coyleart

shop 'til you drop

©Laura Coyle

Is anybody going to NYC for the holidays? Flying US Airways? Here's a map that accompanies a story in US Airways Magazine this month so you can take your own little walking tour of the holiday windows in some of NY's most famous department stores.

Back when I lived in NYC and I thrived on looking at the window displays year-round. I always loved the windows at ABC, in fact I think I loved everything there - a wonderland with miles of beautiful inspiring things, all just a bit outside my price range.

Me and Jenny. Can you find us?

how many chandeliers would you like today?

Speaking of New Yorky things with alphabet names, I have to recommend the B&H Dairy in the east village on 2nd Ave near St. Marks Place. This is the perfect time of year for a nice hot bowl of vegetarian borscht with a dollop of sour cream and thick slices of challah toast with butter. And B&H has been there forever, it feels like you are going back in time when you grab a seat at the counter in this narrow little restaurant. And the nicest guys behind that counter. Kugel? Knishes? Blintzes? They've got them, but I am a creature of habit - always the borscht.

a bowl ah borscht comin' right up.

oh the challah! the challah! with buttah! Oh how I miss New York.

showing a little leg

I must apologize for a month-long hiatus from posting here. I've been in a busy patch with illustration and have been devoting more of my time online this past month to getting my music promotion going and taking on some new gigs as a singer while working on mixing my first CD. Huge learning curve there. But exciting too.

And some fun things have been happening with illustration work. Here are a few peeks at what I've been up to.
Another new promo with Kiki Pollard at Alexander|Pollard Artist's Representatives:

©Laura Coyle 2007

Since this hasn't been unveiled yet, I'll just reveal a little leg from a leaping frog logo. My contribution to a fabulous new inn opening next year in beautiful Highlands, NC. Got to team up with a dear friend and fantastic designer Elizabeth Hautau Karp

And somebody's been exercising around here, I'm afraid it's not me. Hopefully the readers of Gulfshore Life are getting in their workouts. That's all the work from my studio that I can reveal for now - the rest is awaiting publication. I've also just started working with a new intern from Art Institute of Atlanta, and in November I'll be speaking at my alma mater Auburn University. It's a busy season over here, so posting may continue to be light, but thanks for stopping by and keeping in touch! I'll have more to share in November.

digital graphics rolodex

I try to keep up - really! But oh my oh my there's so much to learn when you are an illustrator or designer or anybody using digital graphics technology. The training never ends. Right now, I'm working on my (formerly paltry) Photoshop skills over at Lynda.com. For 25$ a month, you can learn Photoshop, Illustrator and many other software programs at your own pace.

Here are some other links I'm adding to my digital graphics rolodex to help keep up with all the new advances. Adobe Illustrator CS3 has thrown a few new curves into the routine lately, but they are some pretty exciting changes. Creative Techs, a computer support firm out of Seattle has 3 pdf booklets on their site for free download that give an overview of "What's New" in CS3. Also, check out the quicktips section of their site or subscribe to their newsletter.

The new crop tool in Adobe Illustrator CS3 is something new I'm sure to get a lot of use out of. Check out this great video on Adobe's site by Illustrator guru Mordy Golding.

Last year I discovered Mordy Golding's blog when I encountered a bug in Illustrator CS2 and his work-around tip saved me a lot of crashes. For me, his Real World Illustrator blog will forever be THE place to visit for info on Adobe Illustrator. It's time to get the CS3 edition of his book too, Real World Illustrator.

But for FREE tips there are many more online videos to explore at the Adobe Design Center's video workshops page. Live Color is another exciting feature I can't wait to play with, take a look here.

Finally, I found another link that might be helpful to add to your digital graphics rolodex. This article by James Dempsey for MacWorld lists a bunch of links that can help you beef up your font collection. He offers a wide array of links to sites that offer free fonts and sites that sell commercial fonts. Roll on!

carded away

Whee! I think this is the biggest batch of loot I've received so far. These are some of the samples from a few of the recent card collections I've done for Hallmark. They arrived in 2 boxes last week and today I finally had a chance to unpack them, spread them out on the floor and roll around in them.

happy father's day

©Laura Coyle

Giving my Dad reasons to throw his hands up in the air was my M.O. during childhood. So this e-card was definitely made with my Daddy-o in mind. This is one of the many I created for amazon.com starting back in 1999. They don't display my designs on their site any longer, and since they were taken down, I've been wanting to make a little site with a greeting card engine that could give the cards another life. But, alas that project is sitting way on the back burner.

I did nearly 50 different cards for amazon.com over the course of a few years. It was a lot of fun, especially in the beginning when there was so much internet exhuberance in the air. They had a whole greeting card staff of funny funny people who would call and ask me to make cards about everything from the "day of the dead" to invented holidays like "ping pong ball pets day." Every day was an excuse for an odd holiday. I suppose by the time the bubble burst and online shopping was more of a mainstream habit, the e-cards were no longer necessary.

©Laura Coyle

Not that ping pong ball pets were ever necessary. Ah those heady days of the internet boom!

The trick with creating these cards was that they had to be animated .gifs at no more than 50k in size, so it was challenging and kind of fun to design within those parameters. I used Flash to create them and turned them into animated gifs in Fireworks. The good old days. Everything changes and now of course Flash is an Adobe product. I haven't done anything remotely animated since 2003, so I'm sure it would be mind-blowing to get the new program and try it out. It would also be budget-blowing, so it will have to wait, while my bank account recovers from Surtex! For now, Happy Father's Day! And don't forget to walk those ping pong balls.