A year of scrapbooks

I made it a goal to do a monthly scrapbook page for each kiddo in 2011. Mission complete!

Finishing out a year of photo galleries

In November, putting together the winter issue of Gadsden Style + some vacation time = no photo gallery. But this month, I have two!

Papermaking at Gaston



Visit the Gadsden Times photo gallery here.

Traveling Tales



Visit the Gadsden Times photo gallery here.

(More galleries linked in this post.)

Love Without Boundaries' gift cards

LWB needed a redesign for their gift cards. We made one set to use year-round and a holiday set. A few examples:

And while we were at it, we re-did the memorial gift card, as well:

My favorite part of designing these cards is scrolling through the LWB photostream and trying to find an image that captures the viewer and conveys the heart of the program. (And of course I managed to work my daughter Zoe in one – via her preschool Christmas party!)

Comics header redesign

Years ago, I asked my executive editor if I could redesign the header on our then comics page. He said no, because they were printed out of house and we had no control over the header.

And now, about ten years later, he came back and said "hey, I need you to redesign the header for the comics page."

Do all projects come around in time?

Here was the design mine replaced (not the same one of yore that I wanted gone, though)...

CM Saunders book covers

After I worked with Christina on her law firm logo, I did a couple of book covers for her. My attempt was to give them a similar feel but for each to have its own personality — the author is the same but the story is different.

As an in-joke to self, I used one of the fonts that is core to the Gadsden Times print product (Miller Display) since Christina used to work on the copy desk.

Fire Bearer, Esquire is available for Kindle on Amazon.

Women in Small Business

October is Women's Small Business Month. My coworker Sarah Dudik set a goal to photograph and interview four of the (many!) women business owners downtown.

But October is also football season, and Sarah is rather busy shooting games. (And magazine assignments for the winter issue of Gadsden Style.) So, she recruited me to write the stories.

Then our editors decided to publish them on Saturdays and this October has five of those... so we expanded our series to cover five women who own businesses downtown.

First up was Michelle Bailey, owner of the fabric store Material Girls.

Photo by Sarah Dudik for The Gadsden Times

“I knew if I opened a business, it would be downtown,” she says.

Michelle is from Fayette. She fell in love with a Gadsden boy, Chad Bailey, while he was at the University of Alabama. They married, and Michelle moved to Gadsden, which is when she fell in love with the downtown district.

“It’s just beautiful — the trees, the sidewalks, the architecture,” she says.

Read the full story here.

Next, we visited Anna Heard at Jireh's Boutique & Gifts.

Photo by Sarah Dudik for The Gadsden Times

“I knew it would be more than just a place for people to shop,” she said. “We rejoice together. We laugh together. We celebrate together.

“It’s a girlfriend-family thing. Once they become a customer, they’re more like friends,” she said. “I’ve had some of my customers since day one. I’ve seen their children grow up. It’s hard to believe it’s been 16 years. It’s been fun.”

Full story here.

The middle of the month went to Tammy Harvey at The Coffee Well.

Photo by Sarah Dudik for The Gadsden Times

“There are no words to express how much I enjoy meeting the people,” she said. “I love what I do. I’m here most every day from open to close. I’m afraid I’m going to miss somebody.”

Before owning a coffeehouse, Tammy was a one-cup-a-day drinker.

“I still don’t drink it all day,” she said. “I like the taste. It’s a neutralizer. So many people like it. It’s a common ground, an equalizer. People feel more open in a place like this.”

Tammy's tale is here.

Next, we went to Janice Sherrell, owner of Remona's LaDiva Boutique.

Photo by Sarah Dudik for The Gadsden Times

“There was a dress I wanted from Ike Saks, and I hoped my grandmother would buy it for me,” she recalled. “But she said, ‘Janice, I just can’t.’ So I went to Alabama Fabric Store and got fabric and ribbon. I made a dress by hand and wore it to the junior prom.”

These days, Sherrell lends her hand to girls in need of a special outfit for their high school milestones.

Raveen Martin, Gadsden City High School’s homecoming queen, wore a red dress from Remona’s in the homecoming parade.

Read all about Remona's here.

And we wrapped the series with Inez Fambrough and her drapery and design center.

Photo by Sarah Dudik for The Gadsden Times

“I’m well past retirement age but have never even thought about it,” said Fambrough.

