My dream is to embroider this jumpsuit as full as a “freak show” tattooed lady.

I found this velvet apron at the clearance sale of a shuttered Masonic Lodge. It begged for an eye! And became a pillow.

Head and hat based on a famous engraving by José Guadalupe Posada. Embroidery includes three-dimensional embellishments: a bird feather, silk ruffle, and metallic beads. There is a secret image under the ruffle . . .

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I changed the image inside the frame at different points of the Pandemic. This iteration is from October 2022.

I used real porcupine quills in place of daggers. (#NotWorthIt)

Two sides of the same mirror. With a nod to kintsugi for inspiration.

https://reddressembroidery.com

I participated in artist Kirstie Macleod’s invitation for women around the world to tell their personal stories through embroidery. Every institution that exhibited The Red Dress had a calico dress for the local community to stitch on. Eventually all the calico dresses will come together for an exhibit, an IRL worldwide web of women connected by the threads of their stitches.

This tiny pouch with three interlocking crescent moons is the first thing I ever embroidered. A close friend of mine received a diagnosis of terminal cervical cancer at the end of 2020, so I put my love and grief into a handmade gift. I wrote down on paper the three sentences I thought she would want to hear from me at the end of her life in case my words failed me or I couldn’t be there. I sewed the message inside.

Due to the Pandemic, we were never able to see each other in person again. In the end, all we could do was breathe together over the phone. Her son took this photo of the bag when he found it three days before she died. He cut it open and read the note for her.

One year after this first project, I took up needle and thread again and have not stopped a day since.

I designed a series of posters for ukulele shows produced by my friend Michele Kappel (aka Tippy Canoe). I am flattered that people all over the world continue to steal my graphic of Michele wearing boxing gloves. From a heavy metal band in Pennsylvania to talent show organizers at an Indiana Christian school, from protest posters in Turkey to rock-and-roll promotion in Italy, I’ve seen the graphic appear in places as far away as Russia and Japan.

My husband homebrews beer, hard cider, and mead, and I design his packaging. The name, the acorn motif, and the typography of this cider label pulls together elements of our neighborhood’s history: in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, our street was known as Slippery Hill Road in the White Oaks neighborhood, which was home to a lot of bootleggers. As a sidebar, I've included a few process sketches.

This beer is a 140 shilling wee heavy Scotch ale. (Scotch ales are brewed on a shilling scale, with 10 shillings per ABV. Wee heavies are what they call Scotch ales with a high alcohol content.) The brewer named it Buck-40 as an Americanization of the 140 measurement on the shilling scale. Buck-40 is also a slang phrase used to describe a greatly exaggerated or unbelievable claim. The definition of buck-40 and the words wee heavy brought to my mind a heavy bear on a wee bicycle at a carnival. 

A non-profit cinema asked me to create a t-shirt graphic. Their logo is a film reel, which I drew as the iris of an eye, and I lettered their name in a style that references the opening title of the Charlie Chaplin film Modern Times. As a sidebar, I’ve included some process sketches here.

Using metal and wood type, I designed and letterpressed this A.A. Milne quote.

hand lettered over 200 quotations; digital

hand lettering for cover; ink and brush

hand lettering throughout interior pages; watercolor pencils

hand lettering throughout interior pages; ink and metal-tipped quill pen, based on Surveyor

hand lettering for cover and part openers; ink and brush

hand lettering for cover and throughout entire book; ink and brush as well as digital

hand lettering for month names in Nara’s style; colored pencil

hand lettering of Warhol quotes in Warhol’s style interspersed throughout an illustrated journal; ink

hand lettering for cover and several interior pages; fabric and thread

hand lettering for packaging; digital, based on pencil sketch

hand lettering for t-shirt graphic; pen and ink

Illustration by Katie Scott

Illustration by Josh Cochran

Illustration by Bert van Wijk

Illustration by Grady McFerrin

Infographic by me

Illustration by Meg Hunt

Illustration by Allegra Lockstadt

I tried to make the notion of growing plants from food scraps eco-conscious and mind-blowingly fun at the same time. The new design invigorated an out-of-print book from the 1970’s and brought strong sales to retail stores such as Urban Outfitters.

In addition to art directing the whole book, I prop styled and made the food for the front cover.

I redesigned this classic bestseller so it could remain a bestseller and commissioned Bo Lundberg for illustration as part of the updated look for a contemporary audience.

What art do you create for the cover of a book that is organized by occasion and holiday when you want the book to merchandise reasonably well at any time of year? Snowflakes decorated in spring colors so they become non-referential shapes! The publisher followed this commercially successful book with a Christmas spin-off and a paperback edition.

My design goal for the cover was to complement and accentuate the beauty and tactility of the subject in this in-depth reference volume.

The postcard set has a distinctive package, with a portfolio case and cloth binding.

