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April 26, 2023 - Comments Off on Grit & Collaboration

Grit & Collaboration

Combining talents for delectable outcomes

Last summer, the Méli Mélo Charcuterie Boards — a lively collaboration with 600 Grit fine wood design — debuted in the art festival world. Maria Garcia, my former tennis partner and expert woodworker, had applied as an emerging artist to two of the nation’s most prestigious fairs — the Fort Worth Main Street Arts Festival and Denver’s Cherry Creek Arts Festival. A Colorado native now at home in Texas, Maria clearly had soaked in some of the “go big or go home” Lone Star attitude in targeting these events, but even she was slightly overwhelmed to be accepted by both. 

Our 600 Grit/EnZed collaboration began with volleying ideas on the tennis court. It went something like “wouldn’t it be fun to take some of your wrapping paper motifs and translate them to wood?” After a few years of playing with the idea, mostly in our heads, we found ourselves mixing epoxy and pigments in her Dallas workshop. We experimented with maple and walnut hardwoods, metallic and solid pigments, and two designs. Maria prepped the boards for the CNC operator who used my vector artwork to rout the inlays. After several prototypes in which we adjusted motif sizes and color palettes, played with depth of routing and angled edges, we landed on the finished product and perfected the silky finish. 

Méli Mélo translates to “an assortment,” which captures the essence of charcuterie and the nature of our collaboration. Once the boards began selling, Maria envisioned expanding the concept to furniture. The board motifs enlarged beautifully onto coffee, cocktail and side tables, and she received a commission for wall art at this larger scale. Maria’s furniture designs are inspired by the Arts & Crafts and Mid Century Modern movements, but the rich walnut hardwood and bright resin inlays transition across many interior styles.

What started as a friendship on the tennis court quickly became a delicious meeting of minds and materials. Talking with the art lovers venturing into our tent was energizing and Maria secured several furniture commissions in each city, a primary goal for showing at the festivals. (Prior to that, we had a brief foray into wholesale and set up shop on PaperieZ.com, selling directly to friends and others.) 

While I’ve enjoyed seeing my designs in three dimensions as Maria has added new, unique product offerings, the best part of this experience by far is the collaboration. Each bringing our best to the table (saw) inevitably yields tasty results.

For more about Maria, follow her on Instagram @600grit and visit 600grit.com. She’s available for custom charcuterie board and furniture commissions. Let us collaborate with you, too!

Join my mailing list to receive monthly reads about adventures, design, marketing, other creative musing, and how they all relate to and inform one another. Follow my antics on Instagram. — Helen

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March 3, 2023 - Comments Off on Salon Savvy

Salon Savvy

It’s a good hair day.

“A good hair day is the most amazing day ever!”, to quote the Urban Dictionary. Helping clients have more of them is the raison d’être for elle.b Salon’s Central location in West Denver. When the award-winning studio added skin, nail and brow services to complement their cut, color and extensions expertise, however, the word salon no longer seemed enough. EnZed Design was invited to collaborate on renaming the enterprise to communicate its expanded offerings and distinctive style. (A savvy decision, if we do say so.)

The new moniker, elle.b Savvy, was directly inspired by the entrepreneurial spirit and creative genius of the owners, founder and master stylist Lindsay Guzman and Dani Tavbin, COO. We collaborated with them on the renaming, then created custom patterns to brand their new space. Here are the highlights. 

The starting point was Lindsay’s vision for rehabbing a character-rich 1930s building. A true tastemaker and stylist beyond hair, she worked with local artist Birdseed Anthony* to craft the exterior look, landing on horizontal stripes in green hues. We worked with these repeating lines and art deco curves of the architecture to create a suite of patterns for the interior elements and signage. 

Branding with a bang. 

Hunter, Gold and Blush from the brand palette are evident in the exterior paint and lettering and the perforated steel dividers defining stylist stations. The panels feature a custom pattern that was routed into the steel with a CNC, then powder-coated in Blush for a sleek finish. The Pincurls pattern, inspired by the capsule-shaped windows and green stripes, graces the doors for branding, adds a degree of privacy, then climbs the interior walls to define each space.

While Lindsay’s interior design set the tone, the patterns and signage pulled elle.b Savvy branding through the entire building, helping to realize her big picture vision. We thoroughly enjoyed brainstorming together and springboarding off the ideas and talents of these creative clients. Hair extensions are one of their strong suits … becoming an extension of an internal team to bring a project over the top is one of ours. 

