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This is the pretty YCD Happy Holiday card – 2011 Edition - that we designed for our clients & friends. It’s always great fun to spend some time doing design work for ourselves and to have carte blanche for all stylistic choices (including the choice of a reindeer photo amongst . . . → Read More: Our pretty 2011 Christmas cards!]]>

Front

Back

This is the pretty YCD Happy Holiday card – 2011 Edition - that we designed for our clients & friends. It’s always great fun to spend some time doing design work for ourselves and to have carte blanche for all stylistic choices (including the choice of a reindeer photo amongst ALL the reindeer photos available in the whole world!). Thanks to a little print defect, our order was doubled by the printing company so we now have a few extra to spare… So if you haven’t received one and would like your own YCD 2011 Holiday Memorabilia drop us a line with your address at info@yellowcardesign.com and we’ll be happy to mail you one.

Certificat-cadeau | Magazine Zeste

Lucky people who will be receiving a subscription to Zeste (Quebec’s most delicious-looking food-related magazine) this holiday season will not only receive 4 or 8 issues of one of the best executed magazine in the province: they will also receive this beautiful gift certificate, designed by none other than us . . . → Read More: Latest work! Zeste : un cadeau gourmand.]]>

Certificat-cadeau | Magazine Zeste

Lucky people who will be receiving a subscription to Zeste (Quebec’s most delicious-looking food-related magazine) this holiday season will not only receive 4 or 8 issues of one of the best executed magazine in the province: they will also receive this beautiful gift certificate, designed by none other than us @ Yellow Car Design. We were commissioned by the magazine to create a print-at-home certificate for people buying the subscription as a present to give to their loved ones to let them know that they were now subscribers to Zeste. The deadline for the project was very tight but thanks to the great pictures that were submitted to us we were quickly inspired and designed something that looks good in next to no time!

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Les chanceux(ses) qui recevront un abonnement à Zeste (certainement la publication culinaire québécoise la plus appétissante) en cette période des Fêtes ne recevront pas seulement 4 ou 8 numéros du magazine gourmand le plus haut de gamme de la province : ils recevront également ce joli certificat-cadeau, conçu par nul autre que nous, Yellow Car Design. Nous avions reçu le mandat de créer un certificat pouvant être imprimé à la maison par les gens qui achètent l’abonnement en cadeau; ils peuvent ainsi donner le certificat à l’être cher(ère) pour lui dire qu’il ou elle est désormais abonné(e) à Zeste. Nous avions très peu de temps pour compléter le projet mais grâce aux excellentes photos qui nous ont été soumises nous avons été rapidement inspirés et sommes arrivés à un très bon résultat en un temps record!

If you’re following us on Facebook you’ll remember that a few weeks ago we mentioned that we had ordered a t-shirt from Wordans, a canadian website where you can order custom-designed apparel ranging from t-shirts to aprons, passing by g-strings and tote bags… Well the t-shirt we ordered came and we’re quite . . . → Read More: Little Owls T-shirt]]>

If you’re following us on Facebook you’ll remember that a few weeks ago we mentioned that we had ordered a t-shirt from Wordans, a canadian website where you can order custom-designed apparel ranging from t-shirts to aprons, passing by g-strings and tote bags… Well the t-shirt we ordered came and we’re quite happy with the result so we thought we’d post it on the blog!

We had been interested in getting our designs printed on stuff for a long time, and when Marc designed the above little owls for a project I knew right away that they’d look good on a shirt. I chose a plain but good quality beige American Apparel top that I thought would complement the illustration (and the rest of my wardrobe!). The ordering process is quite simple: You choose the apparel you want to print on including the size and the colour, then you simply upload a jpeg of the image you want to use and place it where you want it to be on the product, either at the front or at the back. It gives your a preview (that was ours), you can re-edit it if you’re not 100% satisfied or go ahead with it if you like it, then it takes you to the payment and shipping page. Nice and easy! Also worth mentioning is that if you type “Wordans Coupon” into Google you might get lucky like me and get a discount code for 15% off on your purchase which makes the experience even better.

So go ahead and get your craziest ideas printed on stuff that you can wear. Or if you don’t know how to design it, you can always ask us to design it for you; we’re pros

Vick @ Yellow Car Design

I like to use my design skills in real life, for example when it comes to creating birthday cards for people. I designed the one above for my goddaughter Arianne who turned 10 (already!) last week. Call me cheap, but I do find that paying $6-7 (ofter more for the very fancy ones) for a generic . . . → Read More: Steve Poses for Birthday Card]]>

I like to use my design skills in real life, for example when it comes to creating birthday cards for people. I designed the one above for my goddaughter Arianne who turned 10 (already!) last week. Call me cheap, but I do find that paying $6-7 (ofter more for the very fancy ones) for a generic Hallmark card is way too much. Personally, I would also prefer to receive an homemade card, made “with love” and customized to my tastes rather than knowing that whoever bought the card just went to the card section of their grocery store and picked up any card for the sake of buying me one. However, I know that for some people homemade = ugly, but luckily, with our design craftiness we have the best of both world: we can easily create personalized, customized cards but design them in a way that make them look like real ones you’d get from a store. That’s what I did for Arianne’s card: I chose to use a picture of Attitude Steve because, of all our mascots, I think the little ginger fella is her favourite. I gave it a more grown up look by keeping the layout and font simple with black&white Helvetica and repeating the motif of a gift to add the birthday element. All that printed on a nice, thick, stock. Quick, easy, almost free and Arianne gets to have a picture of Steve!

Vick @ Yellow Car Design

These are pictures from one of our latest projects for Groupe Serdy, the Quebec production company who owns the TV channels Évasion (showing travel & escape-related shows) and Zeste (Quebec’s very own food network). Our work consisted in designing a kit for each channel to unveil their autumn 2011 programming and showcase . . . → Read More: Zeste/Évasion : One of our latest projects – L’un de nos projets récents]]>

These are pictures from one of our latest projects for Groupe Serdy, the Quebec production company who owns the TV channels Évasion (showing travel & escape-related shows) and Zeste (Quebec’s very own food network). Our work consisted in designing a kit for each channel to unveil their autumn 2011 programming and showcase their new TV shows. Those were to be distributed to journalists last week at Évasion & Zeste’s launching party (taking place at nothing less than Gordon Ramsay’s new Montreal restaurant – thankfully before the sprinkler incident that forced the restaurant to be evacuated on the same evening!).

Back to the project, we had less than 2 weeks to come up with a concept and design the folders, 8-pages booklets, DVDs and DVD menus. The designs had to be done in a style that would link the 2 channels together as part of the Groupe Serdy company, while being unique to each one’s own branding and colours. After many long hours of work and print-related stress, we were very excited to open the FedEx envelope containing our very own copies of the kits and very proud to see the result!

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Voici les photos de l’un de nos derniers projets pour le Groupe Serdy, l’entreprise québécoise et maison de production regroupant les chaînes de télévision spécialisées Évasion et Zeste. Notre travail consistait à créer un cahier de presse pour présenter les nouvelles émissions et la programmation automnale de chaque chaîne. Les cahiers de presse allaient par la suite être distribués aux journalistes la semaine dernière lors d’un lancement officiel (ayant lieu au nouveau restaurant montréalais du populaire chef britannique Gordon Ramsay - fort heureusement avant l’incident des gicleurs qui a forcé le restaurant à être évacué le soir même!).

Pour en revenir au projet, nous avions moins de deux semaines pour trouver un concept et pour réaliser les pochettes, les livrets de huit pages, les étiquettes et les menus de DVD. Les cahiers devaient être semblables pour souligner le fait que les deux chaînes appartiennent au même groupe, tout en étant cependant propre aux couleurs et au style de chacune. Après de longues heures de travail et de stress relié à l’impression, nous avions très hâte d’ouvrir l’enveloppe FedEx pour voir les copies finales des cahiers donc nous sommes, finalement, très très fiers!

