Design Musings

What a busy year! 2015 has been a blur in the studio with a real variety of exciting projects. With our own work we have been focussed on the 2016 calendar - something a little different! We are posting them out now to our clients and soon you will be able to buy one on our website. We brought you our pick of Design Classics - actually quite a tricky brief! There is so much good design out there, we selected those items that stood the test of time and are still being referenced in design today. If you sign up to our newsletter you can see which piece we feature each month. Here a few of our favourites from this year... Our 2015 calendar was all about time travel! For December we conclude with The Time Machine, H.G. Wells' marvellous creation. A book that has inspired countless future generations with stories that dart through time. Our idea came from the well loved movie Back to the Future Two, where Marty McFly travelled to the future (and the past)  to right some wr...

Hi, my name is Tom and here is what I did in my week of work experience at pickle design. Emma and Carl made me feel welcome. I had never used a Mac before so it took some getting use to but now I can use the Mac with ease.  The programmes I used were InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop all made by the company Adobe.  My first project was to create a business name and logo for an electronics company trying to sell headphones and during this project I made the front page of a web-page for it. Then I adapted a website into a mobile friendly format, The Quarryman pub. My second project was to make a double sided A5 leaflet for Comic Con using Indesign and Illustrator, during this I made a mood board to inspire me. My third project was to create packaging for fudge I did this by using Illustrator and Photoshop, I made another mood board of fudge related objects. My last project was to create a fold-out leaflet for Camel Self-Storage I added infor...

We have had some great websites come into being recently - and we thought we would show you one of our latest, Trail Bike Hire. If you live in or have visited North Cornwall then no doubt you have heard of the Camel Trail. When I holidayed in Wadebridge as a child I was convinced that camels were involved, but sadly no, the camel reference is to the River and not to a Moroccan caravan. The trail itself takes the route of an old railway track and runs through some very scenic landscape. The route is mainly flat and travels through Padstow, Wadebridge, Bodmin and Wenfordbridge. Trail Bike Hire supply bikes from their Padstow base for the Camel Trail. Our brief was to create an informative and easy to use website. I wanted the design to be fresh and modern and to capitalise on the current trend for everything bike. Some elements from their existing brand were also used, such as the lovely Gill Sans font (featured in June’s Design Classic: Penguin Books ) which evokes the railway c...

This is one of our latest websites to go live and it is for a truly delicious restaurant in Lostwithiel, Cornwall,  Trewithen . We started with the brand, creating a logo, and some elements of illustration, menu backs, business cards and bill holders. Then we came to the website. Trewithen is the perfect balance of first class food with a friendly and personal service. The brand and website needed to reflect their quality, but also the approachable nature of the restaurant. To add to the brand, I drew a selection of forks showing the range of their fine dining, and we settled on a colour palette of silver grey and teal blue. The brand also picks up on the circle shape of a plate which we used throughout.  With the brand in place the next stage was the website. This site is responsive so it will change to fit the format of the device it is viewed on, be that monitor, tablet or mobile. The website is beautiful designed to show off the lovely photog...

You may have seen our 2015 calendar circulating social media or in our latest newsletter. Every year at Pickle Design we like to put together a calendar and present it as a gift for our clients. Over the years this has taken the form of bookmarks, badges, concertina folds, colour wheels and illustrated trees. Last year we created a poster celebrating great 20th century chair design. This year, 2015, held some significance for fans of the movie Back to the Future 2 as this was when Marty Mcfly travelled to in their version of the future. This captured our imaginations so we started to think time travel. 2015 doesn't feel that futuristic (so far) but a few things from the movie have come into being. Take when Marty Mcfly (Micheal J Fox) sees Jaws 19, the reference to countless sequels and movies in 3d is pretty spot on. There is also hand held computers, hands free gaming and video conferencing.  So in the studio we decided to take the theme of time travel and create ...

