Holyoke Medical Center ad series

These are two recent Desert with the Docs ads for Holyoke Medical Center. We created the spot art as well as the design and production.

 

Greener packaging for Brooks Williams

We designed Blues & Ballads a few years ago for Brooks Williams. When it came time to re-order he wanted to move away from the standard plastic jewel case. This package is by OasisCD and is called the “No-corners-cut wallet.” We were able to use all of the original elements from the tray card and booklet to create a new layout. This type of packaging is also lighter for a traveling musician to lug around from gig to gig.  www.BrooksWilliams.com

 

Happy Halloween

FOR HALLOWEEN we’ve done a few cards for our Zazzle shop. This first one features some of the bassets we have known celebrating Howl-o-ween. Marty our resident basset is on the front left wearing himself as a mask. Behind him is Topher as Topher. He was a true tank that stayed with us as a foster rescue. Bottom right is Rosco, Marty’s predecessor. But we can’t remember whose mask he is wearing. This was all done in Photoshop from digital photos.

This Halloween card was created from a photo we found in an old photo album we bought at a yard sale when we lived in Denver. The amazing coincidence is that the original family that took the photos lived near Springfield MA. We can’t be sure but this photo was probably taken there. The inside has a quote from Poe.

 

The Hampden Occasional on Facebook

A few months ago we began using Facebook to find old friends and to keep connected with other members of the basset hound rescue we work with. We realized that there was no easy way to find our next door neighbors. Sure we could go next door but what’s the fun in that. And since Kathy and I are actually introverts Facebook seemed like the best way to go. So we created a Facebook ‘group’ called 01036: The Hampden Occasional. We put the zip code in the title because there are several Hampdens out there from England to Australia. So it’s easier to find. We searched profiles for folks that listed Hampden as there hometown and began contacting them. Unfortunately the Facebook police felt we were spamming and wanted us to buy an ad instead. But from the people we did contact the group has grown to over 200 members as of now. We have also used it to message everyone to vote on an upcoming school ballot.

Times article about Hampden Occasional facebook group The Wilbraham-Hampden Times wrote a nice article about us and the membership jumped further. We now have members from as far away as Japan with memories of their old home town and friends and neighbors are uploading Hampden photos. So it has been fun seeing all the people we still don’t know. We designed bumper stickers and a coffee mug that we are selling on our Zazzle store as well.

 

Website design for johnlehndorff.com

We have been working on JohnLehndorff.com my brother’s new website . This is an early version of his home page and his blog called Nibbles here on wordpress. John was the restaurant critic for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver until it closed and the food editor for the Boulder Daily Camera before that. Now he is writing about food and dining as well as his love for acoustic music. Food and music have always gone together well.

 

Marty wins a costume contest

Marty, our basset hound, recently won a costume contest at Woofstock, the basset hound gathering that is held each year in Massachusetts. It benefits the work of New England Basset Hound Rescue. We have volunteered our design services and were a foster home to several traveling bassets. Mart was dressed as Emilio Ear Hart, the famous aviator. The costume was spray painted cardboard, glue and duct tape.

 

Kohl Construction building sign

We recently designed this office building sign for Kohl Construction Company, a builder and developer in the Pioneer Valley. The sign evolved from a job-site sign design we completed for their Amherst Hills project. The sign design is slowly becoming their logo as well. Fabrication was done by FastSigns, West Springfield, MA.

 

Family History ad for Holyoke Medical Center

This is a recent ad for the Desert with the Docs series at Holyoke Medical Center. The two-part program was developed to help people gather the right family health information to present to their doctors.

The first part discussed what information was relevant. People received a form and came back for the second session with it filled out. We illustrated this ad with type representing the labels that might be on a patient’s medical chart.

