This activity page will make my wife happy, as she is a special ed teacher and would always like more activity pages. Mixing Irish and Mexican heritage is always an easy hit. Two free versions for download are provided. I am okay with the one where it backtracks, but cutting those out and ending up with just 17 numbers is just as good. Hey, 17, March 17th…
I just had to color one for myself.
Backtracking version [shown below] — Simple 17 numbers
Here is a free calendar from a photo of pavers I have been saving for a few years and had yet to find a use. Throw in some perspective via Illustrator’s perspective tools and now it is a hopscotch game that would not be all that easy to complete. Click on the image below to get the full size image for your desktop.
Holiday Inn across the street needed some posters designed pronto, to which we happily obliged. They were just coming off of the huge Gem Show and needed some non-Gem Show centric signage. I found several attractive drink photos after digging through our stock photography site for a while, and through the process of design elimination – and Holiday Inn’s green logo – it was a relatively easy choice. Add some attractive typography and coloring and now the eyes go to the drink, the logo, and Cyprus Lounge. FYI, there are still way too many hours to 4pm as of the writing of this post. I shall remain “wound” for the remainder of the work day.
A connect the dots and coloring page? Seriously? Just go back to second grade for a moment and you know that right about know your teacher would be handing this out and you would be eating it up. 100 years – some thought that Arizona was too crazy to make it that long, but it did and we have. Have fun connecting the dots, and have fun coloring. If you like it, I might make more and make them funny [some may say Arizona is funny, but nah, really funny ones and not just off-kilter].
Click on the image below for a printable PDF that is just dying for you to complete and color. I am already coloring my third activity sheet. So much for getting work done today.
Someone once told me that Save the Date cards were created by designers and printing companies just so they could get more work -bwahahahaha – though they may be thinking of those wedding magazines as well. The bride just HAS to have water pulled from the middle of a Swiss glacier on her wedding day – anything else would just be a wedding Fail.
I say the real reason we need these early reminders is that our schedules fill up so quickly and we often leave out time for important things, such as this golf tournament for Junior Achievement of Arizona. This postcard design is fresh and green with a wide open sky, I would go even though I don’t play golf. It is a half sheet postcard with the logo distorted in Adobe Illustrator and dropped into Adobe Photoshop – not hard at all. It should be a card that is both eye-catching and easy to remember and will result in a greater turnout.
It is another Olympic year with international athletic competition taking center stage where thousands will compete but only a few will medal. That does not seem fair, so we are handing out our own medals to those groups that we work with that deserve a medal. The first medal of the year goes to Integrative Touch for Kids [ITK] which believes that when a child has special needs, the whole family has special needs. As their material states, “Did you know that a child with cancer has a better chance of surviving their illness than their family does of staying together?” Their success is a success for not only the child and their families, but the community as well which is why their catch phrase [mission statement?] is “Whole Child • Whole Family • Whole Community”. To quote a mother on ITK’s site, “Before our involvement with ITK, our family was stressed and disconnected from one another. Now we talk more, understand each other better, and feel much more calm and connected.”
These were delivered in a translucent orange envelope.
If I remember one story correctly, one child made some friends at a retreat and was invited to a birthday party. As a parent of a child with some unique needs and is socially behind, getting invited to a birthday party is a big deal – not just for the child but also for the parents.
Integrative Touch for Kids just held their Butterfly Gala in Tucson this past weekend including dinner, raffle and auctions. Go check them out at their website. ITK, you deserve more than just a medal – thank you.
In for the direction of the design of all their pieces, keeping it light and magical has been first and foremost. The three latest invitations all have gate folds which works well with the butterfly theme.
The first Chicago Butterfly Gala may have been one of my favorite. Very clean and elegant, but it didn’t have as much magic as some of the others.
The second Chicago Butterfly Gala invitation was overflowing with magical, light and energy.
