a day with trustudio

If you've ever met Steve and Anne Truppe, of trustudio, then you know how fiery passionate they are about their work. You also know that if given the chance, they could spend hours expressing their appreciation for their craft, for art, and for others who are like them and are entrenched in what they do. I love when I get to see these two, because their passion is contagious, and usually rekindles whatever fires I have going on at the time. They bring an energy to their work and their environment that is electric. So when I was finally able to hire them to assist me in a branding shoot for my work, I just about squealed.

I wish that I could have made a time lapse video of Anne and Stephen at work, so that I could share the intense process of photography with the whole world. Because it IS intense. I think we were all exhausted by the end of the shoot! Photographers are such an integral part of branding, marketing, events, advertising...I could go on. I would say even more so for trustudio, because they focus on business storytelling and telling your WHY. They are meticulous with every detail, and because of their background in architecture, they have a heightened eye for design, lighting, texture, and composition.

Shooting my work with them was such an electrifying, emotional, involved experience and I feel so grateful to have such talented friends. I can't wait to show you what we've been working on, to reveal the full project to the world. I have such big plans!! There is still so much work to be done, but this has been such a rewarding and fulfilling project so far. A reveal is coming soon, I promise! 

In the meantime, here is a little sneak peek of MY version of my tools of the trade:

To Bring You Joy

Today, a very dear friend of mine is moving away. While I know that I will still see her, it won't be as often, and certainly not every day as I do now. I wanted to find a way to make her something that showed how much I care. I wanted this to be something she would find inspiring on her new journey.

In the end, I decided to make her a print incorporating all of the things that bring her Joy. I had been meaning to make it for her sooner, to give to her as a "just because" gift. I was sad that it had to be a "going away, I hope to see you soon" sort of present instead. Either way, I came up with a color palette to suit her nature and then went to town creating the rest. Using a silhouette illustration and various sizes of type, here is what I came up with:

{re:find Joy poster by ME!}

What do you think? I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. If I do any other variations on this in the future, I might play around with using different combinations of fonts. I like the idea of using several funky fonts together, but it just didn't seem right for this one.

Overall, I'm pretty jazzed. It's one of the first design pieces I've done in awhile that wasn't for work. It was a really satisfying project...I just hope she likes it! I'm considering making a few of them for the opening of my etsy shop if people seem to like it. I may even offer custom prints that can be specialized for each person.

We'll see how it goes! It feels wonderful to be doing some of my own artwork again. I can't wait to get to work on the other projects up my sleeve!