(We designed the logo on this bag! ahhhh, rubs knuckles on chest…)

If you knit, you’ve probably heard of Knitty.com, in my opinion the best and all-free knitting pattern site out there. Amy, the editor of Knitty contacted us to design their special 10 year anniversary logo,

(and wrote a really nice blog about us to boot!),

and sweetened the deal with one of their limited edition Knitty + Tom Bihn bags, and it arrived yesterday!

Oh my gosh it’s just perfect, and love the colours, purple and green together are fabulous! And check out the inside, it’s huge and ready to load up with knitting projects….

… and it comes with one of the medium size Yarn Stuff Sacks inside, to stuff a ball of yarn in to keep it tangle free as you knit on the go.

So very cool, I think you might need one right? I’ll be taking mine to Toronto next month for the Creativ Festival, are you going?

More news coming soon with more exciting previews of current projects as we get approvals to share, stay tuned!

As always, if we can help you with your own special logo design, feel free to contact us, we’d love to hear from you!

Here’s our promise, from us to you:
We Green Couchers love what we do. We love creating excellent artwork and creative work for you, our treasured clients.

We promise we will never disappear off the face of the earth, or ignore your call or email, and we will never leave you hanging.
We will always give you a heads up if we will be away, or if a project might require a bit more time, and will always respond to your email or message in a very timely fashion. ‘Cuz you know, we are very fashionable but being late is definitely not considered stylish in our books.

We promise we will not give you the “designer” attitude… EVER.
Getting real, being true to our word, and being honest with no bull-doody is what we do. We will not try to tell you what you want, oversell our services, or dictate to you our point of view- no “it’s our way or the highway!” Instead, we will listen to you, consider and incorporate your ideas, and work them the best way we can into a creative and unique project made just for you.

Unless you give us permission to go wild, then watch out! But we’ll always have your best interests at heart and carefully consider your company, its values, and style, before designing anything too out of the box. That’s just how we roll.
(And we don’t wear black turtlenecks or berets. Though we do love our macs, but that’s a different story!)

We will not cha-ching you ’til your wallet is empty.
Our work is high quality, unique, and creative, but we know how the real world works. Unrealistically high prices and pretentiousness- no thanks. We get it, we understand, and you’ll get the benefits!

We’re so old skool.
And proud of it! Manners, courtesy, and respect are highest on our priorities when working with our clients. We’ll treat you as we would want to be treated ourselves. Please and thank you are not overrated and we use ‘em. We love spell check. ‘Cuz we’re sticklers for good spelling and grammar. And no we won’t ever cut you off to answer our cell phone or check our Facebook page or tweet about whatever, as that’s just plain rude.

We will try to help when others won’t. Or can’t.
We’re never “too busy”, “too big to take on a smaller project”, “too…. usual excuse not to help you  here”, we will always try to help you whether we work with you or can refer you to someone specialized in a certain area if needed.

We’ve done a lot in our years in business and we really know the ins and outs of dealing with printers, rush deadlines, artwork set up for various formats, file formats, technical specs required, the list goes on.

Plus, we rock at designing. And website building. And illustration. And branding. And…. well, we’ve done pretty much it all. We know how it works. Some might call us experts. We want to, and will show you how things should really be!
Give us a call or drop us a line today and let us know how we can help you with your next project.
Need a new WordPress site or theme designed or built?
A new logo or update for your existing brand?
A cute illustration for your company Christmas card?
A <insert your project idea here>?

We promise we will not be a horror story and won’t leave you wondering wha’ the h-e-double hockey sticks just happened. Just great design, no attitude, excellent service, and great rates- we’d say those are pretty awesome reasons to work with us, if we do say so ourselves!

We think you’ll like us! Call us?

Cynthia: cynthia@greencouchdesigns.com
Norm: norm@greencouchdesigns.com

office landline: 604.820.1488 

We’ve been meaning to post and update you on what we’ve been up to, including telling you about my fabric designs with Robert Kaufman fabrics!

You may not know this, but along with being a regular print and web graphic designer,  I am an avid sewer and quilter. I’ve been playing with fabric design for a while and have many of my designs for sale on Spoonflower.com (you can go check it out & buy fabric designed by me there too!) and when I was contacted to have some of my designs licensed and printed onto fabric with Robert Kaufman fabrics, holy moly how exciting! To any fabric junkie like me this is massive and I am so grateful, excited, and so honoured that my designs are now being sold on fabric in stores all over the world!

