All posts by topbean

The Barn Raiser

The Barn Raiser is a celebration and auction for Washington Farmland Trust that honors members of that community and helps to support farmland in Washington state.

My brief for this project was to design a logo and brand that would be unique to this annual event but compliment the parent organizations brand. A traditional “Barn Raising” is a collective action in which the movement for local farmland is built by members of the community. This concept is such a strong metaphor for what this event is trying to accomplish, it made sense that the logo should depict a collaborative building of a barn.

Savor Snoqualmie Valley celebrates and promotes the local food and farms, arts and culture, heritage, outdoor activities, and independent businesses of the Snoqualmie Valley. Partnering with Carkeek Studios, we designed and developed their website that helps people to connect, learn about and explore the Snoqualmie Valley.

Interact and scroll with the live website below

Project Details

Savor Snoqualmie Valleys web site was designed to promote tourism in the Snoqualmie Valley. Much of content that is featured on the site is centered around venues and events that are connected and cross-referenced in blog posts, maps and itineraries, all encouraging visitors to explore this beautifully rich area. Itinerary pages are built in a way that the page editor can create a list of venues which auto-generate a map that is specific for that itinerary. Pages are designed for maximum usability on mobile screens in order to accommodate users who are actively using their phone in real time while they are exploring the region.

Visit the site ›

Developed by: Carkeek Studios

Functional Requirements

  • Custom WordPress theme
  • Responsive web pages
  • Mailchimp newsletter sign-up
  • Custom map with filters
  • Event calendar
  • Administration screens that allows for easy in-house updates
  • Blog

Partners in Print (PiP) brings people together by using old printing presses to amplify new voices, share knowledge, and spark creativity. PiP is the center of the universe for letterpress printing community in Seattle and beyond. An organization that is dear to my heart, it was a please helping them launch their website for the new organization.

Project Details

PiP has deep roots in Seattle and previous was the letterpress shop at the School of Visual Concepts (SVC) in Seattle. PiP was formed in 2021 and branched off from SVC, becoming its own organization. We provided consultation to help PiP determine the full scope of their project in order to support their program. Thanks to COVID, all classes and events are hosted online and offered to an international community. PiPs leadership team all require access to the admin screens so they can manage and update the site, so updating the back end had to be easily accessible.

Visit the website ›

Developed by: Carkeek Studios

Functional Requirements

  • Custom WordPress theme
  • Responsive web pages
  • Ecommerce/payment processing for online store and donation form
  • Class and event calendar with registration and payment
  • Mailchimp newsletter sign-up
  • Blog
  • Administration screens that allows for easy in-house updates
  • Pages meet web accessibility standards

Situated in the beautiful Skagit Valley which lies between Seattle, WA and Vancouver B.C., Harmony Fields is a family-run farm that produces artisan, farmstead sheeps milk cheese and grows WSDA certified 100% organic herbs. We were originally hired to redesign the website. Along the way, I ended up working on other projects, like packaging and marketing and communication materials, all which feature sheep, of course.

A postcard keepsake with photos of some of the best features of the farm.

Packaging for sheep cheese and yarn features a sheep icon I created which became the face of many farm made products. With nearly 10 different versions of the label in use for different products, color checking and cataloguing of press ready files help to keep printing quality consistent.

Dried herb bag labels. All product photos by Michelle Waite.

We launched a new website for the farm with a custom WordPress template. Matching the look and feel of packaing and other marketing and communication pieces, the website also sells products.

Interact and scroll with the live website below

Project Details

In addition to an updated look and feel and online shop, one of the primary asks by the client was for a better back-end experience that would make site updates easier to do, especially for ecommerce functionality. The website includes a blog that’s features tons of photos of adorable baby sheep, a shopping cart, events calendar, newsletter sign-up and mobile-friendly pages, all which make it easier for their customers and friends to learn more about the farm and purchase their products.

