I’ve taken a full-time, permanent role at Untangle now as Vice President, Sales & Marketing. It’s been a great ride for the last 7 months, and I’m very happy to be part of such an amazing team. I haven’t worked with such a talented group since Zing.com in the 90s. Yay!

I rolled out a new home page, tagline, positioning and registration/download process this week. My role is hands-on, so this is my design. So far, positive feedback. :)

I started a long-term consulting position at Untangle, Inc. as Director, Web Marketing in December of 2010. I’m pleased to report that I’ve settled in and have truly enjoyed working with the team at this fast-paced start-up. My focus is to stabilize the web site from a development and production standpoint while ramping up our online marketing activities including a new email newsletter, an enhanced presence on IT sites,  and developing various advertising campaigns. I’m also looking at enhancing our social media and community building activities, as well as attacking search engine optimization. The image above is a new design I did to split-test for the home page. Plenty to do!

Here’s a quick identity project that I did for a local bakery. The owner was looking for something fun, colorful and approachable and had a reference image for me to start with. She was looking for an illustration-style logo that would work at scale on bakery boxes. I did the whole thing as a vector drawing in Illustrator.

Just completed a back-end stabilization project for parent & kid media site Red Tricycle. They needed help with their WordPress install, plugins, forms and overall site performance. I also did a mock-up of some navigation changes as a first step towards a site redesign.

I had the idea for the abstract dot curve in my mind when I began. I was thinking about using a spiral shape with dots increasing in size to suggest the idea of moving from the past to the future. I wanted to do something less literal than a family tree to suggest genealogy and the relationship of past and present.

I also wanted to have a strong contrast between the “y” letterform and the word “curious” to make the logo readable, even in black-and-white. I didn’t feel like a color contrast was enough.

This is the end result.

Before:

After:

I will have to do the CSS and image slicing once more of the content is finalized, but it’s fun to already have a sense of what the sites are going to look like. It was also fun to work on such disparate sites right after each other. The feel couldn’t be more different. :)

I’ve been working on a number of creative projects recently. In addition to my amigurumi crochet blog and store, I have also started selling jewelry that I’ve been making. I started making jewelry when I was in junior high and high school, then set it aside until about 2003 when I began making a few items for myself and for friends. I recently picked up the hobby again and am greatly enjoying it.

My line, Left Bank, is carried by Coupa Cosas in Palo Alto, CA and Renegade Handmade in Chicago. It’s a fun mix of vintage and modern elements. You can see my portfolio on my blog.

After finishing a couple of freelance projects, I had the opportunity to do a logo for my sister’s new handmade jewelry business, Jane & Josephine. She has a great post on her blog with pictures from each step of the design process. You can see all of the comps that I gave her, as well as the final product.

Check out her portfolio as well; prices are available upon request from Jane & Josephine.