Guess who moved to Denver? After living in Asheville, NC for 15 years, I decieded one year ago, I needed to move to Denver, like pronto. We put our house on the market in Asheville in April and sold it in four days. Then we found a new house in Denver, on the very last day, at the very last minute. I have been in the new house in West Washington Park for about seven months. The new hood is killer. I have gone to the mountains as often as I can. So far I checked out the project hello art festival, first friday, the Denver skate park, the Pearl Street Farmers Market and have had about 10 lark burger cheese sandwiches, with french fries.  I get vegetables delivered from Mile High Organics every other week. I found a gluten free salted carmel marker. DANGER.These candies are super addictive. I love this city!!

What people are saying about Alisa and her graphic deisgn work!

"Alisa was amazing to work with.  She had a great sense of our business and her design updated and invigorated us without forgetting the base we had already built.  She was also always on schedule, professional and kind. " - Julie Stehling, owner Early Girl Eatery

“I hired Alisa to work on my logo for my fair trade online business. She also designed my stationary. I find Alisa to be incredibly talented, easy to work with and trustworthy. She does what she says she's going to do and she does it very well. I would recommend her highly...she rocks!” -Lisa Zaslow, owner, Blue People Fair Trade

“I hired Alisa to redesign our non profit logo and other print pieces. It was a great job!  Alisa was great to work with and offered up information and training that saved us money going forward. Thanks so much!!!” - Janet Price-Ferrell, Executive Director of F.I.R.S.T.

“Alisa provides the exquisite combination of talent and kindness. We were very pleased with her work, and found it very easy to work with her to update our collateral over the years. I highly recommend her...” -David McConville, the elumenati

“Alisa designed my logo, website, and business cards. The results were far more than I could have imagined! She coordinated the design throughout, was incredibly creative, and always on schedule. She is a dream to work with and I would recommend her highly and without reservation to anyone for any design job. She's the best. period.” -Carol Post, writer & editor, Gearhart Editing

I decided last year on going for it in 2011. I am going for in it all aspects of my life, in my work, in my personal life, in my heart.

So, part of going for it in my work means entering some competitions against other designers to see where my work fits in. In the last couple of weeks, I have been searching for a few design contests to enter. I decided on the 2011 Print Regional Competition and a How Design book called Damn Good.

The contests are pretty different, but I thought I had a good chance at winning at least one or the other. The Print Design Annual will be out this fall. Print is pretty tough to get into, but I think I have a good shot. The requirements are simple, it has to be a real project that I produced in the last year. I chose my Kate the Rolfer Logo and Identity package. This project is so simple, yet so right on target for the client.

The Damn Good book contest is open to any design projects, the only requirement is that it was one your favorite projects. I entered my R.O. Frank's Aviation Company project. There a wonderful story about my research and I loved looking back to the 1890's for inspiration. I had so many great pieces to enter on this one. I submitted 6 different elements. Also, this project could be from any year and this project was from 2008 so that worked out great.

If you want to see what I entered into both competitions, check out my facebook fan page for Lucky Design 7. I posted a photo album of all the images I submitted for both the Damn Good book and for the Print Design Regional entry.  Enjoy!!

Early Girl Eatery is a farm-to-table restaurant, located in Downtown Asheville. Owners Julie and John Stehling are awesome people and they make amazing food. They were supporting local farmers and the slow food movement before it was cool. If you want good southern comfort food, with a farm-to- table twist, don't miss Early Girl! Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to re-design the early girl eatery website. I started the project by updating the Early Girl logo. Susan McBride, did the original illustration. She is an amazing local illustrator. I asked her opinion about if she liked the new direction and she did! It's a great logo so, I merely updated the color by changing black to brown. I also, colored the tomato red and added a blue oval with a red dotted line. The revised version is fresh while maintaining the original vision for the brand. Then I re-designed the website and the business cards. I used the light blue color from the original web site, then added red. I changed the blue to reflect more of a 1950's vibe. I used the wonderful vintage kitchen tools for the rollovers on the new website. I think these rollovers really make the site! The real site is live, click here to visit early girl eatery's new online home.

I got some great news last week. I am currently giving the Austin Grill brand, menu & website a makeover!! The company is based out of DC but has franchises all over the country.

This project got extra cool points as the design direction was (& I quote) "very hatch show print, Lucinda Williams, vintage western inspired!" Can you say perfect fit for a client and designer? Check out what the site looks like now. Check out what the site looks like now.
Austin Grill Website

Now go to my blog & see what I am cooking up for the new direction.
Austin Grill Blog Post

The small measure blog is the brain child of Ashley English. She has written a wondeful series of books, entitled "Homemade Living," and will begin work on another book in early 2011. Her books cover topics like keeping chickens, canning & preserving, making your own cheese and keeping bees. The books are killer teaching tools and a great resource for each subject. I designed the current logo awhile back and now I am in the process of re-designing the blog layout. Ashley also hosts a weekly column every Friday on Design*Sponge. I am lucky to call her one my close friends. She is big time, check her out. Click here: small measure blog.

One of my favorite recent projects was for the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project. I was asked to create a Farm Business Plan template in InDesign. Then, their in-house design folks could layout the ever-changing information. They print out the document in house and pass out to local farmers at all sorts of education classes. The end result looks and works great. Check it out here. Farm Business Tools Project