Origami

Sarah and I were fortunate enough to both host Japanese exchange students and visit Japan as exchange students when we were 12-13 years old. Mixed in with learning a bit of Japanese, drinking lots of barley tea, and visiting the Great Buddha of Kamakura was a lot of folding. We folded small square sheets of beautifully designed paper into all sorts of animals (lots of cranes), paper balloons and more. Usually mine ended up looking like deranged, mangled cranes with worn out seams from multiple messed up fold lines. I certainly learned to appreciate the complexity of the art of origami.

Much to my surprise, I was taken back to 1987 when opening my CoDesign morning email last week. Low and behold there's a new typeface, and it's free no less, called Typogami. Inspired by origami, the letters look like they're made from folded paper. Pretty unique if you ask me. Not sure how many projects will be coming in where an origami typeface is a good fit, but it's nice to know it's there if you need it.

Anyway, I'm off to download the new font now, you can download it too if you'd like, the link is in this article: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669461/typogami-an-animated-typeface-inspired-by-origami

Perhaps I'll even dig up some of the old origami paper and try my hand at crane making again.

Baby carrier update

baby carrier fabric design

So we didn't win the baby carrier fabric contest sponsored by spoonflower, but the carrier company, Boba (from our local Boulder), contacted us and purchased rights to the design anyway! So stay tuned for the release of our carrier. Here's the fabric design again, in case you missed it.

ping-ing

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/chris-dannen/techwatch/most-people-use-web-talk-people-nearby-study-says

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/chris-dannen/techwatch/most-people-use-web-talk-people-nearby-study-says

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The Marketing Toolbox - Facebook Insights

Traditional advertising is still a valuable component of any good marketing campaign, but it can be a bit clunky compared to the power of new online marketing tools which provide real time analytics with details on client interaction, demographics and more.

Take Facebook Insights, for example. This incredible tool gives page administrators an in depth understanding of how their audience is engaging with their Facebook page. Some of the features include:
• Interactions Over Time - graph of total Wall Posts, Likes, and Comments by week
• Overall Post Quality Rating – how engaging your posts are to your Fans
• Fans Over Time – graph of total Fans, demographics, top countries, top cities, top languages, trends in user acquisition and subscription

You’ll never get that kind of data from a print ad. But data doesn’t mean anything unless you can apply it.

With tools like this we are able to see a vivid picture of our clients/customers. We can then take the information and customize marketing campaigns for specific audiences, allowing us to truly maximize our marketing dollars.

Let’s talk about Facebook and how to increase our Fan base and their interaction with our page.

The key in all social media is to post relevant, engaging, high quality content. In a recent survey of US Marketing Executives the top benefit of using Social Media is Customer Engagement. See graph below.





All Facebook updates posted to your page immediately show up in your Fans’ News Feed. The key is simply to post relevant, engaging content that will appeal to or inspire your customers and clients. Post this information frequently so your messages are consistently in front of Fans. Post a topic that encourages Fans to reply or contact you for more information. Post information that is valuable and will make your site a resource, encouraging recurring traffic. A combination of the above tactics will make your message more viral – encouraging Fans to spread your message to others or invite other friends to become Fans. When that happens, it drives more traffic to your page and ultimately increases business.

Thinking about your interactive strategy? Engaging in a social media campaign has many benefits, including brand reinforcement, low cost, direct client communications, detailed metrics and more. Facebook is an integral part social media campaigns for many companies, from mom & pop shops to Fortune 500 companies.

Do you have an established Facebook page for your business? Would you like one, but just don’t know where to start? Or perhaps you’re wondering if Facebook would be the right fit for your marketing campaign. gaiacreative can help. We can assist you in managing your current social media campaign, we’re happy to consult with you on what type of social media will work best for you and launch your social media presence!

gaiacreative, llc. is expanding!

gaiacreative, llc. now offers marketing, advertising, media buying, corporate identity, market research, public relations and interactive services in addition to the award winning graphic design you’re familiar with.

Here’s the scoop. gaiacreative is now two sisters – Sarah Douglas and Jessica Henley – who together are a creative powerhouse adept at developing targeted marketing strategies and attention-getting creative. Sarah has spent the last 10 years as a graphic designer, and founded gaiacreative, llc in 2005. Jessica’s joining gaiacreative after 13 years of ad agency experience.

Ultimately, gaiacreative, llc. is here to help you grow your business and garner results through intelligent marketing plans and inspiring creative carried out through a wide variety of media.

