Tinkering with branding...

I've been tinkering with some ideas for branding and fonts to update my Lucy King Design label.  I'm really keen to develop some of my own products featuring my illustrations and designs - and if I can ever get something off the ground with this I'll need some kind of branding.

The current Lucy King Design image is fine for freelance work - but for product branding it is a bit plain and impersonal don't you think?.....

I've got no idea if I will ever be able to develop my own product range, it's been something I've wanted to do for a while but I can't ever seem to get passed the idea stage.  I have lots if ideas, but find the whole notion of dealing with manufacturers and having to sell my own products quite daunting!

 

I started off by quickly sketching a few ideas on paper and then progressed to Illustrator.  I looked at different typefaces and whether to go for something hand-written or graphic.  I liked the idea of incorporating the crown as a logo as this relates to my surname and also links in with the Me Old China image.... but not really sure if this is working. 

I looked at some of the branding that I find appealing - and I'm very much drawn to logotypes.  (A logotype is a brand name without the addition of a logo or symbol, so the treatment of the font or colour becomes the actual branding). 

I like branding styles that are classic and sophisticated, but that are also simple and not too formal.  I'd really like to try and achieve a look that is smart - but also has some personality and isn't too formal.  It's been very hard to find a good balance of all of these elements and create a look that I think suits me and my work. 

So this is what I've got so far..... I've narrowed it down to 3 main fonts that I like, and have started to explore subtle differences with the introduction of italics, upper and lower case, and incorporating grey as well as black. 

What do you think?.... I'd be keen to get peoples feedback on any likes / dislikes to the above.  I'm not a graphic designer so it's not my area of expertise - feel free to be honest as I have no-one to share my ideas with here and I'm struggling to get any perspective on the designs.

Whilst I was expoloring different typefaces I found a few great font websites which I thought I'd share... The first is Logo Design Love which has some great logo examples and design resources, Fontscape which is a font directory with typefaces handily categorised and also ables you compre many different typefaces on the same page (very handy!) and lastly My Fonts which allows you to type in a word and then see it across all the different font types.  They also have great categories to search such as retro, modern, 1930's, antique etc.  It's fun!

Daylesford day-trip

I had a day-trip to lovely Daylesford on Sunday and finally visited the fabulous Mill Markets which has been on my must-visit list for a while!  The Mill Market is full of vintage and retro second-hand treasures covering everything from furniture, crockery, clothing and books.  It's a great place to spend a few hours rummaging and I can highly recommend a visit! 

 

I also discovered another great second-hand and antiques place called 'Daylesford Temple Antiques'.  I picked up a few bits and pieces from here - including a $10 box of china plates!  I was pretty pleased with myself as there was a great selection of plates inside....

I loved the old backstamps on the plates too.  The backstamps really form part of the appeal of the old plates for me - I love how they were so decorative and represent the year of manufacture.  You sadly don't get this level of detail or decoration on new plates which is a real shame I think.   

 

Lastly I visited the gorgeous shop Lark.  Such a cute little shop and full of beautiful patterned vintage-esque inspired products.  I couldn't resist the vintage plates wrapping paper (see above) but sadly they'd sold the last roll of the vintage coffee pot wrapping paper.  Ho-hum - I'll just have to go back another time to buy it!  Lark has a very cute blog here. 

If you're planning a trip to Daylesford there is a list of second-hand and antiques shops here.  Daylesford also has a regular makers market on Saturdays.

Wallpaper

I thought I'd share another great reference book I got for my birthday a few weeks ago.  I love getting reference books as presents - and my partner Mr B always chooses me great ones!  The book I got this year was Wallpaper: The Ultimate Guide, by Charlotte Abrahams.

It's a great book covering the history of wallpaper, profiles on key wallpaper designers and manufacturers (both historical and current) and loads of reference imagery. 

Wallpaper has always been popular in the UK, but I noticed when I moved to Australia it wasn't something people really had in their homes.  It does seem to be getting more popular however, especially with the development of more contemporary designs, textured papers, and wallpaper being used as features - rather than papering whole walls.

