I had the pleasure of creating the branding for PeaceLove's second annual Peace of Mind Speaker Series. The one-day storytelling event is all about sharing stories of creativity and mental health in an inviting and positive atmosphere. I used simple speech bubble shapes in an overlapping pattern to emphasize community & communication, and chose a color palette and textures that would tie in PeaceLove's artistic branding.
Here's a video of the event if you'd like to see more:
The Learning Garden is a home-like childcare center located in an old general store in a historic neighborhood of Warwick, RI. Children ages 6 weeks through 5 years grow and learn through play in a warm, nurturing environment. Featuring a large outdoor play area, The Learning Garden hopes to instill a love of nature in its students.
With these characteristics in mind, I created a logo that emphasizes learning, growth, and nature. Of the concepts I presented to Carla and Raquel, #3 was the winner. I'm so happy with how this illustrated logo turned out and wish The Learning Garden all the best!
“We knew how critical the logo for our daycare center would be in reflecting the look and feel of our brand to our customers but didn’t know where to begin. Working with Alli made us feel so much more confident. Alli made the process simple and designed an illustration that perfectly represented our center. She is professional, responsive, imaginative, easy to work with, and most importantly, has the market understanding to know how to translate our business’s brand into a logo that appeals to our customers.”
Home page design, BonitaBoyd.com
It was an honor to create this website for the extremely talented concert flutist Bonita Boyd. She performs all over the world, has recorded an impressive discography, and teaches at the Eastman School of Music. Bringing all of this together into one website really shows how passionate Bonita is, and how many lives she has touched! Congratulations on the new website, and all the best to you, Bonita!
CLIENT: Bonita Boyd
PROJECT: Website design, logo design, photo editing
RESOURCES: Powered by Squarespace. Fonts: St. Marie Thin, Source Sans Pro. Home page photo: courtesy of James Alby; all other photography provided by client.
“It is my great pleasure to recommend Alli Coate’s work in virtually every respect. She has designed a beautiful, sensitive, exciting, and imaginative website for me! Her design is absolutely marvelous- what she can do with the available materials to make them meaningful and striking is astonishing! Alli is also a delight to work with- organized, concerned and caring about her client’s needs and wishes, and a person of the utmost integrity. I am thrilled with her work!”
Interior page of BonitaBoyd.com
Inspired by my Lace Trees print, this new collection from my wedding shop is a fresh take on a winter theme. Bits of lace, an icy shade of blue, and cardinal red accents are threaded through the collection, which includes pretty details like a Save the Date, table numbers, coordinating address labels, favor tags, menus and more.
As with my other wedding collections, the Winter Lace Collection was dreamed up for brides looking for a cost-effective way to handcraft a beautiful wedding, and need a little help getting started. My design files are delivered as PDF files that can be printed wherever and at whatever quantity you'd like.
Take a look at the whole collection here!
Hope's Woodshop is a non-profit based in Rhode Island that is dedicated to giving handmade furniture to local families in need. When they asked me to create a logo combining a tree and the Providence skyline, I happily agreed and set pen to paper. I love drawing this little city!
The woodshop makes beautifully crafted and simple furniture, the kind you can imagine passing down for generations. I used a simple hand drawn line style for the logo to emphasize this; it's no-frills but with a friendly charm that comes from the slight imperfections of drawing by hand.
I also created an illustration in the same style that shows off the design and features of their first table.
I'm excited about what this organization is doing, and am wishing them all the best! Be sure to take a look and their website and facebook.
I designed this sign for a client who is opening a daycare that will focus on outdoor play in natural spaces. After playing around with a number of ideas, we decided to go with this version that focuses on typography with some playful illustrated elements scattered around. This design will be translated to a 12' wide x 6' high sign that will be mounted to the exterior of their new building.
Even though I've been keeping busy working on some exciting projects in the past several weeks, I haven't been able to share anything with you yet because everything is still in progress. So instead, I'll share a project I finished at my old job, a complete publication design for StyleWeek Northeast called "LOOK." It was a truly enjoyable process - I loved creating a showcase for these very talented designers and the entire team was great to work with. From the beginning, we knew we wanted the design to be clean and simple. The designers each had distinct styles that were all across the board, so the consistent page elements needed to be able to work with both bold and subtle aesthetics. Here are some shots of some of my favorite pages and details:
For the past three years, I have worked for Providence Media, a local company that publishes four regional monthly magazines as well as a couple annuals and a smattering of other projects throughout the year. It was my first job after graduating from RISD, and in January 2011 I was promoted to art director, an amazing opportunity that I am so thankful for. I've had the opportunity to collaborate with some great people, get a ton of experience, and make a LOT of magazines. This grid is missing a handful of covers and projects, but it still gives a good representation of everything we worked on. I could not have done this without my incredible team... going to miss them so much!
