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.
