Oaktown Spice Shop Website is live!!

So excited to announce the launching of Oaktown Spice Shop's website! My design, information architecture, and photography, is live! It took sure took a village to bring this to fruition. We had the great and talented Erin Dracos Scott consulting with us on a photo shoot. She was kind enough to shoot some of the photos herself. I also had Keir Lenihan and Cynthia Warren help in camera work and styling. Andrew Venell was our wonderful and patient programmer who brought our design to life

The owners of Oaktown Spice Shop, Erica Perez and John Beaver, have created the most amazing shop. The walls are filled with colors and textures of all sorts. They are warm and wonderful folks who love to share their love and knowledge of spices. Their enthusiasm is really quite contagious.

Our website wanted convey this enthusiasm, as well as their down to Earth personalities and the beauty of the shop.  We did so by making the site easy to navigate. Nothing is slick. No need to be! The colors and texture of the photos are to transport the viewer so you can almost smell the peppercorns and nutmeg. Erica and John learned how to photograph their products themselves, so that you can see each bottle up close. We are all very excited with the site!

Prune Restaurant Website has Launched!

Houston we have liftoff. It's official, the Prune website has launched! I have been working with my amazing, uber-talented, wonderful, beautiful friend Cynthia Warren on the website for Prune Restaurant in New York City. The owner of Prune, Gabrielle Hamilton, is coming out with a new cookbook this year following her memoir Blood, Bones and Butter, and she was ready for an update to their website.

Our design parameters included an existing logo, a color family, and a font created from Gabrielle's handwriting. The whole team was clear that we wanted a site that felt like human hands had created it and far from a digital, impersonal experience. Cynthia and I used the front of Prune's building as our inspiration. We riffed off of the Victorian details of the storefront for the layout, and thereby created a sense of place. Our intent is that visitors feel as though they are getting a peek into Prune Restaurant.

GH is a straight-shooter, power-house of a woman. It was very much an honor to work with her on this project. 

Oaktown Spice Shop Website Burst

My wonderful Oaktown Spice Shop peoples asked me to design a callout burst for their splash page. The burst would redirect folks to their holiday e-commerce site. To keep continuity with the existing page, I designed a burst that felt like the original artwork in style, color palette, and texture. The complimentary teal and the sans serif typeface made the burst visually stand out. They loved it! Practicality won out over fun design, however, and we set up a straight-forward redirect to their e-commerce page. They admitted their undying love for their splash page, and requested we somehow keep it in the design of our full e-commerce site.

Bartavelle Logo

Loved working with my friend Suzanne Drexhage on the logo for her coffee and wine bar, Bartavelle,  last year. We are starting to discuss a website for her business, so the logo is on my mind. I had a great time playing with the typography. I used the familiar Extended Trade Gothic, but I hand-set that sucker with the version from my trusty encyclopedia of old typefaces. Why? It feels and looks like a human touched it, doesn't it?

This is one of the few times that I have felt like a project was destined for me. Bartavelle opened in the spot of the long-lived Cafe Fanny, where I worked at as a pipsqueak many years ago. It was where my history with the space, the people, and the world of Chez Panisse and Alice Waters began.

If you haven't tried Suzanne's porridge yet, run don't walk to Bartavelle in Berkeley. It will invade your dreams it's so dang good.

Samin Nosrat Identity Project and Website

SAMIN NOSRAT WEBSITE

SAMIN NOSRAT WEBSITE

I was on the design blog Ffffound this morning, and I came across an identity project that I worked on a few years ago with a great friend Samin Nosrat.  It reminded me of our amazing experience for her website's photo shoot. What a cast of creative mad geniuses! The shoot was held at the house of Samin's good friend, Charlie Hallowell. He is the wacky-doodle, loud-mouthed, HIGHLY opinionated, and hecka funny owner of Pizzaiolo and Boot & Shoe Service. Our photographer was the extremely poised and incredibly talented Aya Brackett.  AND, I was about 7 months pregnant! Dang! My design objective for her website was to have a graceful, simple, subtle site that felt more like a beautiful coffee table book than website.  We were all super satisfied with the outcome.

Max Gill Design Identity and Website

                                                                                                                                   M A X   G I L L   D E S I G N

First Post. I am very excited to see Max Gill's website up and live. I think that is an auspicious place to start this conversation (with myself thus far.) We wanted to keep the design clean and crisp to have continuity with Max's letterpressed business cards. Our goal was to have just a few beautiful details for navigation amongst an expanse of white. I love how the arrows turned out, and the -Pause- that shows up as a cursor over the photos to stop the slideshow feels unique and subtle. Most importantly, every aspect of the design serves to display his amazing work.