Creative/Art Direction, Illustrations, Typography: Jess Kemp

A few weeks before my birthday a friend of mine, Amanda Meyncke, contacted me about helping her out with a project. That project was LaceyChabert.tumblr.com. It turns out Lacey and I are pretty close in age, her 30th birthday being the 30th of September and mine being the 2nd of October. She and Amanda had a great idea for Lacey to do 30 new things in 30 days (before her 30th). And aside from wanting the chance to work with both of them, I also couldn’t pass up such a perfect project for me. I worked up a design FAST (in two days) complete with custom typography.

It was a pretty fun project to work on. And I felt pretty awesome about turning out work so quickly that I was actually proud of. The first sketches I sent out (above) were approved in minutes! We went through a few different iterations until finding the right combinations of type.

Lacey’s goal of getting to all 30 things before her 30th didn’t quite go as planned (life gets in the way!). But she’s still going strong and is on Day 28 currently. make sure to check back in and see what she ends up doing for her 30th day. I’m curious to see what she does!

Creative/Art Direction, Illustrations, Typography: Jess Kemp
Web Programmer: Andrew Simone
Coordinator: Amanda Meyncke

After a little focussed research, we discovered that while there certainly is growth in that age group’s presence online – it still wasn’t focussed on future education. We decided that while the site itself should visually be geared towards the potential and current students, the tone of the site should still be aimed at parents.

Our final goal was to communicate WCHS’s mission, the way it felt to walk through the campus, and the value that a great social atmosphere can bring to a high school experience - the ethos of WCHS – to any viewer even if they only visited the home page. We wanted to make a site that utilized whimsy, hyper realism and truth in the right combinations to deliver an honest experience of what the school had to offer.  I believe we accomplished all of these goals and produced a campaign that is enjoyable to look at and honest in it’s claims.

What follows is first the website, it went live in September during a school kick-off event, and I heard the reactions were stellar. And after are images of the print collateral.

Visit my behance to see the printed pieces.

Project Lead: Brian Miller

Creative/Art Direction, Lead Design, Illustrations: Jess Kemp
Web Designer/Programmer: Tim Beardshear
Web Developer: Jimmy Lam

Copywriting: Jason Newell
Freelance Photographer: Laurel Dailey

They were looking for an interesting invite that wouldn’t cost them an arm and a leg to print. At the time, I was working at Biola and had access to the on-site print shop that did great digital work. So I decided to go that route. Carl had left the concept up to me, the only things he asked for were caricatures of himself and Ariel and the use of the wedding colors. So I set off to complete the first of his requests. He wanted himself drawn as a fox, and Ariel drawn as a bird. In hindsight, I don’t believe he actually asked for caricatures, he just wanted a fox and a bird used on the invite. I decided that they should resemble the bride and groom a bit.

I started by choose what illustration style to go with. Without a whole lot of insight into the style of the wedding (they weren’t that far along in planning yet) I decided to go with an illustration style that could work for a few styles. Borrowing from a foggy nostalgia of 60′s illustration (an era I did not technically live through, but grew up among it’s artifacts thanks to my grandparents fully furnished 1966 home never, ever changing) I sketched out two concepts.

I sent the sketches off to the couple and received an immediate response to the effect of, “yes! Love them!” Which left me, no doubt, in a state of shock. Not to say that my first round of sketches weren’t good – I’m just used to a more “hands on” approach when dealing with ANY client, let alone an about-to-be-married couple. If there’s anyone on the planet who has a plethora of un-focussed opinions and “likes” its a newly engaged bride. But so far, this was not the case.

Once I finished the next round of illustration refinements, I sent those off to yet ANOTHER punctual and resounding “yes! love!’ As so I moved on.

Something I forgot to mention is the fact that Carl, the groom, is my cousin. So, as I would hope you’d assume, I wanted this invite to be affordable – but AWESOME. So I devised a way to create an interesting invite, with minimal printing or assembly. The idea was to have a three panle card, scored twice and cut on the diagonal from one end to the other. I walked over to the print shop, and chatted with one of the printers there to see if what I was think would be possible. He was all game to try it out. So after explaining this idea to Carl & Ariel via email, I sent off the first official proof.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was, when they returned with oohs and ahhhs and one text edit. In my 9 years in the design industry – this. has. never. happened.