This week we enjoyed having Carissa in the studio for her work experience, she wrote a little about her time with us: "Hi guys. My name is Carissa, here's a bit about my week at Pickle Design. First of all I don’t think it could have gone better as I am a very nervous person and Carl (although absent most of the time as his wife had twins!) and Emma made me feel very welcome, which made it easy to work and learn from them. When I started I had not use the Apple programming before, so I was introduced to that as well as the programmes I used throughout the week. The programmes I used were InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop, all made by Adobe. They each had their difficulties and challenges, but with help from Emma I managed to figure out basic use of them. My first project was to create a logo for a local restaurant that my father owns called “The Granary”, this took the longest as I had to learn all the programmes, but I learned a lot from this. Next, in Photosh...

We are very proud to unveil our 2014 calendar, an A2 poster celebrating great chair design. Every year we like to design a calendar for our clients - nothing standard of course - but a chance to show off the Pickle Design style, and hopefully create something our clients want to keep. There are always challenges we have to face, but it is quite fun trying to find a cost effective way to produce them, that doesn’t loose impact. Our 2014 calendar uses just two colours, red and blue, but layers them in opacities to create bold representations of iconic chair designs. The typography is clean and simple with a retro bent. Usually I draw my illustrations by hand and then scan them in, but for this particular project I had a very clear style in my mind, so I used Adobe Illustrator. I looked at these pieces of furniture as shapes, and made them up in shades and segments to build, hopefully, striking representations. The calendars are available from the Pickle Design website here , ...

Last week we enjoyed having Jess Fisher in the studio for her work experience, she wrote a little about her time with us: Monday and Tuesday: On Monday I was given the task to create some packaging for a brand of Shea Butter. First of all I had to research Shea butter on the internet. I found how it was made, what it is made from and where it is made. Using this research, I then had to design my logo. We decided to call the brand 'Shea beauty' as this was the name of an already existing product for Pickle Design.  I then made my logo using two different font styles, a fun, informal one and a clean, white font. I felt they went well together and I chose the duck egg blue colour as I felt it contrasted well with the white. I chose the pale brown colour because it was very similar to the colour of the Shea butter. I then decided to add an illustration of the nuts used to create the product. I chose these because I felt they represented to brand well. I then had t...

Recently Carl treated me and his wife Maria to a meal at The Dining Room; the restaurant of one of our client's. The Dining Room is a cosy fine dining experience in Rock, North Cornwall - and the food was delicious! A feast for the eyes as well as taste buds, with homemade bread and homemade fresh clotted cream butter, light delicate soups, terrines, glazed belly pork and venison all tasted. Puddings of custard tart and dark chocolate ganache with home made hazelnut ice cream. Topped off with the most delightful mini cake stand with a Cornish cream tea. It kept our mouths watering for days after and looking at the pictures brings back those wonderful tastes all over again! Any day now the website we designed for them will go live, and you can see even more of Fred and Donna's culinary delights. Emma Julian

Hi I’m Nelly, I’ve been doing a week's work placement with Pickle Design. I have really enjoyed myself and I have learned lots of new skills and programs. I’ve designed a leaflet and business card for Ceramics and Silver studio, an Art Deco theme wedding invite, a post card with a poem I wrote accompanied by an illustration that I did, and a website design for a cafe. I was also given the job of putting posts onto the Pickle Design Facebook page each day of things in the design world that inspire me. I have had a really good week and I feel I have improved as a designer. Thanks to all at Pickle!

A good way to end the year at Pickle Design with a new addition! Rufus was born at 5.09am on the 23rd of December and is now at home with his mum and big brother Henry! Carl and Maria would like to say thank you to everyone who wished us well on the nervous week before he was born, and also to all who have been in touch since.

These last two weeks we have been enjoying the company of Jess who is with on a work experience placement. Emma set her a project that took advantage of her creative skills and new techniques she has been learning in the studio. Here is what Jess has to say about the project. “My brief was to take photographs around the garden and then add some appropriate quotes on to them. I also decided to add a few illustrations on to some of the images. I added filters using Photoshop to make parts of the images stand out such as the red chair. Red Chair (Top) “I took this image from a low angle to make the small chair look large and powerful. I then dulled down the background to make the redness of the chair stand out more. For the illustration, I decided to draw a very small man sat on top of the chair, with a crown, as if he had conquered it. I thought the quote “nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’” fitted with image as with the size of the person, it would seem tha...