Here is a quick calendar I drummed up as there has been a lot of work the past few weeks and not a lot of white space to do much else [always a good thing]. Now if Tucson’s weather was cooperating, it would fit the mood, but so far we have been very warm this winter. Usually there are great storms rolling through and Tucson can get the crazy dark mountains with the sun still shining through onto parts of the desert. Instead we have shorts and flip-flop weather, which is exactly what was predicted from Roadrunner day. Once again he outran his shadow, and once again we will have a winter that requires us to wear a sweatshirt for the first 2 hours of the day [and maybe closed toed shoes] and after that it is perfect weather.
You have a choice of 3 desktop calendars, two of the stormy Catalinas [one without the roadrunner] and then one of just the roadrunner – click on the image to download a desktop-sized version – enjoy!
We have had an online ordering system for years, but not everyone has been taking advantage of it. It is really strange – I don’t like shopping in person, but shopping online I do very well. Maybe the introvert in me gets all giddy when I do, but all I know is that 15 minutes in Target is about all I can take. That said, I just updated the demo version of our online ordering site. As a side note, the site it runs on is called Four51, so I have taken to calling this pretend site “Faux51”. I know, so clever. The biggest part is personalization, where large companies can enter the info for their business cards, HR books, manuals, certificates, etc and we can get rid of the proofing process. I wanted more than just the customizable business card on the site so I created a pair of marketing posters. For years I have wondered who bred a hamster with a grape and got a kiwi. Rather gross if you think about it too much [fuzzy on the outside, grapey on the in] but it made for a fun pair of posters. In case you can’t read the text, it is included below each poster. The logo is mine – I created that a few years ago as a christmas present for a friend and have been using it ever since.
If you want to try out the demo site, head to our AlphaGraphics Palo Verde site and log in at the upper right hand corner. The username is “agSample” and password is “demo”. It is set up to only allow one person on at a time so if someone else shows up, sorry! Fully functioning sites have individual logins.
Are you thinking of breeding a hamster with a grape? You really should be using our services. One consultation with us and we’ll let you know it has already been done. And it is more than just a little freaky.
Utilize Kiffinite Consulting and we’ll make sure you don’t do something nutty.*
*Not available for teenage boys with skateboards or fireworks – you are on your own
Tucson just had one of its coldest Decembers on record, with 5 days with record lows. This follows a very chilly January ’11, though our first few days of ’12 were 79 or 80 degrees. Go figure.
I love calendars, but rarely get to design super cool ones [they sure do take plenty of time]. How about I fill 2012 with desktop calendars? Click on the image below to download the full size version. The photo is taken from the roof of my house of the Santa Catalinas in Tucson, Arizona. The highest point is Mt. Lemmon at 9,157 feet which makes for a great bike ride [Lance Armstrong lived in a cabin up there for 6 weeks to train one year, or so the story goes].
With this year pretty much wrapped up, I am not only looking forward to continued the partnership with our clients where I get to help them succeed, but also thankful for the very very full year where I have done just that: helped people succeed. I will be posting more in the coming months about this process that I enjoy, and it has been a great year. There were the usual projects, the logos, illustrations, posters, newsletters, email blasts, vehicle graphics and so on, but there were some new ones as well. There was the 240 page book now being sold everywhere, several business proposals that help land 150 miles of rail line in Oregon as well as a spot in a huge retail chain that I can say nothing more except that it is one a story of a small business hitting the big time in a big way. How can that not be exciting? There were other books as well, paired with music cds [there were lots of those] and a lot more cycling jerseys and race clothing. Add into all of this a personal project of adding onto my home where I was able to spend time on deciding how the space was to be used which included a 3 foot by 12 foot walk-in shower. Maybe better than that was laying 1800 sq ft of slate tile. It may seem crazy, but I sorted, piled, and chose where each uniquely colored stone was going to rest for the next 30+ years. I don’t often get to sculpt or build things, so this was a bit of a treat. A long, tiring, knee-busting treat. Nearly every surface of the interior has been painted a different color, but that may be what I do best: color. The early morning sun lights the main room on fire, calling the family to curl up on the couches and enjoy. After a whole year of a lot of destruction, there was plenty of construction for the family to enjoy.
Yes, it has been a good year for getting a lot of work done. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Thank you for letting me create for you – 2012 should be even better.
