It seems each week has it’s own set of crazy obstacles that leave me breathless, this week proved to be no different. Michelle and I are in full-on prep mode to get ready for our ‘Photoshop for Lettering Artists’ class launch (the launch date has been pushed back to June). The more I think about it the more nervous I get and the more I wonder why we decided it was a such a good idea in the first place. I know it’s a good idea (because I get about a 100 emails on this subject a day), but I wish my clone (if I had one) would do the class for me, being on camera is terrifying!

Our friend Sanae launched her first children’s book- Little Kunoichi last Sunday, and she is prepping for book number 2 now which is a sewing/memoir hybrid (she is a creative Jedi). We will be interviewing Sanae extensively soon because I think you will be happily surprised to find out how this blogger got her book deals!

Ever since I read about The Cure beauty product I can’t get it out of my head, I must try this stat! If you have already, please let me know what you thought, from the Amazon reviews this product is a miracle worker!

Because I can’t seem to focus on just one thing (even though I truly do try), I have been tinkering with our future Photoshop action sets (and a little Lightroom play as well). We know we want to do a B+W set, and one to do with light (hmm? cryptic enough), but we have also been toying with the idea of a mini matte set, the look is so popular right now and we think it’s subtle enough that you won’t look back on your edits a few years from now and cringe (that’s how I feel about some of my early photo editing, yikes!) Hint, this photo was originally destined for the trash bin, it was too cool, too dark and altogether trash worthy but with a little light therapy and matte Foto Rx actions I think it really recreates the feel of early morning summer light. Do you like the matte look? Or do you think you would be more interested in achieving beautiful light in your images?

Have a favorite book and love a good font? Don’t forget to enter to win Laura Worthington’s hefty new font collection here.

P.S. Want that beautiful glowy light today?  Michelle has the most awesome (and easy) tutorial here.

We’ve teamed up with Laura Worthington today for a  giveaway of her new font Adorn Smooth! If you are not familiar with Laura’s work you will be floored at what is included in her font families. In the Adorn Smooth Collection she really took care of everything you would need font wise to create the perfect invite: A beautiful script font (but of course), a slab serif–a great alternative to those who had sticker shock at the Archer font I mentioned the other day. A simple serif, a deco inspired sans serif (shown above), an elegant engraved, ornaments, banners, flourishes, oh my!  The set even comes with a 71 page resource on how to use everything, sample images to inspire your own creations and easy to reference specimen charts. Laura does not play around, these are seriously pro fonts.

As with Adorn, Adorn Smooth provides a disparate but harmonious typographic toolkit for creating wedding invitations, event posters, book jackets, or packaging.

To enter to win, (I hope this is easy, you know how my not so easy giveaway went last time–insert Debbie Downer music here). I was recently asked what my favorite book was and I was flummoxed, I love so many, it’s so hard to pick just one, right? So I of course gave her 3 favorite books (but that list could have easily been 300!) To enter to win just answer the same question:

What is your favorite book? Or books?

You don’t have to let us know why you chose the book(s), but if you want to share we’d love to know. We’ll choose the winner randomly next Wednesday, May 20, 2015. Good luck!

Our friend Jessica at Coco and Mingo recently announced she was one of the finalists for the Saveur blogger awards, it ‘s no surprise she was chosen out of 50,000 submissions! Jessica’s blog is always meticulously edited, beautifully designed and visually enticing. Jessica also happens to be incredibly kind, maybe it’s the Hawaiian roots, but you can always count on Jessica to be authentically involved with her readers and on her social media platforms. What do I mean by that? I mean she’s genuinely excited to hear from you and it shows, she takes time to answer comments and interact, it such a beautiful example of building a successful blog + community.

When visiting the Saveur site to cast my votes (unfortunately voting is now closed) I came upon some pretty noteworthy blogs that are filled with some serious inspiration if not serious good eats! I have links to everything below, I’ll make this post short because you are going to want to spend some time exploring over there. We hope you enjoy!

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Coco and Mingo

Saveur Blogger Awards

photo by jessica keala

Pinterest is great for design inspiration but sometimes you need more details especially when it comes to the fonts a designer chose. Thank goodness for the interwebs and its endless supply of good will–sharing is caring after all. ‘Fonts in use’ is a collaborative project where design is shared and the fonts used in the designs are disclosed, I am a little obsessed, I hope you will be too. They have an extensive archive of inspiration and everything is brilliantly categorized so it should be a breeze to locate a font for your next project.  It’s an excellent resource for any typophile, designer, font hoarder and the like. You can find the slab serif font used in the poster (it was originally created for Martha Stewart’s Living) and the hand-lettered font links below.

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Fonts in use

Slab serif font

Hand-lettered font

In our effort to maintain transparency and show our process as a concrete example I thought I would tackle this little subject of branding vs. brand identity. I have mentioned before that in my ‘real’ life what I do is branding/brand direction. Since my babe has arrived I haven’t been taking on many projects because it is an intense process and I don’t have the time right now. It is something that is always on the forefront of my mind though and I am very happy that we have been able to utilize this skill set in even a small way in our Foto Rx business (there’s a cheeky medical theme that I hope has been obvious). I think it has really set a tone and framework to come up with brilliant ideas with the always brilliant Michelle, such as this ‘eye chart’ that she designed for our ‘shop doc’s’ (get it ‘doc’s’?) I have to say I thought it was pure genius on Michelle’s part. I did want to speak to the concept of branding versus identity today, because I think that as branding becomes more part of the every day vernacular it seems to be losing it’s meaning and is being used to describe brand identity (logo’s/packaging). This quote from brand guru/modern marketing Godfather Seth Godin really hits the nail on the head:

Spend 10,000 times as much time and money on your brand as you spend on your logo.

Your logo is a referent, a symbol, a reminder of your brand.

But your brand is a story, a set of emotions and expectations and a stand-in for how we think and feel about what you do.

I think defining brand as ‘your story’ is an accessible way to go about building your brand (whether it be a physical product, a blog, your services). There’s much intensity that goes into creating a brand, the visuals are only one aspect (and yes, I believe they play a very, very important role) but there’s also knowing your market. Do you know who your audience is? Hint it can’t be everyone in the world. Try smaller strokes when defining who you want to reach. Michelle and I repeat ‘focus’ often, we like the word for it’s double entendre but it has helped us really hone in on our brand and our potential clients. When starting a business it’s so hard to get in the frame of mind of ‘big picture’, especially with the immediacy of the internet, you could easily create a buzz, but the idea here (we hope) is to maintain that excitement and sustain that desire for your brand. So ‘focus’, a nice one word mantra.

I hope this has helped anyone that is either in the nascent stages of building their new business or even those that may be feeling like they are floundering with their existing one and wondering why they aren’t as successful as maybe someone with a similar business model. You can do this, we believe in you! Do you need to hire a big brand consultant to get you there? Probably not for a small part-time business, there are plenty of great free resources available at your fingertips on this subject on the interwebs. I highly suggest any of Seth Godin’s books, I can’t stress enough though how important it is to do a little research on this subject if you do want to build a successful brand (and I do believe it’s possible).

If you have any questions, leave them in the comments, I am happy to help!

P.S. This ‘Shop doc’s’ set was originally given away for free when you signed up for our mailing list in March. Every month we launch a new free set. If you want some free premium Photoshop actions than we highly suggest you join the club here.