We’d love to work with you - please contact us with any questions, we’re happy to help.

gaiacreative is honored with an American Graphic Design Award!

gaiacreative's invitation and program book design won a national graphic design award last year! Hooray! The job was for the Durango Discovery Museum's annual gala event, and featured a die-cut lightbulb invitation, translucent envelope with wraparound label, reply card and envelope, and diecut program book. See below.



The invitation, envelope, mailing label, and reply card.





The event program book.





A basic visual of how the invitation package went together for mailing.



Here's the info on the contest, straight from their site:
2008 AMERICAN GRAPHIC DESIGN AWARD WINNERS
This year, roughly 1,000 pieces were presented in our annual from among more than 10,000 entries, the fifth straight stunning year in which this milestone level of entries has been exceeded. Slowly but surely, over four decades, our Annual has become a meeting place for the best and the brightest.

Media diversity abounds: print and collateral, package design and in-store graphics, advertising and sales promotion, invitations and announcements, direct mail and catalogs, magazines and books, broadcast and film and — surprise, surprise — more internet and interactive pieces than ever. Diverse, too, are the organizations and clients: Fortune 500 companies and entrepreneurial start-ups, consumer and business-to-business ventures, political and religious organizations, governments and trade associations, universities and cultural institutions.

Moreover, the winning pieces come from many of the established creative minds and organizations of our time, and even more who are striving to excel, to gain recognition and to find a deserved place in the sun. This is a particularly satisfying mix, since GDUSA is tempermentally welcoming and accessible to a broad range of work and voices in an often insular industry.

five elements bags

Check out this bag! It's one in a series of five that I designed for emagineGreen. They're part of the 'It's Elemental' collection, and these bags in particular were inspired by the five elements: earth, air, space, water and fire. It's really fun to be branching out into product and pattern design. The best part? The five bags roll up into teeny things that fit nicely in a purse or glovebox, so you always have your reusable bag at the ready. All five fit in a little pouch.

So where can you get these stunning bags? From emagineGreen! Visit my sister's site to shop away, and take care of your holiday gift giving in one step. Plus, then you can say you know the cool person who designed the bags...


Here's the whole set of bags:



Update: go and check out simplemom's awesome reuseable bag giveaway! Wow - I really love those oilcloth bags by ShopWise - very cool.

Personalized Cards for Kids

Just in time for the holidays, gaiacreative is offering personalized cards for your little artist.

5x7 flat (not folding) cards and envelopes
Four styles - for girls and boys (birds, balloons, flowers, or whale). Please specify style when ordering.
Personalized with your child’s name
Recycled-content cards with recycled colorful envelope
Designed and printed in Colorado

All orders must be received by Monday, December 1. Cards will be shipped on Friday, December 12.

Available now on etsy as a set of 12 for $14, or contact me directly by leaving a comment to this post about larger quantities (ie set of 24 cards for $25, or set of 36 cards for $33.) Also, if you contact me directly, you have the option of adding your child's name and address to the back of the envelope - an additional $3 per set of 12.




whale


flowers


balloons


birds


envelope colors: grapesicle (top) for birds; orange fizz (below) for all others


grapesicle envelope (with bird design) showing optional name and address printed on back flap.

Shipping is $3 per set of cards; for multiple cards ordered for one shipping address, I will adjust shipping accordingly.

emagineGreen in Fast Company!

OK ... a little more about emagineGreen ...

emagineGreen is in the November issue of Fast Company, a popular business magazine! You can read that article here.

I've been working with emagineGreen for the last year as their designer. Here's a brief description of emagineGreen, directly from the website:
emagineGreen is a direct sales company dedicated to turning curiosity about what is happening in our environment into positive action. Our purpose is to simplify the ‘going green’ process for millions of people who want a healthier home and environment.

Our greenCoaches (my sis being one of them) offer in-home ecoParties where they share environmental education and ecoFriendly products to help people 'green' their lives. The greenCoach opportunity is open to anyone, and it's a great time to get in at the ground level ... Let me know if you want more info.

Oh, and our founder, Tonya, was just awarded 'the greenest of the green' by Arizona Republic. Check out this article to read a little more about the background of eG.

Time off

I'm logging off for a while (as if you hadn't already noticed!). There are so many other fun blogs to peruse - I know you won't miss me! Happy fall.

wallpaper + design

The September issue of Sunset magazine features an article by a friend of mine, Christiana Coop, who operates Ferm Living (a hip wallpaper company in San Fran). Check it out. The coolest of the cool are featured in Sunset, so congrats, Christiana! Plus, the wallpaper designs offered by Ferm are really hip.

a day in the life of me

on lobotoME's blog today. Find it here. And if you skim the post (it's a long one), be sure to read the gratitude quote at the bottom. It's good. Happy Wednesday!

five good minutes

In my post last week about six elements to health, I mention stress as a major player to manage. (Nothing new.) I mentioned just taking five minutes - just starting with that - to set aside on the cushion; a mini meditation, if you will.

