Original Artwork « Maggie Pace: From Scratch

Although I have 6, that’s right, 6, knitting projects due in just two weeks, I haven’t been nose-to-the-needles, knitting every night as I’d expected. Instead I’ve been nose-to-the-computer screen designing a website for my friends, who are opening a yogurt shop in my neighborhood in a couple of weeks. It was unexpected work, but I was really excited to get it. Since I’ve moved to Burlington, this is the second website I’ve designed for entrepreneurial friends. I’ve discovered I love graphic design as a moonlight career. I’m still solving design problems, but using a totally different part of my brain. Kinda like cross-training. I also enjoy the collaboration — both clients already had their logos. Having a solid brand as a starting point made my job so much easier. This is the SoYo site— it’s going live next week. Isn’t the branding tight? And here’s Town Neck, a t-shirt company based on my friend’s hometown in Cape Cod. This site went live end of February and was much more complicated to design than SoYo because it’s ecommerce. The company is already bringing in sales, which speaks to the strength of the brand. I hope the industrial beachy vibe is going to take off, and pretty soon Abercrombie and Hollister tees will make way for Town Neck gear.

I’m happy to have a departure from the knit and crochet world. Before moving here, I developed three websites, Knit and Crochet Now, One Stick, Two Stick and my own, Pick Up Sticks. I love them all, but man, I was ready to play around with designs that don’t involve yarn.

My original sketch.

The website design incorporating my favorite elements.

I rearranged my favorite elements into a notecard that I'll print out and give to my husband.

I think the clouds alone would make a beautiful fabric repeat. I can have the fabric printed at Spoonflower.com

Usually I’m sketching to illustrate a knitting, fabric or embroidery design, but sometimes I like to draw just because it feels good. And now that I’ve redesigned my blog so I can change the background whenever I want, free drawing is even more enticing. For me, the new format has expanded my creative process times 10.

For one, I like the way web design lets me pull out and emphasize just the best bits of my work. See how my girl pops as a part of the border? And the clouds take on a new life as part of the header? And the wave has more impact multiplied and stacked than it did by itself in the original drawing?

Also, when breaking the whole into the good bits for the web, it’s a logical leap to see how the elements can be rearranged into real-world items like fabric repeats and notecards. I could send the cloud drawing as a .pdf to Spoonflowertoday, and next week have a yard of my own original design — for less than $20.

I created the original drawing on heavy sketch paper using colored pencils, colored chalk and oil pastels. Then I scanned the original, and “cut out” my favorite elements using Photoshop. I placed them into an Illustrator doc and started playing. In Illustrator I can enlarge, duplicate, flip, and layer the elements however I want, giving me tremendous freedom to create.