Visit the website ›

Developed by: Carkeek Studios

Functional Requirements

  • Custom WordPress theme
  • Responsive web pages
  • Woocommerce store
  • Events calendar
  • Mailchimp newsletter sign-up
  • Blog
  • Administration screens that allows for easy in-house updates

Cascade Bicycle Club is the the nation’s largest statewide bicycle organization. Powered by 15,000 members, it serves bike riders of all ages and abilities in the Puget Sound region and across Washington state. They host a myriad of famous biking events each year, with nearly 20K event participants in 2019 alone. My work with the Club initially focused on design of their monthly printed newsletter. Later I designed content for events and campaigns that would be adapted to a variety of print and digital assets. 

Custom illustration is often used for campaigns and events like auctions and breakfast fundraisers. This Major Taylor poster is one in a series that features information on African-American world champion cyclist Marshall “Major” Taylor. The Major Taylor Project empowers youth through bicycling.
Washington Bikes is an affiliated organization with the Club and in 2020, I developed a logo and  brand guidelines along with creative assets for their ‘Move Over’ campaign. The creative brief for this project specified that people represented in the brand artwork needed to represent a diverse group of people from different background and with different physical capabilities.

Infographics offer a more interesting, more visual way to explain stats for various programs.

Epiphany School

Epiphany School is an independent, non-parochial school serving Pre-K through Fifth Grade. I started working with Epiphany School in 2015 on a wide range of marketing and communication pieces where I was immediately able to help expand their brand look and feel.

Update is Epiphany School’s  biannual magazine which features 20+ pages of news, events, education programing, and once a year, their annual report. It is an opportunity for the school to connect with their large alumni audience and to reach new perspective families.  

Below are some featured spreads from various issues.

The Annual Fund provides the school with essential funds that allow them to stay nimble and keep innovating while remaining steadfast to the school’s vision, mission, and values. Often branded as unique campaigns, materials typically include posters, brochures and mailers.

Annual Fund brochures get mailed to families and include a tear-away donation form, revealed when the 3-panel brochure is fully opened.

It was a pretty fun experience to see my designs drive by on the side of Metro buses. The bus wraps served as a promotion for an open house event. We came up with a series of three designs that feature different kids and different components of the schools mission.

This 28 pages booklet measuring 9 x 7.25″ gives a comprehensive glimpse into a day in the life of a third grade student at Epiphany School. A built-in folder on the back cover provides room for additional materials like inserts, mailers and small booklets.

Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust

We launched Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust’s (MTS) 4 years ago and in 2021, were once again commissioned to make updates to the website. MTS is a coalition-based organization that leads and inspires action to conserve and enhance the geographic corridor made up of connected ecosystems and communities spanning 1.5-million-acres from Seattle to Ellensburg, ensuring a long-term balance between people and nature. This space is where I recreate. It is Seattle’s backyard playground. It feels vital to protect and so the work feels important to take part in.

Interact and scroll with the live website above

Along with Carkeek Studios, we designed and developed a full-featured site for Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust with a custom WordPress theme and functionality aimed at saving the organization time and helping users connect with this region. In addition to being highly functional, the site is also manages lots of content. Pages need to be highly readable and offer up real estate for serving up related content.

Project Details

This feature-rich site has a high degree of interactivity. MTS hosts volunteer events throughout the year and website visitors need to be able to register online. Volunteer events are generated in SalesForce and pushed to the site on a regular interval. Volunteers can register for events on the site and data is pushed to Salesforce and back to the site so that registration closes when all of the slots are filled. The interactive map showcases places to visit in the Greenway, including hikes, bike trails, farmers markets, heritage locations, and more. Map objects are managed in a spreadsheet edited by several contributors and then pulled into the site to generate the Greenway Map. The events calendar helps to filter and search hundreds of things to see and do year-round.

Visit the website ›

Developed by: Carkeek Studios

Functional Requirements

  • Custom WordPress theme
  • Responsive web pages
  • Ecommerce/payment processing for single and recurring donations
  • Event registration
  • Salesforce integration
  • Mailchimp newsletter sign-up form
  • Interactive map with filters that automatically pulls JSON data
  • Blog
  • Administration screen that allows for easy in-house updates

The 2018 annual report was designed for both professionally printing and for digital distribution. The print version measures 5.5 x 8.5″ which is a cost saving sized booklet. I also designed the web version of the annual report alongside Carkeek Studios who handled the development. The web based version was integrated into the custom WordPress theme so that staff could repurpose the template for the next years annual report.

