Living Life with Food

A friend of mine asked me to help her with her blog called “Living Life with Food.” The blog is essentially a cook book of recipes that she has either created, adapted or changed to fit into her family’s dietary preferences- whole grains, non-processed sugars and better dairy. The blog came after a number of requests from friends for Jenn to share her recipes and so the blog began. Living Life with Food has always been one of my favourite blogs to visit but the esthetics needed a little work.

A brand, or character was what the blog was truly lacking and so before I began, we set a few goals to help us in the process:

1. Make it fun and creative
2. Use strong colours
3. Keep it easy for readers to find recipes

1. Make it fun and creative

What better way to keep things fun than with a cartoon. Using Adobe Illustrator, I created a character for the blog that would both exemplify Jenn and also promote a fun feel. The Cook logo adds a flare on each page and is fun, flirty and funky.

2. Use strong colours

Jenn wanted strong and bold colours, no milky tones for her. After some back and forth, the colour scheme was chosen with ORANGE as the background. Wow!

3. Keep it accessible

Being a blog dedicated to recipes, we thought it would be a good idea to have a cookbook viewing option. Under the tab, “Cookbook” I created a way for readers to browse through the recipes by category. With a readership who may or may not be very online savvy, I decided it was important to make it very easy for readers to find what they are looking for and so mimicking the table of contents of a physical cookbook I made all recipes accessible by category. So if they want to look for desserts, they can click on the dessert link and all the dessert recipes are there. Easy as pie.

Working the Jenn was so much fun and after it was all said and done, the blog looks great and I’m hungry for some tasty Chocolate Nut Truffles!

Employer Appreciation

With the holidays coming up, I thought I would showcase some festive material that I created earlier this year. Though this work was not created for a Christmas event, it had a warm feel that I think is fitting for the season.

Last year I was able to volunteer with my husband’s student association, HR@Niagara, to do some desktop publishing. The student run club put on an employers appreciation dinner where all employers of their internship program where invited to a formal dinner at a local restaurant. The event aimed to show the students’ gratitude to the employers for the opportunities they gave them. HR@Niagara asked if I would be willing to help with the invitations, tickets and name badges. I agreed without hesitation.

HR@Niagara was looking for an invitation that looked professional, elegant and inviting. They wanted the text to be concise, their logo to be prominent and the images to be festive. Below are the final results of my work.

the invitation that was sent via email

the ticket that was sent to all attending guests

an example of the name badge that was made for each guest

The event was a smashing success.

Women4Women

This past month I have been working on some communication tools for Women4Women, located in St. Catharines, Ontario. Women4Women is a small community-grounded outreach that provides a safe place for women of the Queenston Street Community to gather, exchange ideas, emotions and their lives. It is an incredible centre offering a wide variety of services and programs on a weekly basis. Women4Women is a truly inspiring place and so I was more than happy to volunteer my time in helping to spread the word about the work they are doing.

The first communication tool that I created was a three-fold information brochure. Being a grass-root organization, Women4Women needed a tool that they could hand out to community contacts, potential partners and funders. The objective was to give readers an idea of what Women4Women is, in as few words as possible. The director of Women4Women’s philosophy is “a picture says a thousand words” and so the focus of this brochure was the faces of Women4Women.

Created using Adobe InDesign

The other tool that was requested was a new website. Women4Women has had a website for a couple of years, however the woman who was running the website moved to a new community and was unable to maintain the old site. Women4Women’s director took this opportunity to create a new website and asked for my help.

Some requirements for the site were a)it need to be free b)accessible by multiple administrators c)easy to edit and update d)very user friendly as the main administrator has zero web development experience and e) simple and clean. I decided to go with Blogger as my host as it met all my requirements. Using the already established brand, I created a simple, clean and easily managed website/blog for the group. The community administrator can now go in, make additions, on their own, while still feeling good about the end product. I am pleased to launch www.w4w-queenston.blogspot.com.

Program Logo

Recently I was asked to help develop the logo for a regional program funded in part by the United Way of St. Catharines and Niagara- After School Matters. The program offers after school programming for kids in under privileged neighbourhoods. My task was to create a logo that was simple, clean, recognizable and transferrable to other mediums.

Community Event Flyer

I had the privilege of helping a local residents group in promoting their annual fundraiser. I created this poster to distribute throughout the community, in hopes to raise awareness about the event and in turn raise some funds for a very worthy cause.

Hidden Tapestry Project

In one of the communities that I was working in, a community project was suggested: a community mural project. Working along side community partners, residents and students, the project was forged. As we moved forward I decided that a brand and a name would be helpful for moving the project forward. The project was entitled the Hidden Tapestry Project and the following brand and communication tools were used throughout the development of the project.

Logo

Meeting Flyer

Meeting Poster

Program Ad

While I was in College, one of our assignments was to create an advertisement for our program.

Information Brochure

During our municipal elections this past fall, I noticed a huge need within the communities I was working in, for information about the election; information about the candidates that were running, where to vote, and why citizens should vote. I decided to create a information brochure that went out to hundreds of homes to inform residents of the importance of municipal elections and how they could participate. Here is an example of one of the three-fold brochures that I created.