This weekend I was reading an article in this month's Delicious Living about Five Minutes. According to the doctor and author of this book, a mere five minutes can actually be really valuable. Here are some specific 5-minute meditations to try. Think I'll intersperse these throughout my workdays this week.

amazingly generous giveaways

a couple of shameless plugs for two of my fave blogs...



Head on over to simplemom! Go here to see all of the goods you could win! The gifts are all in-line with simplemom's thoughts on a simple life: green and frugal living, productivity and organization, taking care of yourself, etc.

Simplemom has a lot of good little tidbits for us time-starved, overstretched mamas. I really liked her last series 'how to be disorganized and uproductive at home.' My favorite on that list was not taking care of yourself, which, as I know, will get you every time.




And it's not too late to take part in Jenny's 'Get your yoga on' giveaway at lobotoME's brain fog blog! Jenny had one of those cool scenic yoga mats on our girlZ trip to Moab last weekend. Om shanti. Have a great weekend!

six elements to health

I was reading elephant magazine last night, a publication about 'the mindful life' out of Boulder, and read this:

There are six elements to health. In order of importance:

1. Thoughts
2. Breath
3. Hydration
4. Nutrition
5. Exercise
6. Sleep

The article is geared towards fitness, and most people are surprised to see that exercise is number 5 on that list. The author mentions that 90 percent of fitness is due to what you eat.

Last night I went to a vaccine talk by Dr. Roy Steinbock, a board-certified physician (pediatrician) in Boulder who takes a more holistic approach. I'll do a separate post with his suggestions regarding vaccinations, but what I want to mention about him here are (what I took away as) the top three things he stresses as vital for health:

1. Reduce stress
2. Proper nutrition
3. Find the middle path in all things (he has a Buddhist approach, with jives with me)

'Thoughts' (stress) and nutrition are high on his list too. Makes sense to me.

The woman who wrote the article in elephant, Ruth Hiller, suggests exploring your metabolic type to line up your nutrition correctly. She uses this book.

I did the short survey here and discovered I'm a 'mixed type.' To get more info, I need the guy's book, but overall, the results are pretty much what I already do ... a little of everything! (My only catch is I need to cut out some sugar...)



Read Ruth's entire article here.

So what am I taking away from all of this? For me, the most important things I can focus on (which do need improving in my life right now) are stress and nutrition. But for me, getting enough exercise allows me to feel invigorated and productive, which in turn affects how I eat and how I deal with stress. So I'd put that one up there really high too. This is nothing new! My plan:
1. Stress.
-Take stretch breaks at my desk and make them also breathing breaks. (Deep, full belly breathing).
-Attend sangha (Vipassana meditation group) 2x/month (more, if feasible!)
-Get back on the cushion. Start small. Five minutes a day. Don't I have five minutes somewhere?

2. Exercise
-commit every Sunday to writing out my exercise plans for the coming week. Schedule them. This is such a no brainer but I somehow still slack off on it. It's Friday, and I haven't worked out per se all week. And I'm feeling it. Argh. (But Ross and I are going for a bike ride in about 5 minutes!)

3. Nutrition
-again, a no brainer. Meal planning. Sundays. Need to get my tail into gear on this one. So far, I know that I want to plan on making two grain/bean salads per week - for dinners, then leftovers for lunch (ideal lunch food).

OK - all for now. Off on the bike!

101 things to do with zucchini

Ok, so that title is a little misleading - this post really isn't about that. But I did happen upon an amazing blog (does everyone already know about this one?) called 101 Cookbooks - exploring recipes one cookbook at a time. Mostly vegetarian. My quick perusal of it last night had me really excited about this new discovery. I googled the words 'healthy zucchini bread' to find a new recipe, and about 15th down on the list was this one, which I'm going to try out. (Will report back on the results.)

It must have been fate that I discover 101 Cookbooks yesterday evening, because immediately after I did that little search, I checked my email, and a fellow mom friend, Corrie, had email me the recipe for some chocolate zucchini cupcakes (which our tots had consumed eagerly the weekend prior; see chocolate-smeared faces, below). The cupcake recipe Corrie emailed me, as is turns out, is also from 101 Cookbooks.