The drapery and design center opened in 1989, but Fambrough managed the Sears custom shop for 23 years before that.

“Sears still sends me business sometimes,” she said.

Full story here.

Glad to have this assignment in the bag!

Assignment adjacent

I snapped a photo of these "cheesewagons" on my way to a photo assignment this morning.

I was at Convention Hall to take photographs of the Message in the Bottle symposium hosted by Keep Etowah Beautiful. The assignment was timed so I'd be there for the "critter show," because it's fun to see kids react to bugs and such...



But I loved looking at all of the posters created by elementary school students.



Last week, I attended the Darden Rehabilitation awards luncheon and on my way out of the parking lot, a train passed in front of Back Forty Beer Company and I had just enough time to take this:



I posted a link to it on their Facebook page and they liked it, too. Here is their cropped and processed version:

Saunders Firm logo

A former Times coworker, Christina Saunders, is opening her law firm and needed a logo. I am honored that she came to me!

We used a swoopy S and peach accents to denote she's a gal and steady blues to convey her trustworthiness.

These are the initial mocks I sent her way:

Gadsden Style: Fall 2011 issue

The fall issue of Gadsden Style came out on Friday (a week late!) and I was so excited to have the final product in my hands. I think it’s our best issue yet.

Somehow, we ended with Too Much Content. A boon to our readers, a design conundrum for me. How to fit it all in and give everything its due?

On a couple of packages, I wished for more real estate to work with. Lisa Nail’s Arizona photos were spectacular and I really would have preferred four pages to showcase them, but I had to make do with three.

The James D. Martin package was a happy byproduct of little space. “There are how many photos with this story? And it’s how many inches long?”

My byline contributions to this issue were the Auburn and Alabama rooms. I considered myself neutral territory enough to write them both.

I am nerdily excited about the head and subhead of Jill’s story. I worked on that package on a day our editor Cyndi was not in the office and she is my Headline Guru. I sought the help of Kendra Carter, Auburn alum. She was like “maybe you could do a play on the Auburn creed in the subhead... you have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

Nope. But she sent me the creed and voila! Subhead!

I confessed to both Tom and Jill that I am a Bama fan in pretty much name (and the occasional crimson tee) alone. If I have to pick a team, I pick the Tide because my parents met at the University and without it, I would not exist. But I know less than nothing about football. Well, I know that a “field goal” is 3 points and that a touchdown is either 6 or 7 and may involve one team getting the ball to the other end of the field.

I was super excited that the magazine came out on Friday and the following day, I got to see Club TBLTT in action.

Find your issue now!

Birth announcement series

The first birth announcement I designed was for my son Ben.

My pal Kristie had her first son a few months later, and I designed the birth announcement for Elias. (Apparently I remembered to post it to Flickr but never blogged it.)

I forgot to post this in July. The cool thing is that after E was born, when I opened the file to put in his real stats, I only had to change the day and time. I had guessed his exact weight and length.

Fast forward to the fall of 2008 and I blogged about the original design for Jacob (Kristie's second son) but never revealed the actual design!



Also, since Jacob's name is now long-revealed, I can explain what I meant by:

Edward Asher is not the kid's name, by the way. That's the substitute for his real name, chosen for reasons probably only funny to me.

Jacob and Edward = dudes in the Twilight novels. Nathanael and Asher = dudes in the Anita Blake novels.

This year, Kristie went and had a girl. We went with a design reminiscent of the boys but with its own flavor. She is a girl, after all!

Mobile Dairy Classroom

My September photo gallery for GadsdenTimes.com turned out to be the Mobile Dairy Classroom.

This was at a local elementary school. The last time I was there, it was as a reporter to cover the principal being duct-taped to the wall. This time, I walked to the gym and asked "is this where the cow will be?"

"No, it'll be back there... you know what? Just follow this class coming out. That's where they're headed."

I know one student who goes to this school. And it happened to be her class on the way to meet Butterbean the Jersey cow.



This was a fun assignment. Cow! Kiddos. I ended up recognizing another girl, too. She and Zoe were daycare pals.



I like the lines in this one:



"My Skills Pay The Bills" is less troubling than "I’m too pretty to do homework so my brother has to do it for me."

Hey, did you know cows can pick their nose with their tongue?