What is Plush Cadillac Designs up to?
Please join Ecofficiency.org for Communities Helping Communities: Hope for Haiti, a benefit concert and art auction to bring relief to the people of Haiti. 100% of the proceeds will go directly to Doctors Without Borders. Entrance is only $15 and includes live performances by some of OC's best bands, an art auction, and complimentary Haitian hors d'oevres. Please come out and show your support Thursday, February 11th at the Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa. Looking forward to seeing you there!
Poster Design by Plush Cadillac Designs
I would like to extend a thank you and my appreciation to all of our clients as well as to our friends and contractors. Working with you made a tough year that much easier and that much more fun. Once again thank you very much.
I wish a Wonderful Holiday season to everyone and their families along with a Happy, Healthy, and Prosperous New Year!
Ecofficiency.org is a start-up non-profit group that Prax of PCD works with. The group promotes earth friendly sustainability options to local businesses in the Orange County area. Prax donates both his time and design services to the group as well as updating and maintaining their web site. The latest project was the design of the "Endless Summer Benefit Concert" poster.
The founders wanted a sort of retro-surf style feel to the poster, citing the classic "Endless Summer" movie poster, since it was being held just up the street in Costa Mesa and Marko Foam (they manufacture surfboard blanks) was one of the bigger sponsors. While we shied away from the great but somewhat overused and imitated poster image, we did keep the element of a surfer looking out toward the ocean. A muted natural color palette was used to go along with the groups "green" philosophy but to also mimic the colors of the ocean and earth. The muted colors and worn edges help give the poster that worn sun-bleached look. The headline font is one that mimics the hand drawn funky lettering that was used on the original posters of the day.
The result was that the poster exceeded the groups expectations and the event was a success! Working with this group is great and we can't wait for the next event.
Prax of PCD will once again be lending a design hand to the hard working team over at IMW. IMW's Art Director runs a tight ship and does not work with just any agency or designer, but she knows that she can count on us to deliver the goods. IMW is an ad/marketing agency located hear in Newport Beach and we do enjoy working with Peter and his tight knit group.
Plush Cadillac Designs will once again be working with Giovinezza Laser and Skin Care. We will be designing and rolling out a new website and monthly e-newsletter as well as helping with getting their marketing machine back on track. PCD will be consolidating the various domain names and outdated sites and bring everything to one place with a fresh design that fits in with their present marketing materials and overall look.
Prax will be working again with the very cool team over at Boost Mobile over the next couple of weeks to help them roll out the ads for an upcoming national campaign. The team and atmosphere over at Boost is very creative and puts out some really good work.
Boost Mobile is a division of Sprint Corporation that offers wireless phones and services with no contracts, credit checks or activation fees. Boost is among the most popular prepaid wireless brands in the U.S. and has approximately four million customers.
In a follow up to their successful first book "Caffeine for the Creative Mind" Stefan Mumaw and Wendy Lee Oldfield have come out with a new book "Caffeine for the Creative Team" in which yours truly was quoted in. Stefan had approached several members of the HOW design forum to contribute thoughts and ideas about how having a virtual team has been helpful to their own creative process. The book features 200 creative exercises and is a great inspirational tool for any creative or in-house design team. The book can be found at most major book store chains or at Amazon.com
It was a busy January that spilled over into February but after almost two months of the site being down and working with some great clients, time was found and Plush Cadillac Designs V2.5 is up and running. While there are still some minor tweaks I would like to make it was decided that this was an instance where 90% of something was better then 100% of nothing.
The new site has abandoned being all flash in favor of a easy to update, change and maintain CSS format. Design wise, while having some characteristics of its predecessor, it is a lot cleaner with a slight edge and hopefully easier to navigate. Often as designers we are our own worst clients and I could have easily designed and redesigned this thing until the cows came home but instead followed the age old advice of "keep it simple stupid".
One of the things that I hope to incorporate over the next few weeks is to have this news section built using a blog program such as Wordpress, that way it will allow the reader to post comments. The blog software will also make it easier to archive stories and newsletters.
At this point it is time for a burrito and some hot sauce and little break. Thanks and enjoy!
Please be sure to check out the PCD blog to view sketches, articles on design and general rantings and ravings about anything in-between.
