Dries-y and Breezy

Do you ever feel like you’re stuck in a style rut? You know, skirt + blouse, pants + cardigan, jeans + tee, blahblahblah boring. I hate that. When I do feel that way, I look elsewhere for style inspiration–usually to my fellow bloggers or recent designer collections. I was procrastinating doing research and checking out some of my favorite blogs, when I came across a photo from Dries Van Noten‘s Spring 2010 collection. I immediately...

How to create a simple text logo

Reading this post on Before&After reminded me of something that’s been bugging me lately: bad logos. Look at number 5. Now look away quickly, then look again. Yep. Chalk it up to my typographic tendencies, but I’ve noticed that many solopreneurs and small business owners take one of two paths: Scenario 1: They get excited about their products and/or services and try to fit information about everything they can do into their logo, usually in...

Cincinnati Fashion Week wrap-up

The inaugural edition of Cincinnati Fashion Week ended on a high note last week, with a show for emerging designers at Suite at Blackfinn on Thursday and el grande finale (I like to mix French and Spanish—I call it Sprench*) fashion show Friday evening at the Hyatt. I attended an AIGA event about the future of design on Thursday evening (possibly more on that later), but I arrived at the fashion show just in time...

Kicking off Cincinnati Fashion Week

Monday marked the start of the very first Cincinnati Fashion Week, a 5-day extravaganza of parties and events designed to entertain and provide me with an excuse (finally!) to break out the Giuseppes. It’s also the week of article submission deadlines for the upcoming issue of Style Sample, so posting will either be very heavy (if I manage to get my ish together), or very light (if I collapse into a quivering mass of nerves),...

Free software services for productivity

I use a lot of free software as a service applications to do everything from create and manage documents, to publish Style Sample magazine. I love free stuff, so if it looks interesting and doesn’t cost money, I’ll try it!  Here are some of my favorites: Google Apps You can use Google Apps to create and manage documents, develop free websites, create embeddable forms, and if you own your own domain name, manage your email....