SALTY POSTERS

Hello my friends. Check out some of my most recent poster work.

QUOTES by and about Graphic Designers

"Life beats down and crushes the soul, and art reminds you that you have one."

Stella Adler

"A great trademark is appropriate, dynamic, distinctive, memorable and unique."

Primo Angeli

"The first mistake of Art is to assume that it's serious."

Lester Bangs

"To draw you must close your eyes and sing."

Pablo Picasso

"You can't polish a turd"

David Reddig

"Genius ain't nothing more than elegant common sense."

Josh Billings

THE LATEST DESIGN BY SALTY

Hey everyone out there. I just wanted to show you some of my most recent work. Scroll down and take a look.

The ad above was designed for acmeclimbing.com. It was published in Urban Climber magazine as a spread. HAVE A GREAT DAY!

Logo design for Framework Destination Management.

54 page black and white catalog design for Magic Geek Inc.

Ad design for Mountain Goat Outfitters.

DVD Packaging Design for jugglingstore.com

SALTY IS IN HOW MAGAZINE

Salty is excited to announce that two designs were recently published in HOW Magazine's Self Promotion Design Annual. The Gravity Anarchy catalog and the Long Story Short Coffee business card. They could be found on page 67 in Octobers edition. This is huge for Salty, it isn't often that you see work from this area recognized at this level. The fight for good design continues.

SALTY ON ARTWALK

Wanted to remind everyone that Salty will be on Artwalk Friday August 8 from 5-8pm. Come on by 206 3rd Street in CDA.

A DAYS WORK

Silver Mountain has a mascot. Why? To appeal to the kids, maybe. To be just like everyone else, more likely. It's none of our business... well, until they insist on it become a part of advertising for the new waterpark. 

So, what should we do with Mo, the moose, so he is a useful tool in promoting the park. In the first spot we decided to have him talking, something mascots rarely do, in a normal voice. Just a moose, telling it like it is. Response was favorable.

Take two. Now that the waterpark is open, we have the option to shoot in the park. Mo is back, this time walking the walk. We really wanted a shot of the moose wiping out on the flowrider surf wave. We figured people would sit up and take notice, and it would be funny. So we created a spot around that. And Silver signed off on it. There were some concessions made, as there always are, and they weakened the overall concept, as they always do (Not to say good ideas don't come from any source. It's just that a pure and simple idea always seems the most effective and when other people, especially a client wanting the hard sell, starts to convolute or complicate things, the results are usually sad and less effective.), but we got our wipeout.

The shot included is Jeff in the moose costume just doing his job. Going above and beyond like he always does. After taking a shot in the mouth on the first take, he was back up and ready for another take, which he did. Would have done another if we needed it. He works hard for his money.

We had a lot of friends and family come up that day for the shoot. You can see some video of them and the park here. Check out the video titled Silver Rapids Indoor Waterpark Now Open.

SUCCESS FEELS GOOD

Deanna, the owner and founder of ja*lu, stopped in the other day to have us shoot some new products for her website. She pedals all-organic baby goods; burp clothes, blankets, bibs, etc.

Her products are selling well and she has been picked up recently by 15 more online stores. We really dig Deanna and are really excited about her success. She has been a great client and it makes us happy to see small businesses succeed, especially during these tough times. 

A quote she shared with us from one of her happy customers makes us think we might be helping her move toward huge prosperity. It goes as follows:

"We received the package today! OMG! It is absolutely adorable. What fantastic packaging... fantastic product... everything is such a perfect package! - Audrey"

Right on! Client success and a plug for ourselves. More people should give us the chance to help them.

You too can shop ja*lu.

THE LATEST FARMERS MARKET POSTERS

They are some real beauties. This is the third year we have designed posters to support  the Downtown Farmers Market and the 2008 series continues the strong tradition. 

This year we implemented a creative exercise and we were curious to see how it would pan out. We did a series of three, each designed by a different designer with some common elements and a common theme. Jeff did one promoting food, Devin crafts and Katie music. The theme was masking. Taking patterns, textures or other images and confining them to a shape. 

They should be printed in the next week or two. Contact us to reserve your copies. I'm sure they will sell out quickly and be gone forever.

GROWING UP SALTY IN COEUR D"ALENE IDAHO

Starting a business has been one crazy endeavor. People have a whole lot of experience with it and tell all sorts of stories, but it's like becoming a parent, you can't really know until you're there.

I'm not going to blather on about what it's like being a business owner. What I'm going to hurl out at this point is some of the surprises and frustrations that have come along since we opened our doors a little over two years ago.

Choosing Coeur d'Alene to start in was more out convenience than anything else. We had a small office space already secured that was ridiculously affordable, Jeff and I were already working in town and we liked it here.

We knew that the type of business we wanted to build, one that didn't compromise on quality and fought for great design on all projects, would be tough in a smaller market, but we thought it could find a place here. There are people who have companies that would budget for this sort of thing, right? Yep, there are some. But most don't.

And they don't have to. There are plenty of places that will design logos or fliers, brochures and websites, ads and for literally nothing. At first I think to myself, well there is a need for that because some people just don't have the money to invest in a real solid brand or effective advertising. They need someone to help them. But that's just it. They are not helping them. These hack shops, publications and TV stations are not helping anyone, even themselves. The reason the world frowns upon a world inundated with advertising is because most of it is awful, insulting, repugnant. misleading and assaulting to the senses. It heaps up the awfulness so even quality work is rapidly rejected once it's recognized to be promoting something.

They create an unrealistic expectation that quality design doesn't need to cost anything. "Why use you?" Joe consumer asks, "when I can get a logo from RockinGrafX for 50 bucks?" or "The newspaper will design my ad for free. How much do you charge!?" So go to them and heap up more unrecycleable garbage the landfill I think in a moment of anger. And then I simply get sad. There are so many good designers out there, a lot of great little companies, some bigger ones too, that struggle and fail simply because the industry has been depleted of validity by ignorant and low-balling hooligans.

We earn awards, but we really want is to earn money. To be able to have a business that pays the bills and allows us to do something we love. That we think we are good at. That really can benefit other business, the community and even the world.

So welcome to the Salty blog. It's all very spontaneous. Sometimes happy, sometimes angry. Sometime right, Occasionally wrong. Always honest.