inkables | Christmas Tags

I am in the holly jolly Christmas spirit and created some fun Christmas tags for you to use on your gifts this holiday season!  There are 11 designs to choose from and use to adorn your gifts.  Print out as many as you need but, please only use for Personal Use (meaning you can't re-sell these designs or use them on another site, thank you!)

(click image to download or visit the Free Things link and select "inkables")

A few tips and things to know when printing your inkables:

• Select "print to page" or "fit to page" when setting up your printer to print.
• These were created on a standard 8.5" x 11" sheet.
• Be sure your printer is also set to print at best or high quality for the colors to come through nicely.  Go ahead and try printing as black and white for a unique look!
• You can print these on any paper you want... just be sure the paper will fit through your printer!

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Psalm 36:5

Your love, Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies.

Quote | Helen Keller

I saw this quote today and thought it was so beautiful...

Designing for a Political Campaign

I have had the honor of designing and setting up a website/branding for a very special politician...my husband.  He is running for City Council in our town and I couldn't be more proud of him.  He was made for politics!  I believe he was created to make a difference in government and I am excited for this new chapter of our lives.  I could go on and on but, I wanted to talk about the design process for creating his branding.

I always like to start with the color palette when starting a project.  The color scheme has a huge impact on the overall feeling that your branding can convey.  It was a no brainer for this particular project since we needed to keep it "American"...red, white, and blue.  I played around with a few options but, my client wanted to stay in the realm of classic.  Here is the color scheme we landed on:

Before I sat down to create some concepts and worked on design, I did some research on fonts, design, and colors used in political campaigns.  Did you know that the font used for Obama's campaign is called "Gotham"?  I read a ton of articles like this one and this one.  I'm not sure why but I was actually surprised at how many people have analyzed this stuff...does a font really change your opinion about a candidate?  A font is probably not the deciding factor when you vote but, it does matter!  Your branding represents you and it might be your first impression to a potential customer.

When I felt confident to begin my creating, I worked on a few different design concepts and these were a few of the final contenders:

After getting feedback from a few trusted friends, I went back to the drawing board to fine-tune and tweak the design a bit more.  Designing for a political campaign is way more difficult than I imagined.  I love a good design challenge and of course, I couldn't let this particular client pass me by so, I stuck with it.  When you look at branding for political campaigns, they look so simple and straight forward but, there is a whole lot more that goes into creating a simple yet, dynamic appearance.  So, here is the look we've landed on:

I will use various versions of the above design concept across his marketing but, the elements will stay the same.  So, here it is, my very first political campaign design!  Feel free to check out Eric's website that we just launched, www.ericpostma.com.

I hope this article will give you some insight about what goes into the design process when you hire a graphic designer...its not just clipart and comic sans, my friends, there is a great big world of fantastic design out there!

Technology Tickets

I'm all for encouraging the free-spiritedness of summer except when it comes to technology.  We have to limit our technology time (this includes TV, Wii, computer, etc.)  Have you heard of Technology Tickets?  Well, I decided to make my technology ticket system a little different than some of the ideas I found online...like HERE.

Here is what I came up with:
The kids can earn a technology ticket for completing an extra chore or when they "go that extra mile" (being kind, helping Mama or Dad with a project, obedience, sharing, etc.)  They can redeem them anytime they would like to extend their technology time.  Right now they are allowed 1 hour of computer time a day and 1 hour of TV time per day.

Click the image above to enlarge. Save to your computer and print.

I sat down to design the tickets and decided to leave the amount of time redeemable as a blank space.  Then I could decide on the amount of the ticket based upon what they did to earn it.  For example, let's say my son decided to wash our van.  That would earn him a 15 minute technology ticket.

If this idea sounds like it might be something you would like to try with your kids.  Feel free to click the image to save to your computer and print it out.  I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas on this as well!  Please come back and share with me.  This is new for us too so I will try to update on our progress with this new system.  Happy Summer!