d-WHOAH.com Newsletter February 18, 2009
Hello again!

After mentioning James Jean's postcard notebook a few times here or elsewhere on the site, I decided to go ahead and post it as well as some screenshots of a site I helped design for a shear provider awhile back.
1) ShearQuality.com Website Design
(found in the "play" section under "shear quality") 		2) James Jean XOXO
Postcard Notebook
(found in the "play" section under "xoxo")
This website for a start-up shear provider was challenging in that a lot of aspects of the business were still forming when I first signed on to the project. However, this gave me a lot of room in my art direction, where I had to match the client's masculine preferences with his largely feminine audience. Therefore, as a high end shear provider, I took inspiration from luxury jewelers such as Tiffany's as well as the sharp, clean edges of his products to inform the website interface. While the project eventually came to a halt due to issues with the manufacturer, I thought it worthwhile to post some screenshots of the designs for you to look at. I am a huge fan of the illustrator, James Jean, and when I found out that he was going to do a postcard notebook with Chronicle Books while I was still there, I jumped at the opportunity to take on the project.

Understandably, James Jean wanted tight control of the look of his entire notebook; so with this project I served more as an art director and editor. Together we selected the images that would be most appealing to his fanbase and I encouraged him to follow through on his designs in many of the smaller details, such as xoxo pattern on the back of the inside cover, and beginning his postcards with "x" so that it could read "xoxo" throughout. While trying to stay true to his designs as much as possible, I also made small adjustments where necessary so that the notebook would fit into the Chronicle Books' series as well.

You can check these pieces out at:

http://d-whoah.com

Hope you enjoyed these updates and thanks for all the feedback! Keep it coming!

With these last few finally up, I'm just about ready to begin the job-search process again, so if you come across any openings, holla!

-d*ro