denizen and baby bibs

This is new illustration for the online magazine, Denizen, which is about third culture kids who grow up in more than one place. The article is titled "The Enigma of Arrival" and was written by Brittani Sonnenberg. It talks about what arriving feels like, or doesn't feel like, when the place used to be your home and now is not. I love illutrating for Denizen because the articles are all always personal and share interesting views on life and what it means to be a "citizen of the world". I do not want to be too literal in my images, but I aim to give the viewer something which accompanies the text in a meaningful way. The thing that caught my attention in the article was this: 

"As aTCK, it’s hard to put two feet down in one place, to offer up that commitment."

 I knew that it was the perfect imagery to use, so I drew a woman with her feet in two very different places, looking a bit unsure of her balance and what to do with her flag which will declare her location.

In other news...

These are my newest project! Organic cotton baby bibs, for the little ones in your life. I found this adorable organic cotton fabric and couldn't resist making these. They are currently for sale in my Esty shop, so be sure to check it out! I am also attending the Silverlake Art/Craft/Vintage Fair on April 14th, so if you live in Los Angeles, head down there you'll be glad you did!

moss brook growers

Last year I was privileged enough to have worked at Unicorn Grocery Workers' Cooperative in Manchester, UK. While I was there two members of the co-op were starting Moss Brook Growers, a farming cooperative which grows organic produce to sell locally. They needed a logo and that's where I came in! Actually, I had helped them out even before that, working on the land. I volunteered a few times, weeding, planting and harvesting! When they asked me to do the logo I was glad to have first hand experience with the business and that I knew what they were about. 

They wanted a bold and simple design, with bright colors. I decided to stick with botanical imagery, something leafy. We came to this basic design quite quickly, but the colors went through several changes. My style tends to have muted colors, warmer tones of greens and blues. Their desire to brighten the color palette pushed me a bit out of my comfort zone, but I love the end result and it's just right for them.

After I moved to Los Angeles in September of last year, they asked me to create a font based on the typography in the logo. I hand drew the logo and so creating an alphabet meant hand drawing every letter, including capitals and numbers and punctuation! I had done that before for Cafe Verde, in 2008, but Moss Brook also wanted me to program it into a usable font, which I had no idea how to do!

It was a fun and challenging project which taught me a lot about how fonts work. 

The Moss Brook Growers website is up and running, so you can find out more about this cool cooperative and see my font in action!

a better city

I've just finished up an illustration job with the Boston based non-profit, A Better City. Their mission statement is this: "Improving the economic competitiveness and quality of life of the Boston region by advancing significant transportation, land development and environmental policies, projects and initiatives." I'm excited to be a part of this project as it's doing wonderful things for Boston, a city I am particularly fond of (being from there and all). I lived right across the Charles River, in Cambridge, while doing my BFA at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. It is where I began bicycling, which I did everyday in Boston, then in England where we lived for three years, and now in Los Angeles!

I was commissioned to design five certificates which will be awarded to businesses who reach sustainability goals in the areas of energy, transportation, water, waste and people. My job was to illustrate these goals, giving them each a message which is easily read and interesting to look at. I decided to use the shape of the image, playing with borders and making them relevant to the concept. 

While sketching them out I found that drawing a horizon and some sort of landscape was a great way to express the ideas of progress and moving forward into the future. I wanted them to look clean and simple, with enough detail to make them interesting. 

This was a fun project to work and on top of that I feel strongly about the issues of environmental sustainability. I want to be a part of the change and use my art to do it. In my life and work I make a effort to always pick the responsible path, my husband and I do not own a car (yes, even though we live in LA!), we are committed to composting and recycling, and in my art I use recycled or organic materials. There is so much we can all do, and the fact that I am able to use my art and illustration for this purpose is very cool indeed. 

Please check out A Better City's website! http://www.abettercity.org/