Where's Liu?

I'm working with photographer Michael Clinard on a project for the magazine. While conversing about concepts for the project, Michael told me about the Chinese camouflage artist, Liu Bolin, and I haven't been able to stop looking at Bolin's work ever since. Both the installation art and the photographs are beautifully executed.

The Craft House

I recently decided to take up sewing. And it, in turn, has taken up our entire house. Must organize this mess of ribbons, bobbins, and fabrics...soon...

Lately, I've been craving to work on more handmade, tangible projects. While I love graphic design, sometimes it's nice to step away from the computer and actually use my hands. I think working on other types of art projects is a great way to help designers tap into other parts of their creative brains, and stimulate new ideas and ways of thinking and being creative.


Here's a Sounders dog collar I made for Elska, using this tutorial as my main reference. I found the nylon webbing, buckle, strap adjuster, and D-ring from a local fabric store. Using this tutorial from my new favorite sewing/craft blog, The Purl Bee, I also made these cute dinner napkins as a Christmas present for my mom, and added these simple ribbon flowers as an extra embellishment.

Playing Catch-up

In the past few months I've had the privilege of working on a handful of great stories, written by our talented editors at the magazine which have been a blast to design.



This "Tunnel Quiz", written by Matt Halverson, about the never-ending debate about what to do/how to pay for the Alaskan Way viaduct is hilarious. I mimicked the design after a Scantron test. It was a tricky puzzle to design, trying to get all the little pieces and parts to fit properly was quite a challenge. I love how the opener turned out, though hand placing all those little pencil marks was pretty tedious!


This spread comes from an article about local photographer, Chase Jarvis' new book "Seattle 100: Portrait of a City". The book is the culmination of a 3-year long person project that features a vast collection of portraits of prominent artists, writers, architects, musicians, chefs, athletes, designers etc. from Seattle. It's always a pleasure designing something that starts with such beautiful photography. I wanted to keep the design simple and clean to let the photographs speak for themselves. Having full spreads was also a fun luxury to design.


It was so much fun working on this holiday tabletop design feature with the talented ladies from The Adventure School, and Annette Lefebvre of Luxe: Productions & Wedding Design. The designers created 2 beautiful, and dramatically different tabletop designs that were photographed for the magazine by Ryan McVay. I worked with our photography intern, Anne Dixon, to create this special behind the scenes video. It had been a while since I've worked with video, but overall I'm pleased with the final piece. Coincidentally, The Adventure School is the mastermind behind the design of my husband's office holiday party for PopCap Games. I'm dying to see what they've created for this event.
And finally, last month I wrapped up a fun feature called "Extreme Pampering: Adventures in Spa Treatments" -- another hilarious article written by Laura Dannen and Christopher Werner . The editors tried some of the most ridiculous sounding "spa treatments" I've ever heard of. -- everything from cupping therapy to sound massage to chocolate body wrap. I commissioned Mark Matcho, to create the illustrations for this piece, while Paul Kooiman photographed the drop caps and opening X dripping with...you guessed it...honey!

The First Post

I’ll admit, I never used to read blogs. In fact, I’m pretty sure up until a few years ago, I barely knew they existed, nor understood their point or purpose. Then I got engaged, and was exposed to the world wide web of wedding blogs. After that, I was hooked. Completely hooked. I could spend hours looking at the beautiful handmade letterpress invites, the stunning photography, the cute little DIY this and that’s. Every time I discovered a new blog, I devoured it’s seemingly endless archives, disappointed when I was finally caught up.

I get it now. Blogs are fun. And sometimes, even informative and inspirational. Design has always been something I like “sharing”. I enjoy design because I love sharing stories, ideas, people, and products with individuals — to take abstract concepts and information and make them visually accessible to viewers. I’m a designer because I like visually communicating ideas.

I intend for this blog to be a source of design inspiration to myself and others — a collection of things I’m working on, things I find inspiring, and things that I look at on a daily basis. A visual journal if you will. I’m sure there will be a few sidetracked ramblings here and there, and maybe even some personal juicy gossip, so please bare with me, and enjoy my musings.