It might have been an understatement when I said this was the most pleasant working relationship I’d had to date. It was down right shocking.

So I made the one change and off to press we go! We ordered the envelopes online,  and I created a stamp to be used for the return address. And like all good couples this side of 2010, we used bakers twine to tie the whole thing together.

At the end of the day, these invites cost the couple about a dollar per invite. So I felt pretty good about that. And they felt pretty good about how it turned out.

Design & Illustrations Jess Kemp
Typography Lost Type Co-op 

The invites were printed by Norman’s Printery using their calendar concept; A flat card that “pops up” into a calendar that can sit on your desk. The couple wanted to create something memorable, that could be displayed about the home, to remind would-be-guests about the upcoming event without it being reduced to a flier sitting beneath a few coupons for bed, bath & beyond magneted on someones fridge. The illustrator I was planning to work with, MLE, had mentioned these calendars to me in an early conversation, and after the web portion of the project was complete – these cards floated back to the surface of my memory, and presented the best solution to accomplish all agendas.

I’ve worked with a different letterpress establishment in the past and was horribly disappointed with the quality of the work. So I was beyond overjoyed when I received the final product from Brian. It was quite obvious to me that these guys take a lot of time and perfected care in their service.

These days, being a print designer takes a lot of knowledge of a practice that is becoming more marginalized as time goes on. Everything is either cheaper and easier for “anyone to do” or it’s more specialized and takes more industry knowledge. Sadly, my early education wasn’t the greatest and was stuck in a instruction style that had worked for the previous 20 years – but was quickly being outpaced by web. I was taught in an environment that’s core curriculum was based on print, with web existing as more of a curiosity on the side than a real design practice. And this was 2004! So needless to say, the silver lining on my somewhat dated education was that I developed a love for print. And as a result, have worked in the medium quite religiously (pun intended, see previous employer). Now, as my interest is peaked more by the intersection of user experience and web design (and how it’s principles relate to product development) I find these occasional moments where I can dive deeply into my love of paper and process a true gift. And what makes that gift less a moment, and more of a prolonged “win” is when I find a partner in the industry that is as curious and precise about the outcome as I am. I’ve drunk the kool-aid, and will be a Norman’s Printery client as often as I can. The work is beautiful.

The rest of the invite was printed elsewhere. We needed to include a map and RSVP information, which we did on a separate card.  The envelopes were hand stamped and addressed. Everything was tied together with baker’s twine, as it IS the thing to do. And the bride included a sprig of lavender in each parcel.

The invite served as an alluring peek into a future day that would end, quite triumphantly – in one of the best weddings I’ve ever been to.

As an extra side project, MLE and I worked on a sub site for the couple that chronicled their engagement and then worked backwards to tell their story and ultimately ended in a “why are we getting married?” sort of manifesto. The bride asked me, somewhat at the last minute, if I could help with a program. What started as a simple layout project, quickly turned in to a extended print version (somewhat) of this sub site. MLE had crafted all of the illustrations used on the site, so it was easy to pull from those and use them again for this project. The bride proclaimed that this might be her “favorite piece we’d done yet!”

I’ve included a couple images of the sub site. You can visit the site by navigating to HowenMcBride.com and scrolling over the bulls-eye style graphic on the lower half. That’s where you will find The Chase. (or just go straight to http://howenmcbride.com/thechase/)

All Illustration penned by MLE
“The Chase” (and howenmcbride.com for that matter) programmed by Crow Norlander
Typography is almost all thanks to Lost Type Co-op
All else by Jess Kemp

Creative/Art Direction: Jess Kemp

I made the ratatouille we used for the shoot, and had it for dinner that night as well! It still stands as such a great memory of my last few days at Biola.

 Credits:

Creative/Art Direction: Jess Kemp
Lead Designer: Jeffrey Hiendarto
Typographer: John Choura Jr.
Photographer: Laurel Dailey 

I worked with a printer, Maskell Graphics to create this invite. They did an incredible job with this project and the tight turn around. I was amazed. Because of the thickness of the paper I wanted (120#) they had to created the invite a tad differently. They took two 60lb sheets of paper and foil stamped them with the artwork, then they glued them together and cut them down. It was so seamless and beautiful. Thanks Frank!

Creative/Art Direction: Jess Kemp
Printing: Maskell Graphics