When author Tina McAllister approached me about a one-page design for her latest book, Woof! The Book, I jumped at the opportunity. Working with Tina McAllister is always a pleasure, as we seem to have very similar tastes in design. And when she said she wanted me to illustrate the main character for her book, I was over the moon!

Woof! The Book is the story of Vivi, a wife & mother, who has completely let herself go, until she discovers the world of Botox & other beauty treatments. In the book, Vivi gets a complete makeover from head to toe, so I needed to illustrate Vivi both “before” & “after”.

I started with designing the “after” illustration of Vivi. However, my first illustration turned out too young…

So, I started over. This time, I was much happier with Vivi’s “after” illustration, so I manipulated it to produce the “before” illustration.

However, Vivi’s “before” illustration wasn’t messy enough & her “after” was too simple, so some details were added to both illustrations…

Some stains were added to Vivi's pants & untied shoelaces to her tennis shoe.

Some bling was added to Vivi's shirt & a ring & bracelet to accessorize her outfit. Plus, her lip color was changed to match her blouse with some glossy highlights.

However, Vivi’s “before” illustration still looked too clean, and Vivi’s lips in the “after” needed a tad more gloss…

Once the “before” & “after” illustrations of Vivi were finalized, the rest of the single web page design came together very quickly…

See the live site → woof-thebook.com

As a designer, in any medium, there is one element that is vital to your success: finding your style. Defining your style helps you to build a brand around yourself. All well-known designers are known for their style. If your style isn’t unique and representative across your designs, people will have trouble identifying your work. On the other hand, if your work is easily identifiable, that makes your promotion and marketing efforts smoother & easier.

I remember in 5th grade art class learning about van Gogh, Degas, Monet, Matisse & Picasso. They all had a distinct style {and painting method}. Style is especially important for illustrators. Look at Norman Rockwell or Mary Engelbreit, you know their work when you see it. Even businesses should have a distinct style {which is more commonly referred to as a brand}. The products, services & marketing efforts should reflect that company’s brand/style.

For some, finding your style may be simple. Maybe you doodle & your style just screams off the page. For others, like me, finding your style isn’t that easy. I find I like several different & conflicting styles. modern. fresh. clean. simple. bold. balanced. understated. shabby. vintage. messy. intricate. The key here is not what design styles you admire, but the style that your designs actually reflect.

As for me, I am still working on finding my style. It is slowly emerging through different projects. It is a mixture of the items I listed above {but not all of them}. It’s not completely clear yet, but I have had some surprises recently. One of those came when I did some doodling on a friend’s card, which became the inspiration for this hand-lettering {on a soon to be launched project}:

I still have some style searching to do, but I’m having fun exploring my design style & learning new techniques and methods throughout the pursuit.

I have a lot of projects to add to the portfolio of the site here, and I had hoped the bellafaith website redesign would be up by now. However, as I mentioned before, I am my own worst client. I tend to stray away from the design process [that actually works] when it comes to designing for myself. I find it is easier for me to work for other people’s businesses… something about looking at the business from an outside perspective, helps me to see a more generalized picture.

So when I started to work on my own site, where I’m intertwined with all aspects of the business’ inner-workings, I found myself at a creative roadblock. Usually, the analytical parts of my brain work really well with the creative parts. However, I found that the analytical side was dictating the creative, and the ideas in my head weren’t coming together very well on the screen.

I spent some time online this weekend looking at different creative blogs for inspiration – which gave me another spin-off project: an online inspiration journal. Most of the blogs I looked at were focused on home decor [which got me dreaming] & helped guide me to start completely fresh last night. Clearly, the inspiration surfing helped, because last night I created a new pattern and color selection for the bellafaith redesign. Unfortunately, I have decided not to use the floral design I originally created for this project – however, it will go in my arsenal for future projects [and possibly go into some of the pre-designed templates I'll be working on soon].

Today, I was able to lay out, in CSS, the design of the interior pages and the blog. I’m really excited with this new direction. So excited, that I want to go ahead & set-up the new design right now, but I still have to layout the homepage. And I have certain pages I want to have ready to go when I launch the new design, so everything can be done all at once. [There will be some giveaways and special deals when the redesign is launched, so make sure you subscribe to our newsletter or feed for updates.]

Well, I’m off to go get some work done, but here’s a teeny glimpse of the redesign’s new direction:

Redesigning my own site has proved to be a challenge. I originally wanted a design with some hand illustrated elements. At this point, I’m still leaning that way. Last night, I finished the floral illustration I have been working on. Now, I just need to figure out what I want to do with it! I have had the initial layout for this redesign sketched for a couple of months, however I haven’t nailed down how I want to lay out the interior/blog pages so that they complement that sketch [of the homepage]. So, while I figure out how I want that done, here’s a peek at the floral design & how I created it..

First, I sketched the floral design with pencil & paper {the left picture} & then I scanned the sketch onto the computer {the right picture}. However, now comparing these side by side, the photo I took of the sketch seems to be clearer than the scan!

Next, I traced the scanned sketch in Illustrator, using the pen tool. {You might be able to see some of the lines from the sketch behind the dark black lines.}

Then, I added some embellishments to fill up the remaining space around the original floral design & placed everything strategically so the design would repeat in a seamless pattern.

Then I added some color & tested out the seamless pattern as the temporary background for this blog. {Wow, this is really hard to see as it blends in with the background right now.}

Looking at the steps laid out like that makes it seem fairly simple, but tracing the flowers, setting it up right for coloring & for the seamless repeating pattern were quite time consuming. Now I just have to figure out what final colors I want to use & how to integrate all the page designs together.

Update: After I posted this, I showed my husband one of the color combinations I liked but was having trouble implementing. And of course, he really liked these colors too:

My husband really liked this color combination I've been struggling with today. All day, I've been asking myself: Is this too busy for what I want to do?