 

The Little Spinner by Janet Bates

The Little Spinner is a new compact disc project by Janet Bates, a singer-songwriter and activist from Oregon. The title song was inspired by a photograph by Lewis Hine called Anaemic little spinner in North Pownal Cotton Mill. Hine was a photographer who traveled around documenting children at work in places such as cotton mills, coal mines, and clothing factories. He was a sociologist as well as a photographer, and he used his camera as a tool for social reform. Hine’s incredible photographs were instrumental in passing the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, the first to set federal standards for child labor. Hine was one of the photographers that made me interested in becoming a photojournalist. Although I left that field to pursue art and design that world view will always be important to me.

Janet was referred to us by Tracy Grammer, a great singer-songwriter we have worked with. As we began to work on the liner notes we in turn recommended that Janet use  Tracy to help edit and proofread the text. Then as the project developed Tracy and Jim Henry added backing vocals and other instrumentation to the songs.

The last page of the booklet is devoted to Janet’s personal story about her battle with endometrial cancer. She included a photo of her in the midst of chemo without hair and maintains a blog to help people learn more.

“I started a blog at the beginning of all of this
as a means of keeping my friends and family
informed as to how I was doing. It has evolved
into something much greater than that. I am a
physician, and given the current health care
crisis, I feel people need as much information
as possible to successfully navigate the system.
So what I have done is to explain, in laymen’s
terms, every step of the process. Cancer has
become such an epidemic in recent years
that there are few untouched by it. Knowing
more about what friends and family are going
through is helpful. My blog can be found at:
www.janetbates.blogspot.com”

Janet’s website is www.janetbates.com

 

New basset items available

These are a few of the new basset hound photoshop illustrations we have done and used on cards and a tote bag. They are available at our Zazzle shop. Another tote bag for Woofstock has been selling well. All proceeds from that product will go to benefit New England Basset Hound Rescue.

 

New campaign for Stroller-Mow

New logo and ad designs for Stroller-Mow

We have begun working on new materials for Stroller-Mow. It is a combination lawn mower and stroller for children that is being reintroduced by Schein-Witz. The old ads and imaging were classic.

They needed updating but they didn’t want to lose their Popular Mechanics retro vibe. They are hoping to get distribution through independent children’s hardware shops.

Their old television spot.

 

Outpatient Services brochure for Butler Hospital

This is a new brochure we created for Outpatient Services at Butler Hospital in Providence. All of these brochures are printed in-house. We received a wonderful compliment from Ernie Pascale, Manager of Care New England Printing Services, :

I have to tell you that your work is by far the best I have ever seen. Your files are super clean with absolutely no extraneous crap attached to it. I have been in the Graphic Arts field for 37 years now and your work is the best to work with, from a printers standpoint, I have ever seen.
When we receive your files my pre-press person has very little to do except send the file to the imagesetter…period. Thank you for such good communications and understanding of what we need to work with!!

 

Some new card designs

ere are a few new cards from our Zazzle store. We’ve been trying to do more greeting card deisgns as our schedule allows.

Sometimes the image finds the quote. We have an image that seems like it would make a nice card. This was a photo of an old garage in Florida that we kept on trying to use for compact disc covers. The quote:

Is fuel efficiency really what we need most desperately? I say that what we really need is a car that can be shot when it breaks down. -Russell Baker (1925 – )

This is a sign on the wall of an old hotel in Virginia City, NV. Hoss and Little Joe probably stayed there when they didn’t want to be at the Ponderosa. The quote is from Flip Wilson: When you’re hot, You’re hot. When you’re not, you’re not.

We have loads of flowers at the Hampden World Headquarters. Lots of weeds too. This was a photo of some of our Irises. Quote: Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place. -Zora Neale Hurston

This card uses one of Kathy’s mixed-media paintings as a card illustration. Actually the ‘media’ are my clothes – glued, gessoed and painted to a canvas. There is a quote inside by Mark Twain on fatherhood.

 

Schein-Witz merchandise

New faux-Pa® official merchandise

As part of the new father rental service by Schein-Witz we’ve created a new shirt and mug. They are available through ourzazzle shop.