The case with just the left side open.

The case with both sides open.

The postcard block, which you can flip through like a book.

I lettered the month names in the style seen in some of Nara’s informal drawings.

Each journal has three sections printed in different spot colors, with lined, graphed, and unlined sheets. All sheets have vertical as well as horizontal markers to accommodate either Western or Asian writing styles. 

The Pop Box is the centerpiece of the collection, featuring facsimiles of an incredible range of artifacts from his life and work. There is also a small educational book included. The cover of the box features a lenticular tip-on that nods back and forth between two photo portraits of Warhol.

One of my favorite artifacts: a letter from Mick Jagger before Warhol designs the Sticky Fingers album cover, with the zipper built into the record sleeve. If you are a designer, please read it. You will totally get it and love it!

There is a wheel inside this movie promo. A photo still from the movie shows up in the lens and the title appears in the mouth. As you  rotate the wheel, different movies appear. I had to figure out how to reproduce the manufacturing without having an actual sample to examine.

Warhol’s personal stationery: I used this and other samples to create the style of lettering seen in the Idea Book.

I designed a lenticular cover that transitions from pink, with a focus on the hands and mouth, to orange, with a focus on the eyes.

Most of the pages in the Idea Book are blank for your own writing or drawing, but I inserted vellum pages throughout that feature Warhol’s inspiring art. I also picked up Warhol quotes and lettered them in the style of his own handwriting.

We produced stationery and journals using Warhol’s fashion illustrations.

Less predictable than the Fashion product, we produced a postcard set and address book of art that features images of men, much of it erotic or suggestive. The address book is a hardcover wrapped in silver mylar, referencing Warhol’s Factory, decorated in tin foil and silver paint. The mylar is overprinted with the art but still retains a silvery, metallic sheen. 

Monster-illustrator extraordinaire, Michael Slack, invented and illustrated this card game, which is hilarious, fun, and totally gross all at the same time.

The best part of the game is the character design. The book of course has rules of play, but also introduces you to ten quirky, icky, and yet still lovable characters, such as Carbuncle and Clarabelch.

I feel like I should have paid for the privilege of working on this project instead of the reverse. Game Night is a collection of classic card and dice games, gathered into one rule book and kit. David Sheldon and I melded minds and he rocked the illustrations. I laughed myself silly. The cover concept riffs on the pop-culture paintings of dogs playing poker.

The kit includes dice, a dice cup, rule book, score pad, winners' log, stickers, and playing cards. Getting all the components to nest into a nice, tidy package was a challenge.

Note the pink elephant character illustrating the game Rummy. 

I grew up playing classic card games, so designing my own deck was pretty awesome. A Queen bee, King lion, and Jackalope adorn the face cards.

An especially fun component of the kit is the winners' log. You put the stickers on the pages to create a historical record of wins and losses. Not that families are competitive or anything. 

The bestseller that launched a parade of follow-ups, this little package is retail gold. A padded hardcover with a leather-like wrap, gold foil stamping on the cover, a ribbon bookmark, and gold-tipped ivory pages is just the right combination of simple and special.

Sample spread.

This journal has a three piece case, with boards glued over a flexible spine edge. My favorite part is that I created a spectrum of color that prints on all three sides of the visible book block.

Toothy, uncoated stock, gold-foil stamping, and classically simple patterns make these journals perennially pretty.

This is one of my proudest package-design moments. The box lid and nested tray are constructed from heavyweight board wrapped in die-cut, spot-printed paper. The lid has a thick plexiglass window. A system of hidden belly bands and fugitive glue hold three stacks of label sheets in different sizes, so you can see more than just the top design. A band wrapping the label stack as a whole conceals those mechanics. The package feels solid and high-value and the contents don’t shuffle into a messy jumble.

The cover photo is by John Dolan and launched the whole idea of the journal. I repeated the photo three times at different scales for a sense of cinematic motion. The title area is a tipped-on label in the shape of an old ticket stub. 

At a flea market I found a treasure trove of ceramic letters that I used to typeset movie quote excerpts. I superimposed the photos on scans of blank film stock and added ghosted layers for the feeling of old, flickering film projection.

A red vinyl case to match WW’s shiny, red, villain-stomping boots.

Even Wonder Woman gets buried in paperwork sometimes.

The concept is to get kids to have fun personalizing their own cards to send as thank-you notes. I worked with illustrator Catalina Estrada to design five empty scenes that could be populated and decorated with stickers of characters, plants, and other details. The kit also comes with a book that gives kids letter-writing tips and encouragement.

The challenge was to design a greeting card package that included envelopes but was still book-like in its presentation. It seemed impossible at first, but perseverance paid off. This is the second of a series, besting the first by having punch-out ornaments. Art by Caitlin Keegan.