Design Diaries: January 2024
Welcome back to your monthly fix of Design Diaries, where you can binge the weekly updates like a full Netflix Series being dropped all at once!
Each week I will be capturing and uploading a week in the life of a brand and website designer living a nomadic lifestyle.
Follow along to see my day-to-day and the current projects I'm working on.
Episode 4
-
Welcome back to Episode 4 of a week in the life of a designer.
This week we re-opened the studio after Christmas, on 2nd Jan we squeezed in a tour in Temascaltepec in Mexico state to see the butterfly forest before we got back to work on the 4th.
This week has been all about getting on top of all the new year admin! Setting goals, paying taxes, organising finances, all the stuff that I don’t like doing, but feel much better once it’s done.
I’ve also been working on promoting my webinar which is on Jan 23rd on five common logo design mistakes and how to avoid them - link in bio if you wanna join up, it’s free!
I’ve cleared my inbox down to 1 email which is honestly a miracle, all my retainer clients and enquiries have been replied to, and the whole of Jan has been planned!
Work-wise I’ve been reviewing the work that Will our developer has done for a small WordPress site before sending it over to the client, and we’ve had a few more little tweaks come in for Tooth Angel which we’ve been working on.
Episode 5
-
Welcome back to episode 5 of a week in the life of a designer on the road.
This week I’ve started a new project for Veranda Books, a brand new business that is launching this year in London. I’ve been working on brand strategy and brand design.
Here you can see I’m aligning all of the letters so that the spines of the letters are all centreally aligned, I’m trying to get all the letters to look like books stacked on shelf. I’ve also been playing around with colours and fonts, trying to find the right bright green and the right fonts to use.
I’ve also done a little bit of photoshopping for Mindful Champs, we reworked one of the journals, and we haven’t got photography for it yet, so I’ve photoshopped the new cover onto the old photos.
Travel wise, we left Mexico city on Friday, and have now arrived in Canada, where it’s -10, but look at these beautiful mountains!
Join me next week if I haven’t frozen to death!
Episode 6
-
Welcome back to episode 6 of a week in the life of a designer on the road!
This week we had a snowstorm in Vancouver which was gorgeous and cold.
I’ve been working on perfecting the Veranda Books logo, the client loved the design, but I wasn’t happy with the ‘R’ or the ‘B’, so I’m just finessing that before we begin the logo exports. We’re not quite there with the colours just yet though so I’m going to work on those again this week, we want a more acidic green so that will be my job this week!
I’ve also updated the brand guidelines to reflect the changes that we discussed in our catch up call on Monday.
I did some more photoshopping for Mindful Champs, we are making some new bundles to sell on her website to increase the average order value.
We also made an event invitation for the launch party for Tooth Angel in March! I can’t wait to see the products out there in the wild.
We ended our week in true Canadian style, watching the Cannucks win the hockey on pride night, here’s Fin, their mascot, singing Freddie Mercury in the stands.
Follow me for more designer on the road updates!
Episode 7
-
Episode 7 of a week in the life of a designer on the road.
This week started off with a bang, literally, a car exploded in the basement of our co-working space, which started a fire. No-one was hurt, except the car.
Anyway, this week we progressed the Veranda project, we signed off on the green (woohoo!) and I’ve just made some final tweaks to the logo before I get the brand guidelines prepped and ready for sending over.
We also designed an add to cart pop-up for Mindful Champs to encourage people to add more stuff to their carts, normally wouldn’t recommend a pop up at this stage, but we’re trying to increase the average order value so let’s give it a go and see!
I hosted a webinar this week too, which went really well, we had 60 people sign up which was fantastic, I’ll definitely do more of these!
I also wire-framed a new page for Do It Now Now, which we’ll build next week.
We ended the week with a hike in Whistler and Squamish which was honestly a fairytale.
Catch you next week!
Stay connected by joining us on TikTok, Instagram or Pinterest, where we share weekly insights! Dive into the behind-the-scenes brand design, explore the digital nomad lifestyle, and uncover valuable branding tips and tricks. Don't miss out on our updates—be part of our creative journey!
For deeper diving into our projects and the brands we work with, head to our portfolio.
You’ll find more branding and design advice on our blogs, too!