 

Woofstock travel mug and tote bag

We’ve been involved with the New England Basset Hound Rescue for a few years now. Their big fundraising event is called Woofstock and it happens every September in Sturbridge MA. It’s a fun event for all dogs and people with basset hound costume contests, drag races and agility tests.

We used our Rocking Horse Graphics artwork and adapted it to a print, a tote bag and a travel mug available from our Zazzle shop and at the event. Our dog Marty will come if he sells enough tote bags. We need to get going on his costume, too.

 

The Hampden MA parade

Some personal things. Things that we do.  Or eat. Where we live.
Where we go. Or shop. Or basset hounds. Or general complaining.
_________________________

HAMPDEN is a small town in Western Massachusetts on the border with Connecticut and fairly close to Springfield. There are about 5000 people here besides Kathy and I. And Marty, our Basset. Here’s a link to the Wikipedia page about Hampden.

We have lived here on Main Street in an antique house for about 20 years. For many years we were pretty invisible. Our immediate neighbors always knew us but we kept a low profile. We had an article or two in the weekly papers, The East Longmeadow Reminder and the Hampden-Wilbraham Times about our design work and about my music.

Marty the Basset

But by and large our obscurity was preserved– until we started fostering basset hounds. We moved here from Denver with Max, our first adopted basset. He left us and a few years ago we adopted Rosco from New England Basset Hound Rescue. Then we volunteered with fostering so for a while we were known as the basset family. We were always seen walking or being walked by two or more living torpedoes pulling us down the street.

The parade goes right by our house

Anyway, the big event in Hampden every year is the Memorial Day Parade. People joke that it’s a 5 minute parade. Really it’s longer but it does go right by our porch every year and we decided to have Marty help film it.

Marty with the Basset-cam

So I attached a little Flip video camera to his harness and created a little film. This is a link to our Drool-Tube movie of the parade with Marty’s commentary. YouTube video There is also a film of Marty singing “This Land is Your Land” while I play the harmonica. That was done right after the parade.

 

Signature Sounds tote bags and mailing

Signature Sounds 15th Anniversary
postcard and tote bags

In addition to a new logo and other items to help celebrate Signatures 15th birthday we designed an ad and a postcard to help publicise a concert coming up. It will be part of the Green River Festival in Greenfield, MA on July 17th. We also designed two new tote bags that are available now in their Zazzle shop.

 

New father’s day promotion

We’ve been working with Schein-Witz to market some of their newest services and products. Just in time for father’s day they have started fauxPa.

Basically a fauxPa is like a surrogate father for those who need one. Not everyone has a dad like the one I had, but with fauxPa you will get birthday cards and the appreciation you always deserved. FauxPa providers are screened and trained to call you as much as you contract them to. They’ll write letters and you can be in a happy family photo. They also have a mother service called fauxMa but that is handled by another agency.

 

Latest ads for Holyoke Medical Center

These are two latest Desert with the Docs ads for Holyoke Medical Center. These are our spot illustrations as well. The woman in the Surgery ad has been with us for about ten years. She first appeared in Heart & Soul, calendars we did. We also used her in brochures and now in the ads.

Not surprisingly she has needed a few face-lifts over the years. The original woman always looked a little sad. So we nipped and tucked and gave her a touch of a smile. It’s still surgery. Can’t be that happy about it.

 

Signature Sounds Zazzle Store

We’ve had so much fun designing stuff for our Rocking Horse Graphics store we offered to setup a Zazzle store for Signature Sounds. We’re waiting for the orders to fly in. But there’s some really cool stuff, if you get a chance to look. We designed a banner using the 15th Anniversary logo we did combined with a radio beacon we had used for a flash banner for them.

We started with T-shirts to celebrate the anniversary, mugs and travel cups. But we’ve created a few embroidered pieces, a bumper sticker and a jacket. We’re working on other stuff too. Let us know what you think of it.

Signature Sounds Zazzle Store