DIY design in Portland

This week in my design business class, we went to North Portland to talk to designer Lisa Jones about her business, Pigeon Toe. Lisa went to school for graphic design, and also studied fine arts. She learned pottery as a child and decided to try pottery again as a creative outlet. After she had been doing it for a few weeks, she realized that she had created a product line, and Pigeon Toe was born.

We went to visit their new space, which is a big warehouse where all of the wheel throwing, glazing and firing happens for all of their pottery. She gave us a tour, and we got to grill her with our questions about how to start a business.

Pigeon Toe is unique in that they do a large quantity of ceramics but still throw all of their ceramics on the wheel by hand. Because Lisa came to ceramics as a designer without years of experience in ceramics, Pigeon Toe has a unique aesthetic that is different from the weighty, bulky mugs and dark glazes that usually come with handmade pottery. Pigeon Toe is light, airy, delicate and unique.

Lisa also designed this table, which is in the consulting room of Pigeon Toe. I’m excited to see what this space will be like once they are all moved in. While we were there she encouraged us to create work that we’re passionate about, and she also said that although we may not use all of the skills we are learning in school in our jobs someday, it’s still valuable because it will help us figure out what we’re really supposed to be doing. I was inspired Lisa’s story because she did not take out a business loan or get any financing when she first started her business, she just made a line sheet and began asking retailers if they wanted to carry her products. When she could afford to, she expanded her business and bought new equipment. So inspiring!!!

–EHT 02/26/12

What do we know?

My illustration for this week’s opinion piece ‘What do we know’ all about women serving on the front lines in the military. People are concerned that women might compromise important military operations, or distract the men that they are with. To read the full article, visit PSU Vanguard.

-EHT 02/24/2012

Mindful Eating

My illustration for this week’s opinion piece about the way people eat on the go + never stop to enjoy a good meal anymore. I really enjoy cooking for people and spending a lot of time at mealtimes but it’s not always possible, and I notice that the times when I’m rushing through the day just eating whatever I can pick up on the way to class or work are the times when I don’t eat as healthy or feel as awake.

To read the article, visit PSU Vanguard
-EHT 02/22/12

Studio Olivine

This week in design business class, we went to Studio Olivine in SE Portland, a custom letterpress shop. She talked to us about starting a business, using credit cards as a small business owner, having employees and the dangers of letterpress machines. For marketing, she stressed putting samples of work in people’s hands as well as word of mouth, along with using social media to engage customers in the story of your business. She also took us on a tour of her new space, which is full of lovely letterpressed greeting cards, invitations and business cards. We also met her kitty, Emma, who loves PSU design students!

-EHT 02/16/12

Enat Kitchen – the best Ethiopian food in Portland

These past few weeks have been a blur as I have been super busy working on creating an identity system for Enat Kitchen as a part of Kate Bingaman-Burt’s 321 communication design class at PSU. We are working with MESO, an organization in town that helps small businesses in town become successful. We met with the clients and each student tried to create design solutions that they felt would benefit the companies the most.

Menbere showed me her kitchen, where she makes the food for Enat Kitchen fresh every day

I chose Enat because I was inspired by the owner’s story: she came to the US from Ethiopia and worked at a convenience store in North Portland for years to support her two children. She had the dream of opening a restaurant and so when the space across from the convenience store became vacant she asked the landlord every day to let her open a restaurant in the space. She didn’t have a lot of money to start a business but the landlord eventually caved and let her open the restaurant anyway. I really liked how she started with nothing and created something successful just by not giving up.

photo from Willamette Week

I drew a lot of design inspiration from the traditional crafts and artwork that I saw inside Enat Kitchen when I visited, and also from the vibrant, colorful, flavorful and healthy food that we enjoyed. She has all of her ingredients shipped from Ethiopia, except things like meat and produce which she buys locally. The food comes on a big plate with the meat, sauces and vegetables piled on top of injera bread, which is a kind of porous flat sourdough bread.

A few of the beautiful baskets found inside Enat Kitchen, which was full of inspiration.

When I first walked into Enat Kitchen, I was very inspired by the vibrant, beautiful colors and patterns that I saw everywhere in crafts and artwork from Ethiopia. I drew color, pattern and design inspiration from what I saw.

