Arcane Palette Creative Design » artistic graphic design

Adventure Tykes was one of the biggest projects we’ve worked on in a while and crossed over into many different applications.  We started out with a Magento online store.  We supplemented that with a community powered by phpBB with a Coppermine photo gallery bridge, and a Resources section with articles and a blog powered by WordPress.  The goal was to provide a seamless look and make the experience as easy for the user as possible.

The site and community was built to provide a resource and store for outdoor enthusiasts who don’t want to become shut-ins just because they had a kid.  It was a lot of fun to work on and they were a great pair to work with.  It was particularly interesting for us to work on this project because, being parents who like to camp and hike, we were also part of the target audience for the site.

Erin composed a welcoming design that used the earthy color palette from their logo suitable for a website for kids’ stuff and outdoor-types.  I became a code monkey for a couple of months, immersing myself in the various platforms and making sure the transition from one to the next was as natural as possible.  We are confident that when it launches officially, Adventure Tykes will not only be a great place to find outdoor equipment for you and your little ones, but also an engaging and active community and resource for ideas to go on adventures with them, too.

Designed by Erin
www.adventuretykes.com

This design was a make over for a clothing boutique that needed a more exciting and one-of-a-kind look to fit their image better.  We built the new Wild Oats Boutique in Magento, our favorite shopping cart program, and also designed a newsletter template to match the new site.

We started with some rough ideas like using lots of fun textures and creating a leopard print background to match the new printed bags they were using at the store.  It was tricky to get the leopard print texture to match the feel of the bags and be able to wrap or repeat but we persevered and the result is worth it.  We added some textures (like warm-toned papers, a vintage picture frame and velvet ribbon) with a vintage chic look and ended up with a truly gorgeous and very unique design.

Our favorite part of this site is the various scraps of paper, ribbon, paper tag and other small decorative elements that combine to give this a hand-created feel that screams “Boutique!”.

designed by erin
www.wildoatsboutique.com

Sunflower Favors is a small business selling wedding and party favors.  They wanted a creative, boutique-y feel and had requested their site be built on ZenCart software.
We’ve had a lot of experience pushing, tweaking, and otherwise completely pulling apart and putting back together ZenCart designs to make them look anything but like a typical ZenCart site, so we were more than willing to build a beautiful design to appeal to their specific audience.  We came up with a bright-colored, clean but artistic design featuring a logo with the colors of their red sunflower throughout the letters and some flowery, swirling designs to add to the corners.

We did quite a bit of template tinkering to acheive the specific layouts they wanted, as well as designing their logo graphic.  We also helped get their payment gateway set up and tested on the site so they just needed to worry about entering their products into the database.

They were so happy with the result that they invited us to build another e-commerce site for them selling backpacks and based on Magento software.

designed by erin
www.sunflowerfavors.com