I see myself spending a lot of time gleaning recipes from this site. We've been grilling a lot of tofu this summer (it's really quite good that way), and she has mentioned here 'Lemon Achiote Grilled Tofu.' I don't know what achiote is, but it sure sounds good, and I'm going to read all about it. She also has a wheat pizza dough recipe on there that she recommends for grilled pizza - another one to try ...

bagless

Last night Mirelle and I went to our local Vitamin Cottage (a small natural grocery chain based in Colorado). We hadn't been in a while, and in the time we've been away, the store's gone completely bagless. How cool is that? And they're the only Vitamin Cottage store in Colorado that is doing so. Can I just say how great it was to be shopping and notice that every other shopper had reuseable bags with them. (If a customer shows up without a bag, they can purchase a cloth bag for $1, or use a cardboard box, of which the store has plenty.) Hopefully it will be a trend that will spread, motivated by the city of San Francisco.

Since I've been working with emagineGreen, I've felt inspired to explore what else I can do to continue along my ecoJourney (an emagineGreen keyword!). I've always been what I would call 'green' (back in the day, I spent many hours at my high school shuffling fermented recycle bins around). But, like with yoga, there's always more to learn, and a path to continue on.

My plan right now is to figured out a way to use less plastic - namely: produce bags, yogurt containers, mixed greens/salad containers and anything else that can't be recycled. The action I'm taking so far is this: I have some great little mesh produce bags that I'm using, and I reuse all of my bread bags for other things, until they're pretty worn out. Vitamin Cottage will recycle used bulk bags (they package all of their bulk items for you) if you take them back in. I wonder where I could take the plastic bread bags? My solution thus far to the yogurt container dilemma is to buy kefir (basically drinkable yogurt) that comes in reyclable bottles. But ideally I'd like to get back to making my own yogurt. And the salad? Just buying leaf lettuce, not mixed greens packaged in plastic. I realized that a lot of these things take a little more time. With convenience comes packaging. Often not recyclable.



If you haven't checked it out yet, Gorgeously Green is a good book. I have so many library books on my bedside table at the moment that I haven't gotten to it yet - just perused it briefly. This is a fun read to inspire more progress on your path to green (or more green)!

nalgene with a purpose

Repurpose your old nalgene (you know, the one you shouldn't be using anymore because of BPA leaching). How's that for a brilliant idea - a solar powered cap that fits nicely on the nalgene's top. I think the nalgene co. should start selling these at an über-discount, just to make up for all of the BPA they've put into the world.

two fantabulous summer recipes

Whew! Summer is getting hectic around these parts. Suddenly my work load is well, laden with stuff. All of which I'm very very grateful for, but yikes! I think I need another one of me.

I was very good and {mostly} didn't look at blogs last week. Well, maybe just a couple of peeks here and there. But it was helpful to take the week off from posting. I've created a new timesheet to log my client hours as I work, with columns for each client, and one called 'personal.' It'll be my own way of logging all of my hours spent at my desk, scoping out blogs not excluded. I think it'll be quite telling for me.

Summer's humming along at its typical blink-of-an-eye speed. We had some friends over for dinner last night, and thought I'd share some recipes for two things very summer. The zucchini is starting to come in at a mind-boggling pace, so this soup took care of last week's bounty.

chipotle honey butter (for corn)
from sunset magazine, july 2007
combine 2 canned chipotle chiles in adobo sauce (chopped up), 1/2 cup melted butter, 1/3 cup mild-flavored honey, such as clover, 1 garlic clove, minced, and 1/2 tsp salt. (You could blend it all up in the blender, but I just mixed it by hand.) Sooo good, especially on the Colorado Olathe sweet corn that's appearing (and quickly disappearing at the markets!)

cream of zucchini soup with fresh basil - serve chilled this time of year!
from munson farms (near us, in Boulder County). Visit them by going here.
Melt 2 Tbs butter in a 4 qt saucepan over Med heat. Add 1/2 cup chopped green onions (including the green tops). Cook 5 mins 'til softened, stirring occasionally. Add 2 lbs chopped zucchini - about 5 medium (I used some yellow squash too, and it added nice flecks of color). Cook about 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add 3 cups chicken or veg broth, bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat, and simmer uncovered, 20 mins. Add 1/2 cup packed fresh basil leaves. Allow to cool slightly.

Puree the soup in a blender, then stir in 1 1/2 cups half and half, salt and pepper. Serve chilled with a garnish of sour cream or plain yogurt and a basil leaf.

Ciao!