*Worth a deeper look: Civic-minded artist Anthony Garcia, Sr. and the nonprofit BirdSeed Collective he co-founded. 

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February 10, 2023 - Comments Off on French Diamonds & French Toast

French Diamonds & French Toast

“I do,” was my reply when Denny’s creative services popped the question: Do you design wallpaper? 

I’d just completed a custom pattern and a dozen or so templates for the corporation’s to-go boxes, cups, bags, and seals. This new request was a special invitation — to design the wall covering for their Las Vegas Wedding Chapel* on the iconic strip. 

With unbridled enthusiasm, I reviewed the creative brief. My task was to marry icons from the bride and groom t-shirts with the iconic French diamond shape housing the restaurant’s logo. A childhood of road trips and a decade of designing wrapping papers groomed me for this very moment. 

Initially, I presented seven designs featuring a bow tie, diamond gem, and French diamond, adding some additional symbols of love and location. They selected two motifs to see in a variety of color ways that complemented the new restaurant interior materials, then settled on one design. We further looked at color and scale with mock ups of the wallpaper in the space. Denny’s creative team selected a tone-on-tone print on a pearlescent paper. 

The project was a grand slam. This background will be photographed behind many happy couples, cutting into their wedding pancake stack and linking arms to sip mimosas. 

Elvis may have left the building, but the wallpaper is here to stay.

Thank you, thank you very much.
— Helen

*Yes, chain restaurant weddings are a thing. Rate the best “cake” - post below!

P.S. Need a custom pattern for your project? Check out our Custom Collections offering.

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January 27, 2023 - Comments Off on “I’ve got nothing to wear.” ~ Your Brand

“I’ve got nothing to wear.” ~ Your Brand

Custom patterns can bring your brand fashion forward.

Does your logo deserve a bigger, better sense of style? Whether making an online or in-person appearance, a brand requires a suite of assets — or wardrobe — to differentiate the organization it represents. Brand guidelines typically cover the basics, such as logo colors, fonts, maybe photo style and copy tone — the white t-shirt and jeans of marketing. But maintaining a powerful presence by ensuring visual continuity is far more complex – not unlike fashioning the signature look that makes a day-to-evening transition effortless. 

By providing my clients more options, customized options, they’re able to rapidly claim brand recognition beyond the obvious. Custom branding patterns, when designed as an integrated part of a client’s branding assets, add the flexibility to “mix and match” with ease. This creates brand recognition with variety — the difference between wearing a uniform, and choosing classics with the added flair of accessories. Plus quality branding begets quality products. A well-crafted brand communicates success subliminally, if not overtly. If great care has been put into presenting information, then it must be valuable. 

Case in point. When we revitalized the FCCS brand, part of the process was creating a suite of patterns that ranged from “boldly forward” to “background conversation.” The client knew a range of applications would be needed, even though specifics were still being determined. A child brand was born the same year, with the launch of their Accelerate Center. It, too, required patterns uniquely its own. Cross-over patterns worked to maximize flexibility, unify presentation and link the brands into a cohesive, powerful presence.

A suite of brand patterns and complementary assets can also work wonders to tie everything together. Patterns can grab attention and quietly accent. So if your logo is the cashmere of your brand, the pattern serves as the designer shoes. The gemstone ring, the platinum watch, and the diamond earrings appear via brand devices — bullet point, page divider, and quotation marks. 

The upshot? The ensemble is everything. Add a surface pattern collection to your brand wardrobe and brand recognition soars. And you’ve taught a master class in style.

***

What’s your go-to wardrobe piece? Comment below.

Join my mailing list to receive monthly reads about adventures, design, marketing, other creative musing, and how they all relate to and inform one another. — Helen

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January 19, 2023 - Comments Off on Family Tree: Branching Out 

Family Tree: Branching Out 

Creating a surface pattern collection from one central design.

It began with a single leaf. My contribution to a calendar promoting Chicago’s Newberry Library debuted in the month of April, then went on to become much more. The initial task was to represent the library’s Genealogy Floor by creating an image encompassing multiple American heritages with their global origins. I chose to design a tribute leaf for each country or culture based on the motifs and colors I’d researched, then loosely assembled them to form our nation’s Family Tree.

Fast-forwarding to 2022: As the creative brief provided by the client had been limited to representing select continents, I expanded on the original tree by adding new leaf designs reflecting indigenous art from Latin America, Asian Pacific nations, and New Zealand, where I was born. The leaves were arranged into a repeat, while keeping the same loose placement on the bough. 