 

The book shows some great examples of how you can use wallpaper in different ways - and some people have been really bold with their choices of patterns and colours.  I particularly love the bold retro patterns seen above, and how single strips of different wallpapers have been placed side by side to create a striped-effect feature wall in the childrens room.

I love the use of the architectural-style green geometric paper in the hallway above, and great use of wallpaper placed inside the cupboard - very cute!

Wallpaper: The Ultimate Guide can be bought on-line through Amazon but if you're in Melbourne I'd recommend getting it through the excellent Metropolis Bookshop in the city.

Ink & Spindle - open studio

I had the pleasure of visiting local print studio Ink & Spindle at the weekend, run by the very talented duo Lara Cameron and Tegan Rose.  I went as part of the Creative Women's Group which brings together women working in creative industries and establishing small businesses to share information - and best of all be inspired and learn from other women setting up or running businesses within the creative field.

Working from home and trying to develop a small business can be isolating and a little lonely at times, so it's great to have the opportunity to get together with other creative peeps and learn how they have set up a design business.

After the talk Lara and Tegan had an open studio session where they gave a yardage screen printing demonstration - you can find details of open studio dates on their blog!

Exposed screens ready for printing, and above the fabulous Young Husband building
Ink & Spindle set up their boutique screen printing studio in 2008, with the aim of specialising in high quality and environmentally-friendly textile printing for designers and independent labels. They work from the fabulous Young Husband Wool building in Kensington, hand screen-printing their designs and creating ethical as well as a sustainable range of textiles.

Lara and Tegan hand printing on their 10m print table - but hand screen printing also means hand cleaning screens!

Some of the cushions and fabrics designed and hand printed at Ink & Spindle.
Images courtesy of the Ink & Spindle website

It was a great experience seeing Lara and Tegan hand print their designs in their fabulous studio (very jealous of their studio environment!!) and to hear about how they set up Ink & Spindle, including their great environmental commitment which is very inspiring.

I can highly recommend visiting one of their open studio sessions - dates and details on the Ink & Spindle blog and also check out the Creative Womens Group blog for future meetings.

The Willow story

It was my birthday last week and one of the gifts I received was this gorgeous little book called The Willow Pattern Story (by Allan Drummond).  I love the Willow pattern, and as a child I grew up eating from Willow patterned plates.  This book outlines the story behind the Willow design, and is full of really cute hand-painted illustrations to accompany the story.

Willow plates depict a Chinese temple, bridge, distant island and a willow tree as the essential components of each piece. Also in the pattern are two birds in flight, their beaks kissing in mid-air symbolizing the spirit of eternal love. The Willow plate contains the heart and soul of this lovely legend with a tragic ending.

The Willow Pattern book gives a detailed account of the story (of which there are many variations) but this is a condensed version of my favourite;
Long ago, in the days when China was ruled by emperors, a Chinese mandarin lived in the magnificent pagoda under the branches of the apple tree, over which droops the famous willow tree and in front of which is seen the graceful lines of the fence. The wealthy mandarin had a beautiful daughter named Hong Shee who had fallen in love with her father's humble secretary, a man named Chang. This made her father cruel with anger, he dismissed the young man and built a high fence around his house to keep the lovers apart, and imprisoned his daughter in the little house just visible on the left of the temple. One day she escaped and the two lovers raced over the bridge pursued by her father to a waiting boat. They reached the boat, escaped and sailed away to a distant island where they took refuge in the little wooden house. However, the mandarin father pursued and caught the lovers and was about to have them killed when the gods took pity on them and transformed them into a pair of doves. The birds are seen gazing into each others eye’s and the spirits of the two lovers live on to this day.

I also thought I'd share the very cute wrapping paper the book was wrapped in!!  It features the adorable collage-style illustrations by Catherine Campbell.  Catherine's illustrations are very feminine and slightly whimsical, and I love the girls on the wrapping paper with their paper-doily skirts, newsprint tops and sailor outfits - too cute!  Catherine has an Etsy shop and a blog if you want to see more of her work.

House featured in Cleo magazine!

I was very excited that my house was featured in Cleo magazine this month!