Here are a couple of pictures they sent to us of them on the road and before the departure.

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Ils l’ont encore fait: l’équipe Go à vélo! a parcouru au-delà de 1000 km à travers le Québec le mois . . . → Read More: Go à vélo! Update]]> Go à vélo! completed the challenge! They biked over 1000 km across the province of Quebec last month…

Here are a couple of pictures they sent to us of them on the road and before the departure.

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Ils l’ont encore fait: l’équipe Go à vélo! a parcouru au-delà de 1000 km à travers le Québec le mois dernier!

Voici quelques photos…

Congratulations to the team!

You can read our previous entries about them here and here.

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Félicitations à toute l’équipe!

Vous pouvez lire nos blogues précédents concernant Go à Vélo! et le logo que nous leur avons créé ici et ici.

Remember that blog entry from June 2010 featuring the logo we created for GO à vélo!, a team doing the 1000 km bike ride for the Grand Défi Pierre Lavoie?  Well, since they doubled the amount of cyclists in order to create 2 teams for this year’s challenge, we updated their . . . → Read More: GO à vélo! – 2011]]>

GO à vélo! - 2011

Remember that blog entry from June 2010 featuring the logo we created for GO à vélo!, a team doing the 1000 km bike ride for the Grand Défi Pierre Lavoie?  Well, since they doubled the amount of cyclists in order to create 2 teams for this year’s challenge, we updated their logo to illustrate that change and here is how it now looks on Louise Lévesque’s, the team captain, jersey! Nice isn’t?

Again this year we wish the best of luck to “our” teams! If you’d like to make an online donation and help GO à vélo! reach their $10,000 objective for the lactic acidosis awareness & research cause, please visit their page.

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Vous vous souvenez de ce blogue datant de juin 2010 où nous parlions du logo que nous avons créé pour GO à vélo!, une équipe de cyclistes participant au Grand Défi Pierre Lavoie? Éh bien, puisque l’équipe a doublé son nombre de cyclistes pour ainsi faire 2 équipes de participants, nous avons modifié leur logo pour illustrer ce changement pour l’édition de cette année. Voici de quoi ça a l’air sur le maillot de Louise Lévesque, la capitaine de l’équipe. Joli, n’est-ce pas?

Encore cette année nous souhaitons la meilleure des chances à “nos” équipes et nous vous encourageons à faire un don pour cette bonne cause en vous rendant directement sur la page de GO à vélo pour les aider à atteindre leur objectif de 10 000$!

Logo -2011

]]> http://yellowcardesign.com/blog/2011/04/21/go-a-velo-2011/feed/ 0 http://yellowcardesign.com/blog/2011/03/14/designs-for-paper-airplane-festival-competition/ http://yellowcardesign.com/blog/2011/03/14/designs-for-paper-airplane-festival-competition/#comments Mon, 14 Mar 2011 17:34:04 +0000 ycd http://yellowcardesign.com/blog/?p=1501 We were contacted by the organizers of Folded Dreams at the beginning of 2011 and asked to design a poster, a postcard and some templates for the website of their Annual Paper Airplane Festival & Competition taking place in Ottawa. They wanted something “simple and clean”, and below is what we came up with. This event . . . → Read More: Designs for Paper Airplane Festival & Competition]]> We were contacted by the organizers of Folded Dreams at the beginning of 2011 and asked to design a poster, a postcard and some templates for the website of their Annual Paper Airplane Festival & Competition taking place in Ottawa. They wanted something “simple and clean”, and below is what we came up with. This event being the most simplistic kind of “airshow”,  any complexity in the design would have been inappropriate… We therefore used swirly dotted lines and uncomplicated shapes to suggest simplicity and lightness which is, after all, what airplanes made out of paper are all about.

