Happy Monday! Today I thought I would share some recent graphics created for a brand new event in
Starkville — the King Cotton Crawfish Boil. I had a good time with this little mudbug! The event is going to be a fun one and it benefits the Starkville Main Street Association. So if you’re in the Starkville area, be sure to get your advance tickets for April 26!
It was a busy January with some projects for events in Starkville, and I thought I would share one of them this morning. I was able to do some illustration work for this Spring’s unWINE Downtown wine tasting event hosted three times a year by the Starkville Main Street Association. The Spring edition is often held close to Valentine’s Day, so I wanted to do something that would share the love! Here’s a glimpse at the sketches and the finished poster design. Enjoy!
Today, I’m excited to share a recent client project completed for the Starkville Convention & Visitors Bureau. Each year, the organization promotes a spring even series called Savor Our South. I’ve had the privilege of designing the campaign since its inception. This year’s poster is one I actually created for the 2013 campaign and re-worked this year with new colors. For the design, I had fun with some watercolor painting to give it a vibrant feel! If you’re in Starkville this spring, I hope you’ll join us for some of these great events!
Today I’m sharing a recent logo project I completed for the City of Starkville Department of Environmental Services. I’m posting it because it was a fun public project and because I think it’s a good design solution. But, I’m also sharing it because Starkville, MS is doing something special, and I always enjoy applying good design to good ideas.
The project began as a logo for the city’s Curbside Recycling program. Several years ago, Starkville began a free program of picking up recycling at the curbside with no sorting required by citizens. That’s a pretty common service, but in our area, the fact that it was free to citizens was pretty groundbreaking. We were one of the first communities in the state to offer it as a free service.
In our initial meetings on the project, however, the tone of the conversation began to expand beyond just recycling to the concept of environmental services as a whole. In addition to recycling, the department handles sanitation, as you might imagine, but also rubbish & debris, a landfill (like most communities), and city landscaping. The committee members shared their thoughts on the ways sanitation and recycling are tied together and their goals of creating a community where the days for recycling pick-up actually outnumber the days for garbage pick-up. We recognized together that the underlying goals were really bigger than just recycling. The work of the department is really about creating a positive environment in the community, and about doing that responsibly with greater citizen involvement and buy-in.
We changed the program of the project to create a logo and brand image for the Department of Environmental Services as a whole, so that all the elements of creating this “clean community” are represented by the same image. With the visuals, we wanted the logo to be about more than trash — just as the department is. And, we wanted the brand to reflect that Starkville is growing something positive with our environmental services — in both mindset and the physical environment.
Enjoy this first look at the solution the City of Starkville embraced!
Have you thought about 8 1/2 x 11″ lately? I’ve recently worked on a few client projects sporting the standard “letter” size, and I thought I would share a glimpse today. Admittedly, the 93 1/2 square inches of marketing space available in a regular piece of paper is a little over-used–so much so that I sometimes recommend against it to help clients break out of the “standard” box. However, this tried and true format can also offer a lot of well-designed punch within a manageable budget. The fact is; it’s easily mailed, easily stuffed and easily hand-held. Not to mention the fact that it can be produced without much fanfare with your own desktop printer or with any quick-print company in your small pond. And, as the designer in the room, I kind of enjoy squeezing my creative juices to make this common format sparkle! Although the format is the same, these three clients each used the 8 1/2 x 11″ format in a slightly different way. Take a look…
Starkville Academy Annual Fund: This piece served as a folded self-mailer giving it a little more presence than the typical #10 envelope provides, but concentrating the information in a simple and inexpensive one-pager.
Greater Starkville Development Partnership Blue Ribbon Business Resources Flyer: This flyer was included in a packet of other information mailed to Chamber of Commerce members. Keeping it in a format that could be combined in a standard presentation folder or a standard envelope offered just the right amount of flexibility.
The Rogue Christmas Wish List: This mini “catalog” of favorite gift items (produced in collaboration with Halo Business Advisors) was hand-delivered to area offices and restaurants around the store’s location. Keeping the format simple made it inexpensive to print, easy to distribute and quick to grab attention.
Hello & welcome! I’m Haley Montgomery, and I’m the designer and owner of Small Pond Graphics. I sometimes fancy myself a frog kisser— a documentarian coaxing poignant moments from unexpected places. This blog has evolved from those moments.
The small Pond FIELD GUIDE is part diary, part sketchbook, and part wish list – an archive of ordinary wonders. For years, this space has housed my stories – creative ideas, vintage inspiration, our forays into curious places, and the simple artifacts of quiet of conscious living. Through watercolor, photography, and illustrated tales, these pages uncover the blessing of ordinary days and the wonder found in authentic places and pursuits.
I invite you to open the boxes.
Peek into the drawers.
Rustle through the pages.
I’m honored to have you here.
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Phone: 662.312.4001
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