I'm really excited about some of the projects I've got going on right now.  ceciliatan has successfully funded her Kickstarter  campaign to create a printed omnibus edition of her Daron's Guitar Chronicles, and I'm doing the cover and book design.  We've got a first draft that I'm really excited about -- hope to have a more final version to show off here soon.

But moo.com has been having contests to design business cards for fictitious people; the first one was Zeus, and there were some really fun entries.  So when the announced a new contest yesterday to design a card for the Tooth Fairy, I couldn't resist.  The winner gets $300 plus $100 to spend at moo, so keep your fingers crossed for me!
( Wanna see? )

Here are the wedding invitations I designed for Briavael O'Reilly and Nicole Pashka. They wanted the invites to look like carnival tickets, so I drew from my extensive collection of vintage woodtype fonts to create something with a fun old-time feel. The final invitations were 9" x 4", designed to fit into standard envelopes to keep costs down, while still looking like a ticket. I suggested using string-tied policy envelopes, with the flap on the short side, to add some extra flair for mailing.
( See the image )

muffyjo suggested I write something for The Margaret Ghost blog about the process of updating the art for the new production -- I'm posting it here as well for your convenience.

When I first designed the art for Theatre@First’s 2006 production of The Margaret Ghost, we were still a very young theatre company, and all of our materials were photocopied at someone’s office. All of our promotional art at the time had to be in black and white, to copy clearly. We’ve since graduated to printing in color, so I welcomed the chance to revisit the design and expand on it for this new production.

For the 2006 materials, the director and I had long talks about the play. We decided that the important things to emphasize were the humanity of the piece, including the fact that Margaret was a real woman, and her writing, which was such an important facet of her self-expression. We went through a number of rounds of possible fonts and quills, as you can see in the image on the side, before settling on the font Archive Petite Script, which brings to mind weathered writing from a quill pen, and a simple and less literal calligraphic flourish of a quill, positioned as if writing the title.


When it came time to update the art, I wanted to keep some consistency with the original, but add more depth and texture. To add to the sense of history, I decided to keep to literal physical objects. I looked through dozens of stock art photos of pens before finding a pen and ink set that grabbed me -- something utilitarian but with a sense of personality, and even a dash of femininity. We wanted to show a picure of the real-life Margaret, so I found an antique frame image to put it in, as if it were a miniature sitting on a desk.

For the background, I had hoped to find a sample of Margaret’s own writing to scan and use as a texture. When that failed, I took an excerpt from one of her books and typeset it in a vintage handwriting font, blurred it enough to not be distracting, and added some vintage paper behind it.

I decided to use a dark sepia brown for the type, and toned the pen set and frame to a dark bronze to match and create a more unified whole.


And there you have it! Same play, same message, but a very different look.

--Gilly Rosenthol, RosentholDesign.com

FYI, I've registered RosentholDesign.com and put up a web page with some samples of my work and testimonials from satisfied customers. So if you know of anyone who's looking to have some design work done, please feel free to point them there, or tell them to email gilly@RosentholDesign.com. Thanks!

(OK, link now fixed. Also, I had temporarily broken the lightbox feature; if you click on any of the images, a larger or expanded version should pop up. You can scroll through all the pictures on a page by either hitting "p" and "n" for "previous" and "next", or else just clicking on the right and left sides of the image. You can hit escape or click on the "close" link to get out of that.)

A book is an inherently satisfying object to hold in your hands, at least to me.  But to be holding a book that I actually designed myself -- well, believe it or not, it's actually even more exciting than holding one that I was published in.  (Of course, they misspelled my name that time; at least this time, I can make sure it's right!)

This is my first book, and it's a bound copy of the script for The Margaret Ghost, so the fact that it's a T@F project makes it even more special.  The ever-patient lillibet and I have spent a more hours than I care to count going over and over and over it, eleven rounds of revisions at last count, but I think it's really paid off -- it looks, well, professional!  I wish I could do more books, but sadly, breaking into publishing is really tough.  Still, having a sample to show off is a good start.

This is just the sample copy, the test pancake so to speak, so I have a few tweaks to make, but by the time the show rolls around, if not before, we should have copies for sale.  I can't wait for everyone to see them!  And the contents are pretty great, too; in addition to the script, the book contains an introduction and postscript by lillibet , and a paper by the playwright.  I think we're planning to sell them for $15, so bring money to the show! :)  And we'll probably also be selling them directly through lulu.com, although that will add some shipping costs.

I've been working on building up my freelance design practice lately, and I thought I'd show off the logos I just completed for the Somerville & Capitol Theatres. I really love those theatres, both as a performer and a patron, so it'll be extra fun to see my work representing them!

I'm definitely looking for more work; if you know anyone who might be looking for some print design, please do feel free to point them to my online portfolio at rosenthol.carbonmade.com

I'm really amused that the "Please, no tips" sign in Dunkin' Donuts was done in a font called Hobo.