MAKE ME SMILE MONDAYS

Mondays and I have always been great friends.  Although Mondays are traditionally the start of the conventional working week, I have rarely ever suffered from Mondayitis.   

The mystery of my immunity to this disease can be traced back many years,  when I was first at college, and had Mondays as a day off.

Because of this, Sunday nights were spent dancing and having fun with friends, with Mondays being left to do lovely things like brunching, vintage shopping , afternoon teas and the odd beauty treatment. I was able to enjoy the day without the hoards of crowds that usually accompany a day off on the weekend.

 

When I did begin working on Mondays I would combat the disease by flipping thru the pages of a book that I came across from one of my favourite cartoons. The book “Happiness is a warm puppy”  was first published in 1962 and is by Charles Schulz.  It features all the old favourites from the popular cartoon “Peanuts”.

So every Monday at work the girls and I would turn to a new page and it would act as a type of inspiration for the week ahead, as well as a distraction from Monday and its itis!

These days I am very fortunate to again have Mondays as one of my days off work.   So as a weekly or forthnightly segment I thought I would bring back this little tradition of mine for you all to share, along with something that makes me smile – chances are if you're reading this I hope it makes you smile too.

 So this week I have just put up my new blackboard from france along with my new chalk to write on it with.

page taken from "Happiness is a warm puppy" by Charles Schulz.

Happiness definitely is 18 different colors, but since my chalk has a more limited colour range I'll settle for just under eight.   

  Whatever your 18 different colours are this week, make them fantastic!

ORIGINS OF AVENUE E

So much has been happening recently, that I haven't had a chance to post lately.  So to get me back into the swing of things, I thought I would take a break from the "archive" and talk about where the idea for the name "Avenue e" has come from along with its logo.

For those of you who have studied fashion, or design of any kind will know how important concept is to your design.  Everything must have a meaning and reason why you chose it - colour, shape, imagery.

For me Avenue e has relevance to New York - when you think of the word avenue - most people think of 5th avenue(well I do anyway!).  In New York there is avenue a and b, but no e.  It reminds me that in life sometimes we take different avenues, going from plan a to b to c... to get to avenue e.  Because there is no avenue e,(in Manhattan, as opposed to greater NY) it is something that I want to carve out for myself, when I make it back to NY and hope to have my own little piece of the city.

So in saying all this - how did I want to translate all this thru my logo?

 
Well the font I used, is something that I would think of 5th avenue - resonates with NY and perhaps it's subconscious, but the credits of one of my favourite New York shows are in a similar font.

I thought it would be cute to have an apple in the logo to symbolize the big apple, but then wasn’t quite feeling it - a little cliché perhaps.  I thought about another icon, the I heart New York.  After some thought I had a light bulb moment, merging the two together to show my love for the big apple.  The e is then carved out in the centre to show my quest to carve out a piece of the city for my own.

In regards to colour, as you can see I started off with black and white, which is quite striking, but I've always had a thing for grey font, esp. with black and white pictures, I think it looks great. So I decided to stick with this.  I adore certain soft colours and am not afraid to wear them either, so this seems like the right choice.

So there you have it, the reasons explaining my design process.  See below my development and progression of the label, which do you resonate with?  Do you think I made the right choice?