 

A budding new collection. Next, I challenged myself to design to a full collection of surface patterns, iterating on the single-leaf motifs. I chose a shape or section in each motif to craft new, seamless repeats and simplified the initial color palettes. The new motifs turned out to be very different from one another, yet an umbrella aesthetic holds them together. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A pattern collection is akin to a family, where the siblings are unique while the parents’ genes are expressed differently in each. I think of my brother at 6’4” with auburn hair, freckles and fair skin, and me standing a foot shorter with an olive complexion and dark curls. Eyes, toes, nose. Fun, puns, buns.

Seems evolution is its own artform.

***

Can you match up the leaf to the motif? Comment below with the leaf letter and motif name.

Join my mailing list to receive monthly reads about adventures, design, marketing, other creative musing, and how they all relate to and inform one another. — Helen

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August 3, 2022 - Comments Off on Reading The Waves

Reading The Waves

Learning from a master is faster

La Paz letters along the beach

Four thin textbooks arrived in a blue drawstring bag in December, our reading assignment prior to boarding a 42-foot catamaran. In late April, we were to set sail from the port just outside of La Paz, Mexico. Reading one book per month couldn’t be so bad, right? By the time we set foot on the Fountaine Pajot, however, we’d made our way through just one and a half.

Learning the sailing terms was like another language, but without the benefit of a good reference for decoding, like my French gives me clues to understanding Spanish or Italian. There was little other than colloquialisms—it took the wind out of my sails, learning the ropes, he was three sheets to the wind—as hints. I was clueless about clews, goosenecks, halyards, and shrouds. Slogging through the first book twice and quizzing myself until I could earn an honest B was the best I could hope for. It would be easier once I was on the boat, I assured myself.

The craft and her crew, Helen, Karl, Teaching Captain Troy, Rachel, David

The first step, after meeting our captain Troy Mills of Nautilus Sailing and additional newbie crew, was to learn about the boat’s features and functions—opening lockers, inventorying cushions, locating fire extinguishers, and counting personal flotation devices (PFDs). We learned about provisioning, the heads (and their touchy waste system), navigation devices, desalination tanks, and engines. The purpose of the first lesson was to know the boat, but also to accept that each of us would depend on the combined knowledge and actions of the captain and entire crew on this journey. Our craft was white, sleek, and stable, and would carry us out to sea without any communication from the outside world. Sheer bliss.

“Each of us would depend on the combined knowledge and actions of the captain and entire crew”

Sea Life

We slept aboard and floated off the dock the next morning with green buoys drifting by. Our six night live-aboard adventure to learn and earn our captain certifications was underway. Two young humpback whales—one flashing its tail, the other keeping a low, sleek profile—escorted us into the Sea of Cortez, “the world’s aquarium.” The waves were soft and sea turtles the size of manhole covers floated alongside us. A pod of partying dolphins met us as we rounded a small island, swimming fast along our twin-hulls and surfacing in graceful arches.

sea life
The Sea of Cortez, Mexico, is sometimes referred to as the world’s aquarium.

With nightfall came more lessons: How the right anchorage site could shelter us from shifting winds and surf so we could sleep without the risk of heavy rocking or swinging into another boat. Captain Troy could see things we couldn’t. Given his years of experience, he could quickly calculate how rough a sea we were likely to encounter by reading the waves’ amplitude and direction and feeling the wind on his face. He explained how to account for the tides with our timing on and off anchor. Why the boat was built with redundancies—from dual engines to anchor lights and alarms—to prevent a pan-pan or mayday call. How to troubleshoot using an if this, then perhaps this metric. How clear communication among the captain and crew supports good decision-making. 

Finding the right anchorage makes for happy sailors.

We learned pragmatic rules to sail by and sayings with deeper purpose, including Captain Troy Mill’s salty favorite “A boat shrinks an inch per day,” a nice way of saying keep your stuff stowed or your shipmates will want to deposit you on one of the five uninhabited islands on our journey. Everything in its place can truly prove lifesaving should the weather turn abruptly—tools stored, sheets flaked, and phones far away from a wet sink. When sailing, thinking through everything that could possibly happen and taking preemptive action prior is key. After the first day, it became clear that this week of lessons was just the beginning and there was a lifetime of learning to become an accomplished sailor. As the sun set on our first night at sea, eagle rays leaped along the pink horizon and pelicans settled into our inlet as night patrol. Fair winds and following seas. —Helen

Continue reading: Permission to come aboard?

  • Photos by captain and crew of the journey, Helen, Karl, Troy, Rachel and David.

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