When I was thinking about how to brand Enat Kitchen, I tried to look at successful small businesses and restaurants, figure out what they are doing right and think about how I might be able to help Enat do those things for themselves. I tried help improve Enat’s image by creating something contemporary and bright that helps Enat stand apart from it’s competition. Enat is friendly, approachable, caring, simple, exciting, handmade and authentic, and I tried to create a design for them that would reflect that.

I also saw this project as a chance to experiment with using a sumi brush and ink to create unique patterns and shapes. The small icons, colors and patterns come together with the logo to create a flexible design that adapt to different applications.

Although the budget for the project is small, I decided to create this mood board for the way that I might treat the interior if they decided to redesign it in the future…

The best part of this project was exploring a different culture from my own and learning about helping restaurants and small businesses succeed. I found out from this project that I love branding- from doing the research to the final product. It was exciting to be able to present my ideas to a real client, because it made the project more meaningful.

The Rainbow Master

As a part of the design business class that I am taking this term with Jill Bliss, we are visiting various design studios, galleries and stores to pick professional brains about how they have became successful running their own businesses. Today we went to the Grass Hut Gallery in Chinatown, owned and curated by Bwana Spoons, the infamous creator of hundreds of strange toys, crazy paintings and wondrous drawings.

Bwana Spoons teaching us kids how to succeed and achieve our dreams

He talked about his life leading up to being able to work for himself, and I learned that he went to City College in San Francisco for one semester before getting on his skateboard instead one morning, riding into the sunrise and never looking back. He says it took him 20 years of working various day jobs (most of them related to toy manufacturing or distribution) before he was able to finally quit and begin working for himself. I learned a lot about how licensing is different from freelance or contract work, because the artist can collect royalties over time and can often negotiate being paid in product (in Bwana’s case, this means shoes, skateboards and toys!)

The Grass Hut is a magical wonderland filled with toys, comics, paintings, and awesome zines

His toys are limited edition, collectors items that are only produced small quantities- sometimes only 100 at a time- and many are hand painted by him, making them completely one-of-a-kind. Grass Hut was full of tons of independent comics and zines that I had never seen before. Everywhere I looked I found more inspiration!

(images from here)

I thought it was interesting that he said that his marketing strategy for years was “constant yet gentle harassing”– he just kept doing art, giving people zines and promos, finding the people at companies that were the decision-makers and calling/mailing stuff specifically to that person. He said that while the person might not remember you the first few times, if you keep meeting them and keep giving them promos and zines they will eventually remember who you are and that can lead to work someday. It was very inspiring to talk to Bwana Spoons about design business and marketing stuff and see how Grass Hut supports so many independent artists and freelancers. He also really inspired me by saying that one of his friends, Scrappers, worked at the Vanguard newspaper too!

-EHT 02/08/2012

Si Se Puede!

Here is my illustration for this week’s opinion piece about the unsettling statistics on the Latino population in Oregon…

To read the full article, visit PSU Vanguard.

-EHT 02/07/12

drowning in drop outs

Here is my illustration for this week’s opinion piece about highschool dropout rates in Oregon:

“Only 67 percent of high school students in Oregon graduate within four years. Portland faces a more daunting problem: only 59 percent of Portland high schoolers will graduate in four years. Even fewer of these are likely to pursue higher education; roughly half of high school drop outs will not attend universities or pursue other degrees. In other words, Portland has a real problem on its hands…”

When I was a teenager, highschool became a stressful, scary place for me. I was smart but my grades were terrible. Family problems, homelessness, moving, missed days, terrible grades and other issues combined and I almost fell through the cracks. I left home and came to Eugene to live with my sister and ended up in a really awesome program in Eugene that accelerated my highschool coursework and allowed me to go to school in the afternoons and evenings. They soon realized that I learn quickly in areas that I’m interested in (writing, literature and art of course) and they helped me to graduate early and start in community college, where I did really well. I’m really grateful for the teachers that took the time to help me succeed and not be another bad statistic.

To read the rest of the article, go here.

-EHT 02/04/12

Diversify this

My illustration for this week’s PSU Vanguard opinion piece about diversity in college. To read the article, visit PSU Vanguard. Enjoy!

–EHT 01/31/12

Letter to the editor

-EHT 01/28/12