So, what's next? I've taken a position with PeaceLove Studios and will be helping them out with illustration/design. I'll also be devoting a lot more time to freelance work, including my new adventure alli coate weddings, and making more art & such for my etsy shop. I can't even tell you how excited I am - it still feels like a dream! Stay tuned, friends. :)
I recently teamed up with Tino Chow and Big New Ideas to create branding and some design pieces for Young Leaders Fellowship, a local non-profit we are involved with. We designed a logo, website, postcard and poster in record time!
I also had the pleasure of creating some illustrations for the website. I used a combination of tight pencil drawings and loose brushstrokes to convey the personality and spirit behind the organization.
In my line of work, I spend a lot of time figuring out how to visualize abstract ideas. Working out how to illustrate some of the programs offered by YLF was challenging, but in the end I was able to get the point across simply.
It's amazing how quickly a year can slip by, isn't it? On New Year's day I found myself trying to remember what has even happened over the past twelve months. The more I thought, the more I realized that 2011 was actually a great year. I don't usually talk too much about my personal life here on the blog, choosing to keep it more about what I'm working on, but I think I'll make an exception to do a little "2011 year in review"- hope you don't mind! I've condensed my entire year into one memorable event from each month. JANUARY
While I spend my nights, weekends, days off and lunch hours working on illustrations and making things, during the day I work for Providence Media, a publishing company here in RI. January marked my transition from assistant art director (which I started as in July '09) to art director. That month we were working on a cover story for February's issue of Providence Monthly, which was definitely the highlight of the month. We made paper cutout props and had a fun nautical-themed photo shoot. You can see the rest of the issue here.
FEBRUARY
In February, my family adopted Bonnie. This photo is from one of our first walks together. Look at that face!
MARCH
March was a quiet month; I was doing a lot of brainstorming and prep work. These are some of the images that were inspiring me, gathered on my digital inspiration board. (1. Michael Kenna, 2. Dermot Flynn, 3. Ed Ruscha, 4. modified version of this 1927 photo)
APRIL
The biggest project I worked on this year was Easter Encounter, basically a giant walk-through art installation created by 70 artists and volunteers from Renaissance Church that sought to communicate the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Being involved in the dreaming, construction and sharing of this was a humbling, exciting experience and was definitely a highlight of my year.
MAY May meant packing up and saying goodbye to a beautiful apartment. In the process I ended up going through a ton old paintings, as far back as when I was 5 years old, photographing each one before unceremoniously shoving it into a garbage bag. (Ouch!) It's okay, I saved my favorites.
JUNE Now you see why I had to get rid of so much! I'm learning to love living with less things. My new workstation holds the whittled-down essential tools that I need to make my art. (Even with less stuff, I still manage to make a huge mess.)
JULY
Every year I look forward to the Newport Folk Festival with much anticipation. It's a great mix of bands I already love and bands I fall in love with that weekend. Here's me, in my giant sun hat, with Rhode Island's famous Del's frozen lemonade. Mmmmm.
AUGUST
This year I turned 25, and the cake was delicious. I also got hurricane Irene the week of my birthday, which reminded me that, yes, I can survive without the internet.
SEPTEMBER Shortly after the hurricane, my family and I took a quick getaway to New Hampshire. My favorite memory from the trip was exploring a hiking trail that followed a cascading waterfall down the mountain. It was way more beautiful than my camera could capture, but this photo at least reminds me of it.
OCTOBER
The biggest milestone of the month was finishing the illustrations for my first children's book! Unfortunately, you can't see that yet. But the other exciting event of October was going to see The Civil Wars, my favorites. This was, hands down, my favorite concert ever.
NOVEMBER My mom makes a great Thanksgiving dinner, and this years' was no exception. But the highlight of the month, honestly, was getting to hang out with my family. Now that my siblings and I are all out on our own, I really treasure our time together.
DECEMBER
I had ten days off in December. Ten days.(I still can't believe it.) I spent a couple of those days working on getting a new series of paintings started, and it was bliss. Resting and making art? A perfect way to end 2011, if you ask me.
What was the highlight of your year?