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04 March 2013

The Design Process + Using SketchPad


Hey there! I'm Melissa and I blog over at Design Eat Repeat, where I post my latest kitchen success & failures, free printables, design tips, and obsession with peanut butter. (True life.) I'm a soon-to-be college grad (3. More. Months) and when I'm not in class, I run my Graphic Design studio, Melissa Rose Design, where I work mainly with bloggers on rebranding, logo design, and custom blog designs.
Today, I'm going to share with you a behind-the-scenes look into how I created a recent blog designs from start to finish. I'm big into hand drawn illustrations and I love the opportunity to whip out my sketchpad when starting a design. I'm a big believer in sketching out designs in the beginning, in order to fully conceptualize what type of layout is appropriate for that individual blogger. 

I recently had the opportunity to work with Danielle over at Framed Frosting on her blog design/rebrand, and today I'm going to give you a little sneak peek at how I created it from sketchpad to computer!

Gorgeous blog design! via Framed Frosting
When Danielle first came to me, she had a lot of ideas on what she wanted it to look like. Whimsical, watercolor, polka dots, use of glittery gold, were a few things she had mentioned she liked. 

So I set off to find a way to bring all these different elements together into one unified design. Like most of my designs, I began sketching on paper. With design so much geared toward computers these days, it's important for me to take a step back and conceptualize before jumping into a design. Sketching can not only lead to other great ideas, but it can also be the first step to creating organic & natural typography and graphics. Many sheets of paper later, I had a few "winning" sketches that I wanted to work with. I scanned them into the computer, where I vectorized them, and worked with them from there.

Hand drawn floral accents
After laying down the "mood" of the design with the hand drawn elements, I then set off to incorporate watercolor into the design. I was unhappy with the watercolor images I was finding online, and knew that the only way to achieve the form, color, and quality I wanted was to produce it myself. So I whipped out my sophomore year watercolor set and began painting. I set off to achieve a shape that would fit well as a header and frame the top of the blog.

using a watercolor for a blog design
After producing the main graphic elements, the next step was to move to the computer. At this point, I sat down and figured out what types of fonts & colors would work well with the whimsical & organic feel I was trying to achieve. A mix of whimsical script & both clean cut serif and sans serif fonts turned out to be a great mix for a fun, young, and organic feel. Danielle had a certain color palette in mind, and after incorporating it throughout the design, everything came together! I loved working with Danielle to make her vision come to life and am so happy with how it turned out!






gorgeous design elements via Framed Frosting

>> Website: Melissa Rose Graphic Design Studio <<

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And that's how it all came to be! Thanks so much to Amy for inviting me to post today! I'd love for you to stop on by and take a look around! I work primarily with bloggers looking to take their blog to the next level & develop a professional web presence. I'd love to chat with you, so feel free to get in touch by clicking on the links above or visiting me at Melissa Rose Design!

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xo, amy