I recently had the pleasure of designing a logo and an iPhone app icon for Friday Night Rivals, which is an app developed specifically for the Texas high school football community. As you may know, high school football is huge in Texas, so this app is a must have! You can follow your favorite teams, your favorite team's rivals, locations, upcoming schedules, live scores and more. Check it out the FNR web site or in the app store, it's free!

App Icon

Logo

These beautiful invitation sets were created for brides in Northern Maine (yet to be photographed) and Chicago, IL. The weddings of both of these brides are a bit more formal, as you can tell from the pearlescent paper stock and ribbon. It also has a more modern feel to it, with an off-centered gate fold and modern color schemes.

Click here to see/purchase these invitations from my Etsy shop!

 

I recently completed this wedding invitation set for a lovely bride from Wyoming. She's getting married at a lodge on top of a mountain, so the rustic feel of the invitations are just perfect for that mountain lodge/outdoors-y feel. Even more appropriately, we incorporated beautiful photos of them on the mountain! It's going to be a lovely wedding. I had such a wonderful time working with this bride to create these invitations, I wish her the very best on her big day!

Click here to see/purchase these invitations from my Etsy shop!

 

Today I was featured on FPO (For Print Only... online magazine featuring worthy print designs) for our wedding invitations! I'm sooo excited! This is such a huge accomplishment and it's some serious validation! 

You can read more about the thought process behind the overall concept in the feature, but overall I must say, this entire design package came together just as I envisioned it. Our wedding invitations were designed for us, based on our personalities, our wedding, the venue, our life, etc. So some of the comments on the post are understandable considering these weren't designed to please all people.

Design is subjective, and I'm aware that you can't please everyone. Initially I was a bit put off by a couple less positive comments from the public, so I went on this internal rant to defend my pieces and to remind myself that someone saw value in it to feature it in this online publication. And then I realized... that's not really what matters. Strange that it took actually getting featured to realize that. What matters is that it solved the design challenge it was set out to do... it was what the "client" wanted. It was that I got to use my creativity and skills freely, as my own client, and make this project what I (and we) wanted it to be. And like I said in my post, I wouldn't have changed a thing!

 I just read an outstanding article in USA Today (yes, the newspaper... not online...) and it was too good not to share. Yes, this web site is mostly related to design, but if you don't stay healthy, you won't be alive to read about design! 

My recap:

• Organic foods have no synthetic fertilizers, no synthetic pesticides or insecticides, no genetically engineered plants or animals... (Um... that means that conventional foods DO have those things. Who wants to eat fertilizer or genetically engineered animals?! Not I!)

• Organic foods have less pesticide residue than conventionally grown foods and it is well documented that children who eat a predominantly organic diet have lower levels of pesticide residue in their bodies. (Oh the innocent children! Don't feed them chemicals!)

• Buying organic can be expensive, so here are the top foods to buy organic, since they have the highest amount of pesticides: celery, peaches, strawberries, apples, blueberries, nectarines, bell peppers, spinach, kale, cherries, potatoes and imported grapes. Hormone and antibiotic free butter, milk, eggs and meat are good too. Although it can be pricey, the money you spend now to eat better will be far less than what you'll spend later in life with all the medicine and drug treatments you'll need b/c of the pesticides you ate. :)

• Organic farms are less damaging to the environment. And... just in general... when you buy organic... you subscribe to a different kind of environment ethic.

 So there you have it. Moral of the story. Take care of yourself. Don't feed yourself chemicals. :)

Peace, love and pesticide-free food,

Melissa :)