This is the third time I’ve worked on this project and by far my favorite edition. As with the other Hazelden annuals, I had a lot of fun with the design and working with Hazelden writer Teri Ryan and production manager Dawn Carlson.

We became even more ambitious than usual and decided to do something we’d always talked about: feature not just real stories from the people of Hazelden, but also real portraits.

Above, the three portraits and their spreads. Below, the cover and inside front spread.

Coming up with original photography of people from all over the country can be quite a challenge, especially on a limited budget. And these weren’t simple head shots — we needed portraits suitable for the high-profile piece.

This year with a lot of planning, help from Teri, and a fair amount of luck, it all worked out. We wound up doing something different for each person. One of our subjects had an awesome portrait already available, taken by a photographer friend who was willing to donate her work. (Thank you, Rebecca McDonald of B Fresh Media!) We hired pro photog John Tracy out of Chicago to do a photo session with a school principal there. And I did a photo shoot with our last subject, a Twin Cities local.

It’s a more effective piece for it. Stock photography can be compelling and certainly has its uses. But for something as personal as telling the stories of Hazelden, I like this solution best.

2010 Saint Paul Area Council of Churches annual report

Initial annual report planning meetings with Saint Paul Area Council of Churches Development Director Kristi Anderson and Communications Coordinator Melanie Lund revealed that a new direction was needed. We knew we wanted to feature stories from the many programs to which the Council provides a home. We also admired non-profits who were able to streamline their annual report basics into a compact, user-friendly format, also suitable as a marketing piece.

What emerged was the idea to combine their regular newsletter Faith Works — always packed with stories — with a wraparound piece. I worked closely with the printer, Impressive Print, to keep printing and mailing costs low despite the many changes. The end result was a huge success, which did not cost the Council any more than typical. Our audience went out of their way to tell us they loved the new format, and the Council now has a great, succinct marketing tool they can use all year long.

Top, inside spread of the wraparound piece. Bottom left, front cover of annual report. At right, companion issue of Faith Works.

Here are some of the new brochures and the refreshed Faith Works newsletter. Click the images for .pdfs.

New Council brochures and newsletter make good use of a colorful brand palette. My roles in both projects: write, edit, design, production.

Prior to this series of projects, I came from working extensively with Hazelden, where I worked, coincidentally, with their Tilka-designed identity, this time on a 60th annual report:

Other clients keeping me busy these days:

ThreeWire — patient recruitment materials: concepting, design and production, including building a Joomla! website

ATK — proposal editing and graphics creation

ICMA-RC — employee newsletters and other human resources materials

As with all the Hazelden projects I’ve done, I worked closely with writer Teri Ryan to develop this concept, back and forth which is always rewarding professionally and also makes the end result much improved for it.

The logo is ready for application in a variety of formats, and I provided Hazelden with a couple shown here: a one-sheet summary document and a PowerPoint template. You can download a .pdf of the summary document [although it will have lorem ipsum text in place, to preserve confidentiality].

Hazelden’s vision, while not easy to achieve, is simple and beautiful: “All who seek recovery will find it, and the stigma of addiction will be overcome.”

In keeping with this, we paired simple but beautiful imagery with a simple but sophisticated layout. I’m very proud of this effort.

But I put my nose to the grindstone recently and got the redesign of it well underway. I have all sorts of ideas — too many, really — but it’s starting to gel. Here’s a sneak preview:

Having fun with Japanese stencils [also in use here on current site], type-as-art and lots and lots of color! [Hrumph, you’ll have to trust me on that one, seeing as the screengrab is fairly monochromatic.]

The Hazelden 2008 Annual Report was on press last week, all went extremely well and I’m excited to see the final piece. It was printed by Ideal Printers in Saint Paul and they did a fantastic job.

I will post a .pdf here once it’s officially gone public.

The Rhythmic Circus site is now done!

I’ll admit I’ve done my share of those. At the campaign consulting firm I worked at, they actually had a sheet printed out of 20 or so logos they had already created and basically told me to “just do something like this.” You have to pick your battles and since I was new to campaign work [as in, I had just walked in the door 20 minutes earlier], I decided to roll with it that day.

The Sol Sender story also nicely illustrates a point I have been trying to make with clients and agencies for years: just because someone has never done a particular type of project before doesn’t mean they cannot do it. As graphic designers, we have a skillset that is widely transferable. And we have the smarts to apply those skills to a new task — in fact most of us already find ourselves doing this every day. So, don’t “misunderestimate” us!

At any rate, Sender definitely raises the stakes, and for this we can all be grateful. Hopefully this will usher in a new era of more sophisticated and nuanced campaign branding work.

It’s really interesting to see the earlier renditions posted in that article. Apparently this was one of those jobs where the final just popped out at Sender. I know how that goes: sometimes you just nail it. But you still have to flesh out all the options to make sure. Like when you find the perfect dress, but you still peruse the store to see what’s all there before making your purchase.

I also like the name Sol. Like Sol LeWitt. Nice name.

Up until now I had only seen word cloud plug-ins for blogs and the like, to show what was abuzz at any given moment. But there’s a site, wordle.net, which will generate a word cloud based on your text input, a URL or a del.i.cio.us user name. Try it out, it’s a lot of fun.

I create this word cloud by cutting and pasting a rather large collection of favorite quotes I had accumulated over the years. This word cloud is also hosted at wordle.