Celebrating 15 Years of Subalpine Design

Happy Birthday to us… it’s hard to believe that Subalpine Design is 15 years old this year!

GROWING
It has been an incredible and dynamic journey that continues to amaze me in its evolution. When I began this business in partnership with my husband, I was working only in print design, full time for a fairly large, international company. The president of the company asked the graphics dept who wanted a side-job? I raised my hand and began to learn what it means to be self-employed and maintain an LLC.

MEASURING
Over the years, the work has ebbed and flowed depending on the projects and many other factors including networking, the economic climate, skill sets, and availability. Because I like to actually work with people in person, opportunities often opened by Subalpine Design became priorities to work for local retailers, businesses and non-profits or volunteering while Subalpine sat more idle. My husband’s participation has changed from year to year as well, but it is his full time employment that has afforded us the opportunity to experiment with Subalpine Design.

FORKS IN THE TRAIL
We thought I needed to branch more into web design in 2007 when a fellow designer introduced me to WordPress and everyone who wanted a logo was looking for a website, too. That demand hasn’t changed much. It was a challenge to develop custom WordPress theme designs and broaden our clientele outside of the local community. It wasn’t until 2016 when I started to realize how far off track I’d gone. I haven’t taken on a new web project since.

SURVEY & REORIENTATE
The landscape of web management was always beyond my capacity or desire to maintain, and mobile development has taken the lead. In the world of tech, you so quickly lose it if you don’t use it and continue to upgrade it. Defining my recent role on a software team, reaffirmed strengths in the design, layout, mock-up, wire-frame, UX side and moved me further away from the technical, developer side.

RETRACING MY STEPS
I have been slowly turning the boat around, so to speak, changing course to re-examine Subalpine’s roots in a way. In retrospect, I’ve found some interesting areas to critique. Subalpine Design hasn’t lived up to its greatest potential. Not that we do a bad job. I think you’ll find our clients more than satisfied and if anything desiring for us to expand our services.

A large part of the problem seems to be that I’ve focused too much on adapting for them and not applying that knowledge to Subalpine Design. This company often doesn’t get the attention it deserves because we’re fulfilling client needs and balancing it with personal ones. It wasn’t until 2010 when we launched this website. It’s not hard to get stuck or distracted, unable to establish any goal.

I can wear a lot of hats and it’s taken some experience to know which ones I should wear for other people. There’s one client who might like it if I morphed into a React developer, another an SEO specialist, everybody needs sys admins…

THE PATH AHEAD
I used to think I could do it all, if I desired. These days I realize as long as I am working for myself, it’s best to identify my strengths and pursue that which fuels my passion, while tempering it with a dose of reality. Our mission has always been to help people through DESIGN.

I’ve been carving out some personal time to research ideas that could take the business in a more artistic direction, while continuing to support design clients. I’ve been afraid in the past to tread the path I’m exploring now, and am still trying to figure out why. I think I’ve been skeptical of standing out in the ‘global’ market of the web and figuring out how to leverage the right tools without compromising my values, deciding if it’s worth the effort without knowing the return. At times I’ve been uninspired. It seems when I get an idea I want to nurture, other projects and priorities begin to appear. The next step begins by showcasing and continuing to refine skills in illustration and photography. We’ll see where Subalpine leads us next.

March 30, 2017February 13, 2023

Overhaul

I can never keep up but don’t stand still.

About the time I was ready to launch my last custom theme, Google started penalizing for mobile compatibility, and I wasn’t designing for mobile. That’s probably why I tend more towards creating child themes of core WordPress themes these days. When I saw the new twentyseventeen, I thought, “Finally! A theme I can work with.”

I converted the ole website over last weekend, and am currently updating content. Already added new examples for Red Silk Essentials, Alpine Leadership, and FUSJR.

And the sun sets on another design…

April 19, 2013February 13, 2023

Oops, Did it Again

So I have this bad habit of neglecting my website. If you read through my posts, you’ll see the trend. I get a bit done during the winter, but once spring arrives any extra time in front of the computer goes out the window—replaced mostly by gardening and travel.

I started writing this post last fall with a great idea to re-vamp my WordPress theme. Now it’s spring again, the revamp is still on the list, and I’ve trashed the original concept and am going in another new direction. Here’s a sneak peek into what’s on the drawing board:

In the meantime there have been a few client projects that are definitely overdue to get mentioned. I plan to add them to the portfolio and talk more about the designs with the launch of the new theme. Below are screenshots of websites created by Subalpine Design.

Ziggy Marley Organics

Sonrisas Foreign Language

Cindy Raleigh Fine Art

December 9, 2010October 17, 2020

Evolution of a Designer

I believe a designer’s portfolio should be reviewed and updated regularly to be sure it showcases their best work in the most succinct way possible. With the power of the web, a designer no longer has to tailor their portfolio in this fashion. I have still chosen to show my best and most relevant work in the portfolio section of my website, but in this blog section I can talk about ALL of my work. I think it’s a good way to reflect on how my skills have evolved.

I thought the first ‘project’ I should showcase in this fashion, should be some of my works from my time at Parelli. I worked for Parelli from 2002-2007. These designs end around 2005 when I took on more of a project manager role and did less designing. I do not include them in my current portfolio as there are few of the pieces that I feel are my best work; there was often so much content I wished we could have made the designs simpler; there were tons of projects with tight deadlines so not everything got the attention it deserved; and we worked collaboratively so there are few things I can take 100% credit for.

As I assembled these pieces to scan them, there were a few things I reflected upon:

I can see an evolution of my skills as well as the evolution of the company’s content/message/professionalism.
I remember now how ‘color-centric’ most of our designs were. We color coded everything.
There are a few designer tricks that I chuckled to myself about. I’ll point some of these out when I discuss the individual designs.
The real star–what made our designs stand out from the competitors–was the hundreds of photos we had at our fingertips from our talented photographer, Coco.

From VHS to DVD

I spent a lot of time at the beginning just learning what the company was all about and learning more about design in general. These VHS jackets, published in 2002, were some of the first projects I worked on. How they contrast against the DVD jacket that was part of the national ad campaign that we won an award for in 2005!

2003 Rocky Mountain Horse Expo

In 2003 Parelli supplied the headliners for this well known, regional horse expo held in Denver. Likewise, we designed the graphics for posters and tickets.

Newsletters

Until 2003, Parelli produced a quarterly newsletter for anyone on its mailing list. As we transitioned to a web-based newsletter, we prepared our subscribers by postcard. This transitioned to a weekly e-newsletter which was one of my first projects using html. Not knowing much code at the time, I relied on Dreamweaver to format E-News which was sent to our database as well as posted on our website.

On Tour

A large portion of our marketing was focused on promoting Pat & Linda’s tour around the US, mostly by using national and regional advertising and direct mail pieces. These are examples of some of the postcards we designed to promote the tour.

2004 Catalog

If there’s one piece of work I feel I can claim as my own and am most proud of from my time at Parelli, it is this catalog.

2005 Conference Program

The annual Conference at the Parelli ranch in Colorado was often the launching pad for new innovations and were well attended. The 2005 Conference was one of the first where the schedule was finalized enough in advance that we could play with the content and present it in a souvenir style program.

Happy Holidays

As mentioned in my post about The Logo, it was while taking photos for a Christmas mailer that I shot the picture for my logo. While I no longer have a copy of the artwork we used for the first mailer, I do have the ones from 2004 and 2005.