outdoor retailer winter 2010 trend report

From tiny happy bunny

i recently travelled to outdoor retailer. it was kind of amazing to apply online to get a media badge, buy a plane ticket last minute and hop a plane to go take pictures. it was also really fun. along with seeing some friendly faces from the northwest (brooks, eddie bauer, and REI peeps) i met a lot of amazing people at the show.

i decided to put together a small trend report of what i saw, and of course i'm selling the photos from the show as a set for design inspiration.

kuler is cool

From tiny happy bunny

so the last few times i've worked in illustrator and i've been searching for that... one... color... i just can't get right, this is my newest tool. adobe allows you to go to the web, download palettes, make palettes for others to use, and just generally play around with color mixing. i like when work becomes play.

*that one's called 'avoidance'

no freakin way !!!!

a few months ago... probably around 3, i was watching heroes. my husband is a fan, i tend to read or peruse a mag while he watches. at the time i was paying attention. there were a couple of men, in charge of a baby... and they had a baby bag. i went insane. i jumped up. 'look at that bag !'. 'i have to have that bag!'. i got online for a few weeks and looked, searched and googled. nothing. as you might know, i do freelance design projects for kids, and i spend a portion of every day looking at baby stuff (i don't have kids, it might be odd). anyway, i was doing some random search for a diaper bag i came across (i took a picture of it with my phone, and was trying to figure out what it was) and had just found it on this really cool site. it IS a cool diaper bag (if something like that CAN be cool). and then i found this. randomly. serendipitously. FINALLY. i'm so excited i'm going to buy it right now. not even invoking the 3 day rule. you could buy it too... here.

kid's inspiration

i decided to do a small inspiration color board, i've seen so much bold baby stuff lately, and it's so inspiring ! i'm glad it's not all the usual pink-girl, blue-boy... that stuff is cute, but as a parent i can't imagine carrying around something so... kiddie. fun, sophisticated and gender specific (if you HAVE to have it) can coexist. i'm glad they caught on. my favourites are... jj cole, boden, and anorak

here's a better one

i posted a color site previously, and... it really is no longer functional. this one was sent to me by my friend p. and it is truly awesome. i love the articles they post... especially about color trends on etsy. rad. talk about grass roots inspiration. one could spend hours.

love the color.

if you love color, like i love color

i came across this today. kind of a cool idea, and there are definitely some palettes worth exploring. daily color

also found some great tutorials for AI, check back, i'll be hard at work....