I designed a set of email newsletters to support different subscriber lists for topics like volunteering and program areas. I assembled the final templates in MailChimp so that staff could create new emails that all have a consistent look and feel. View this email online.

Interact and scroll to see the entire email below

The Mountaineers

For over 100 years, The Mountaineers have helped people explore, conserve, learn about, and enjoy the lands and waters of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. I’ve been involved with the Mountaineers as a student, volunteer and instructor and so it’s been especially rewarding to work with them professionally on marketing materials like their quarterly magazine, annual report and brochures that help promote their leadership in outdoor education, volunteerism, and outdoor advocacy.

Mountaineer magazine, published four times a year, includes stories, news, and insights about what’s happening in The Mountaineers and the greater outdoors communities. Coming in around 50 pages of featured articles and regular columns, this project requires project management, layout design, content production, editing, and photo curation. A strong attention to detail and a high degree of organization and time management skills are also a must. Below are some favorite spreads and page designs.

The 2017 Annual Report is a perfect bound, square booklet. Spreads are divided into pages that alternate full bleed photos and lots of white space.

The 2017 annual report worked so well, we used the same format for the 2018 report. I created a custom illustration that helped to turn strategic priorities into an infographic.

For the Youth Education Program brochure, I drew inspiration from Mountaineers hiking books that I acquired from my dad who used them in the 60s and 70s. A signature part of hiking books from this era are the wonderful illustrated maps, created by Marge Mueller. With the illustrators’ permission, we incorporated some of these maps as a visual design element in this brochure.

The Eat Local First Collaborative is made up of regional partner organizations from around Washington state that are working together to merge different online farm finder tools into a single easy-to-use platform. This tool, the Washington Food and Farm Finder, connects people with local food growers and producers.

Carkeek Studios and I were brought on board to help improve the user experience for the Food Finder. The main functional feature is an interactive map that shows locations of food producres and growers. Filters can be used to streamline search results. Read more about requirements and features for this site below.

Project Details

When we inherited this project, the geo-location based map was based on a smaller region, encompassing only a couple of counties. The current map searches all of Washington State. This map is fairly sophisticated, with lots of ways to search for food in order to better meet the needs of different users. The UI had to create very clear text hierarchy so that the user could follow along with their progression, as they flip between filters and different map views. The map has to perform well on phones as this often is how a user on-the-go interfaces with the Food Finder.

Visit the website ›

Developed by: Carkeek Studios

Functional Requirements

  • Location based search with results sorted by distance
  • Custom Pin/group indicators that vary by category
  • Pin popups link to a full templated pages
  • Complex list of filters, organized by categories
  • Full content search by keyword
  • Toggle between list view and map view
  • Search results updated instantaneously with filter assignments
  • Responsive web design
Glass Art Society

The Glass Art Society encourages excellence, education, development and appreciate of the glass arts and supports a worldwide community of artists who work with glass. Each year, the Glass Art Society brings together an international community of glass artists and enthusiasts for a multi-day conference featuring glass art from every discipline. Each conference is promoted with an invitation and supported throughout with a comprehensive program booklet. Members receive a catalogue that highlights the event the year following.

The Journal for the 2019 event held in Murano Italy contains over 140 pages of conference stories and highlights.

Managing content is an important piece to this job with words and text being generated by many different sources. Photos that vary in quality and size require quality control. Spreads need to be designed for flexibility to accommodate stories of varying and word-count. The final piece is perfect bound, featuring primarily black and white spreads.

The 2019 Glass Arts Conference held in St. Petersburg Florida required a trifold pre-conference brochure and a 70 page, perfect bound booklet for use during the event. The Journal, published after the event, features 120 perfect bound color pages.

Color spreads in the 2019 Journal enhance the visual appeal and do a much better job at supporting artist work

A self-mailer brochure for the 2020 GAS Conference opens to a 4-panel fold out containing conference schedule additional information. The back of the piece is a commemorative poster.