Even our furry friends deserve well designed products.

Doggie dishes by these creatures, found via Oh Joy!

This is pretty clever.

Serif tote bag, available here.

Last week Whitney posted about our wish to attend the Renegade Craft Fair this weekend, December 5-6 in Chicago. She mentioned a few artists we admire and ended her post with a teaser that I would post a few can’t-miss artists as well. I know you have been waiting with baited breath (haven’t you?), so without further adieu, here are few I would enjoy checking out in person:

First up a perennial favorite of ours: Ork Posters

We love their typographical renditions of city maps, including the Chicago poster which happens to grace the entrance of our home.

We also love their new Brain poster. This, along with the heart poster, would be great for our studio as these are two things that are used to create each of our designs.

Next up: Tugboat Printshop

I love these Deep Blue Sea woodcuts. The illustrations are great and the colors used are beautiful.

And finally: Delicious Design League

We’ve been fans of Delicious Design League since we saw them last year at Renegade. They design and screen print all of their posters and create stellar design and illustration work as well.

Two great Fleet Foxes posters (a favorite of ours!). I love the use of white in the second one.

I had to show this one as it displays two of our favorite things; David Bowie & Flight of the Conchords. Gotta love it.

These are a just few of my picks – there will be so many great artists at Renegade this year so it was hard to pick. It’s definitely a great show – if you’re in Chicago, GO!

(all images from papermojo.com) from top to bottom: asian lattice print, peacock damask print, lustre print, rossi manuscript print, spirograph print, midas touch lotka print

When in need of a little inspiration, one of my favorite things to do is to swing over to one of our local stationery boutiques to browse large sheets of patterned paper. It’s no secret that Jonathan and I are serious paperphiles, and the danger of seeking inspiration at said local stationery boutiques is that I typically come home with far more than I actually need.

Online paper browsing is far less dangerous for me. Papermojo.com is one of the best online sources for fine papers from a variety of sources, and it never fails to inspire. The patterns shown above are some of my current favorites (and the gold/neutral color palette is exactly what I’ve been loving as of late).

This packaging caught my eye on Lovely Package – who doesn’t love a pink and brown box – surely there must be beautiful things inside! A little clickity-clicking led me to the design firm responsible for this packaging, FBDI®. While looking through their portfolio, I found these images for the same client – the styling in these shots is inspiring! This stuff is eye candy in the truest sense of the word. Enjoy!

It’s that time of year  – time to think about new calendars / planners / organizational tools for 2010. More on planner / organizational possibilities later – right now I’m trying to narrow the field for a calendar choice. I’m especially drawn to the idea of a poster style calendar – easy to display and an affordable option for some new artwork in the home. This lovely letterpress calendar from Dutch Door Press is currently in the lead as one of my favorites.

If you’re still in the market for a 2010 calendar, check out some of these great roundups presented by various bloggers:

Paper Crave 2010 Calendar Roundup Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3
Decor8 2010 Wall Calendars, Desk Calendars, and Poster Calendars
Oh So Beautiful Paper 2010 Calendar Roundup Part 1 and Part 2

This photo from September’s Anthro catalog caught my eye – especially the oversized framed type chart on the left. I would like to do something similar in our home…sounds like yet another project has been added to my list…

Last week we posted about Seb Lester and his ‘Keep it Simple” poster. We couldn’t leave it at that. We had to post more of his gorgeous work. Above is his “Home Sweet Home” poster that not only is a beautiful type specimen but also uses Mirri paper which changes colors depending on the lighting conditions. See this video of the poster for the full effect – very cool!

Another great piece in metallic gold.

Similar style in metallic silver…

…and a beautiful inspirational piece, where in the artist’s own words, he said, “I like to think that almost anyone can achieve almost anything in life. It’s all about passion, focus, and commitment. I wanted to design a strong, dynamic, inspirational poster that referenced this popular self-help adage.”

A nice thing to remind ourselves every once in a while.

All the works can be found and bought at Seb’s website or at the Keep Calm Gallery. {images from here}

I just saw this poster on the ilovetypography.com shop by the great Seb Lester (more on him later) and thought it was just a great little reminder for us designers.

While we love the fun ornate typefaces and love to look for ways to use them in the proper form, we see way too many times (more often than not) them being used poorly or overly used. Sometimes it’s good to take a step back and to “keep it simple”.

Speaking of letterpress (did you see yesterday’s big offer?) check out these lovelies we created for an upcoming September wedding! The bride and groom are planning a gorgeous celebration at the Inn at Spanish Bay in Pebble Beach (you MUST check out the website for this place – it’s AMAZING!). We worked with the bride to create these elegant letterpress invitations in chocolate brown on pearl white 100% cotton paper.

One of my favorite things about this suite is that the bride chose chocolate brown envelopes and had her return address offset printed in cream on the back flap. This is such a fun choice – it’s a cost-saver over having your return address letterpressed, and the cream on chocolate is still elegant and yet unexpected. The bride chose Laura Hooper to calligraph the guest addresses, which she hand-lettered in cream ink (stunning!).

We are working with Katie and Dave right now on their wedding day items – programs, menus, etc. I can’t wait to see how everything comes together!