]]> http://yellowcardesign.com/blog/2011/03/14/designs-for-paper-airplane-festival-competition/feed/ 0 http://yellowcardesign.com/blog/2011/02/07/winterlude-2011-ice-sculpture-competition/ http://yellowcardesign.com/blog/2011/02/07/winterlude-2011-ice-sculpture-competition/#comments Mon, 07 Feb 2011 17:36:11 +0000 ycd http://yellowcardesign.com/blog/?p=1408

Winterlude 2011 - Ottawa, Canada - Confederation Park

We’re not big fans of winter, but yesterday we made an exception and took advantage of the warm-ish weather to go to Winterlude, Ottawa’s annual winter festival. We wanted to see the ice sculptures that were, as you can see above, quite spectacular! We couldn’t . . . → Read More: Winterlude 2011 – Ice Sculpture Competition]]>

Winterlude 2011 - Ottawa, Canada - Confederation Park

We’re not big fans of winter, but yesterday we made an exception and took advantage of the warm-ish weather to go to Winterlude, Ottawa’s annual winter festival. We wanted to see the ice sculptures that were, as you can see above, quite spectacular! We couldn’t photograph every pieces due to Confederation Park – or should I say the “Rogers Crystal Garden”?- being extremely crowded with families, pushchairs and tourists, but we managed to take a few photos thanks to Marc’s height. I am always amazed of the precision and details that goes into each sculptures and could personally not do it, even if I had the talent, since I would get way too upset when it’d begin to melt and would probably insist of getting a huge freezer to store it all year-round. More convenient to stick to graphic design.

This year, the competition theme was “Harmony & Contrast” and I don’t think I could have guessed it by looking at the different sculptures. I am not a judge, so it doesn’t really matter to me and doesn’t alter the fact that I am immensely impressed by what I saw! Other than the ice sculpture competition and the “Sugar Shack” setup featuring a bunch of lumberjacks, the rest was pretty much your usual festival stuff: a row of kiosks selling deliciously smelling but ridiculously expensive food (in this case poutine, beavertails & maple syrup taffy), souvenir shop, overly present sponsors (Rogers and their giant ice-sculpted Samsung phone trying to sell you a 3-years contract) and loud Canadian music. Overall though it was nice to be outside for a bit and to re-discover the greatest pleasure of Canadian winter: going back inside with nice red cheeks to enjoy a hot drink!

]]> http://yellowcardesign.com/blog/2011/02/07/winterlude-2011-ice-sculpture-competition/feed/ 0 http://yellowcardesign.com/blog/2010/12/06/recycled-cards-for-the-holidays/ http://yellowcardesign.com/blog/2010/12/06/recycled-cards-for-the-holidays/#comments Mon, 06 Dec 2010 16:23:01 +0000 ycd http://yellowcardesign.com/blog/?p=1318 A few weeks ago Felt & Wire was giving away packs of lovely Mohawk Paper envelopes to their Facebook fans following a discussion on what size(s) of envelopes designers/paper lovers were using the most. I received mine in the post a few days later and was very excited about posting about them here, but . . . → Read More: Recycled cards for the Holidays]]> A few weeks ago Felt & Wire was giving away packs of lovely Mohawk Paper envelopes to their Facebook fans following a discussion on what size(s) of envelopes designers/paper lovers were using the most. I received mine in the post a few days later and was very excited about posting about them here, but then wanted to wait until I’d do something creative with them before showing them off. So here they are now along with what I’ve created to go with it: recycled Christmas cards made of old cards that I’ve collected throughout the years.

Envelopes can make all the difference when it comes to greeting cards design. Indeed, I think that both the dark charcoal envelope and the mustardy yellow one highlight details from each illustration. The thick matte paper stops the cards from being too tacky and the bold colours give them a trendy edge. This is how far I got with my craft before running out of glue… I doubt I will go through my pile of envelopes with this project – I don’t send cards to that many people, really – so I’ll have to think of something else to do with those nice envelopes. Will keep you posted, stay tuned!

Vick @ Yellow Car Design