The article is called 'Home is where the art is' and looks at the homes of four creative women and their different interior decor and style ideas.  It was great to be featured alongside other creative women from around the world - including Karly Depew from Ohio who custom designs wedding stationery and fine paper goods under the label Oscar +Emma, Susan Banchek a jewellery designer from Philadelphia who's label is Esther K, and Eleonore Bridge from Paris who is a web consultant, photographer and art director.

The homes featured are full of an ecclectic mix of patterns, colours, found treasures and great style ideas - and they all show you don't have to have an enormous budget or buy expensive designer pieces to have a lovely personal and inviting home.

Thanks Cleo magazine - I was very flattered my little house was included in the article!

New 'Me Old China' jewellery on Etsy

After a busy few weeks working at the design studio I'm back working from home again, and have finally had time today to list some new 'upcycled' plate jewellery onto my Me Old China shop!

I've still got some more pieces to list - but I'd forgotton how time consuming it was to photograph the pieces, write the listings, upload the photo's and convert the prices into USA dollars. 

I need to get some more wall plates made and add these to the shop as I've sold a few of these recently - including two which made it all the way to the States which was exciting but also a bit nerve-wracking to know if they would make it all in one piece!  I've got some new ideas and possible designs I'd like to trial with the next collection of wall plates which will be fun - so I best get cracking on some new designs rather than procrastinating by writing this!!

1950's fabric

I fell in love with this cute 1950's fabric as it depicts my favourite subject matter of all things related to vintage or retro kitchenalia.  It makes me want to put on an apron and bake a cake!

It's very pretty and I love the vibrant red next to the soft mint green.  I'm not sure yet if I'll make anything from the fabric.....or just use it as inspiration.

Oh well - I'm off to have a cup of tea and look at cake recipes ;-)

New second-hand shop finds!

I had a pretty busy week last week as I was back working at the textile design studio where I used to work full time. I left working there last year to freelance and to set up Me Old China , but I've been helping out in the design studio whilst a few people are away. It's been nice to work in a busy studio environment again and get to work with a bunch of really creative people. Freelancing can sometimes be a little isolating and lonely, and I do miss interacting with creative people and getting inspiration and learning from other designers.

However, one of the best things with being back at the design studio is getting to visit all the second-hand and charity shops in the area - and I managed to pick up a few great finds!...

... such as this very cute map desk!

It 's in great condition for it's age - I'm guessing it's from the 70's as some of the geography is a little out of date.

I also found this fab retro patterned bone china tea-cup and saucer by Colclough China, England. Colclough China was founded in 1890 but sadly ceased to manufacture in the mid 1990's. In the 1950's they merged with Ridgway and this pattern must have been produced sometime after this as the backstamp denotes the name Ridgway as well as Colclough.

I love that it's in olive green and soft ochre colours - and whilst it's floral in nature, the pattern is a stylised and retro interpretation. Too cute!

Along with the tea-cup and saucer I picked up this sweet floral oval shaped plate. It depicts a small cluster of flowers, leaves and berries but in an autumnal colour palette - and I like it because it's unusual to find this muted colouring for a floral plate.

I'm back working at the design studio this week as well - so I'll definitely be making a few more trips to the local charity shops at lunchtime! Fingers crossed for some more great finds...

The Loop

Today I'm profiling a fantastic website called The Loop.

The Loop is an Australian-based career networking site especially set up for creative professionals. Companies & individuals can promote themselves online by creating a free online profile which includes multimedia portfolio, images, photo's and resume. How very cool is that!

The site showcases the work of various professional creatives (both national and international) including designers, art directors, illustrators, animators, producers, editors, photographers, stylists, make-up artists, publicist, marketers, writers and artists. Phew!

It's great if you're looking for work within the creative field as there are lots of industry jobs listed, and it's also a fantastic way of promoting yourself and your work to people looking to find the right illustrator / designer / photographer / stylist etc for a job.

The best bit is you can upload different projects you've worked on with as many images as you like, and create your own 'website' within the site. I think it's such a fantastic concept and I've recently set up my own little profile with some images and examples of my work which you can see at The Loop/Lucy King.

It's a great resource and really easy to use. Do go and check out the website - it is a fairly new venture and it's great to support the people who are helping to support the creative industry.

I'm also putting a permanant link to The Loop under 'handy resources for creative businesses'.

You can read more about how The Loop got started here: