost Container was dreamed up by Nancy Balter and my task was to bring it to life. I worked with artist Matt Mance along with our factory’s sculptors to translate Nancy’s idea into physical form. The product is a sectioned plastic “box” with three compartments. Children […]
Categories: Design, Product Design Direction
Owees and Booboos Never Looked this Good!
Cover those nicks and cuts with art! Illustrator Austin Lotz created unbelievably adorable illustrations for some new Band-Aid packaging under their new artist series line of bandages. His acrylic illustrations grace a new trio of packages dubbed “Bully Proof” by the Band-Aid brand. I’m seeing lots of geek-chic and underdog-inspired characters and illustration lately, and these are so well-executed. Check out Austin’s work work here, as originally published by the gurus of packaging at The Dieline.
Categories: Design, Designers + Artists of Note
Another 5-star Review
I continue to be touched and inspired by the reviews readers write. My memoir, What Barbie Taught Me about Wearing a Plastic Smile, has received its latest five-star rating from a reader. You can purchase my work for 99¢ on Amazon’s Kindle here, and on any of Amazon’s desktop or mobile Kindle apps.
Categories: Personal Work, Press and Publicity
Type for Now: Inspiring Typography Blog
I’m just a little obsessed with typography, as are most designers. Tonight I fell onto the Type for Now typography blog, courtesy of my nighttime pastime, Pinterest. Check it out.
Categories: Design, Designers + Artists of Note, Inspiration, Typography
My Very Own Author Page on Amazon
Now on Amazon! My Master’s Thesis memoir, What Barbie Taught Me about Wearing a Plastic Smile, has gotten me thinking about the importance of play and imagination in the life of a child. When magical thinking ended in my childhood; when the stuffed animals stopped rearranging my room and cleaning up my clothes; when I put the Fisher-Price Little People away permanently, and grew out of the notion that toys could talk, I began to realize I was a prisoner […]
Categories: Memories of Imagination and Play, Personal Work, Press and Publicity
Stuffed Critters Made from a Child’s Drawings
Child’s Own Studio has created stuffed animals inspired by actual drawings by children. These are being pinned all over Pinterest and in blogs. What a great idea. From the Child’s Own Studio site: “ Child’s Own Studio started with a simple idea: to make a recognizable comfort toy for a 4 year-old boy based on his drawing. It was an idea that launched my home-based craft business. Since then, I’ve custom made a few hundred soft toys based on children’s drawings, each […]
Categories: Designers + Artists of Note, Inspiration
The Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Game is Climbing up the Amazon Ladder!
Today’s Amazon sales ranking for The Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Game is fantastic! Check out how high my favorite little squirrel has climbed. Monopoly, The Game of Life, and Scrabble are all trailing closely.
Categories: Design, Packaging and Design Direction, Press and Publicity, Product Design Direction