Working with the team at Robert Kaufman has been fun and they are truly experts at what they do. They helped make my designs look even more spectacular than I could have imagined, and so far the response by people has been amazing and so positive and I am totally thrilled!

Designing fabric is an interesting field to delve into, and whole new process of designing. So many things to consider, how the design repeats over yardage, how the colour translates onto fabric and into several colourways, and how much time is involved from start to finish. And it’s definitely exciting to see it start popping up online in various favorite online fabric shops and beyond!

Stay tuned for more releases designed by me coming early 2013!

In Green Couch news, we’ve been working away behind the scenes and coming up with some new package deals we’re sure you will like (info coming very soon). Whether  you’re a new or returning client with us, there will be something for everyone to choose from. We love our clients new and ongoing, and we want to share some love with you! We’re booking projects now for mid-August and beyond, and we want to add you to our list! Watch this spot shortly for deets!

• First up, we love WordPress and so do search engines. You can highly improve your site traffic by using WP and blogging.

• We use Hybrid Core as a basis for all our custom themes, which is an excellent SEO optimized basic theme to start with.
Site structure technically is very important, some say even moreso than design, as well as having your own hosted site and domain instead of using the free site options.

• Consistent content not as much as blog posting frequency- search engines seek out frequently updated content- blogs are great for that.

• Also using keywords that are relevant to your biz in your post(s), links to other sites, etc. are great as well.

• Headers make a big difference since it’s the first thing search engine sees. Put your locale in the header too to help to be found locally.

• I found this great link with some free tips for optimizing your site, they really do work, I tried them myself!

http://www.artbizcoach.com/websites.html

• Specifically for artists or those in creative fields, it’s important to have your site be a reflection of “you” and your work. This is an excellent guide and well worth the price to help you with your artistic or creative business and tips for your website:

http://chrisguillebeau.com/3×5/the-unconventional-guide-to-art-and-money/

And even more fun- we had never Twit-chatted so we learned something in the process too!

Here are a couple of links for you to check out for more great tips:

http://www.catswhocode.com/blog/8-tips-to-enhance-your-wordpress-blog-seo

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2011/04/27/how-to-select-good-seo-keywords/

http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

Enjoy!

We are so honoured and excited!

The Right Brain Business Plan is just awesome- I’d recommend it to anyone in any stage of their creative business. It’s a great book with loads of exercises to help you figure out your creative business, where you’re going and what you want to do with it. It’s got lots of great tips and stories from other entrepreneurs about their businesses and how they “make it work”.  I’m still working my way thru the exercises but so far it’s given me a big boost to keep the momentum going full speed ahead!

Huge thanks to Jennifer Lee for shining the spotlight on us!

Now go buy her book, The Right-Brain Business Plan: A Creative, Visual Map for Success- you’ll love it!

Have you been wanting your very own cute blog, a funky logo or stylish illustration? Or something web-related or design-y we can help you with? Look no further and come check us out! For one month we are offering all new customers 20% off on your first project with us- what could be better than that? Great design, excellent service, and great prices! Contact us for more info and we’ll look forward to hopefully working with you!

You can check out our website and work here…

It ain’t easy finding a good, reliable, and affordable printer, but once you do, you hold on to them for dear life! I like using online print services for our clients as they can ship direct to you, generally lower prices than a bricks n’mortar print shop, no fuss no muss and no middleman which means no markup for our clients! I was using a service in the US which was great, relatively inexpensive and nice quality work. Until they jacked up the shipping rates to Canada making their prices crazy ridiculous and not worth it for us anymore. I looked around online and asked around for recommendations and some local clients and colleagues recommended Jukebox Print, in Vancouver.

I tried them out with a Green Couch project, new business cards for me! And wow! I think I have found my new favorite printer! They are fast, excellent communication, and even sent a note concerning my dieline and border I had put in my artwork mentioning it might be a bit off after cutting which is normal, but you know what? They turned out perfectly! I am thrilled!

They have loads of great specials on and excellent prices, great customer service and yes. I can highly recommend them and will be using them for any printing that comes up in future!

So on your next project whether with us or on your own, try them out!

We love!

Jukebox Print
Vancouver, BC

Here we’ll be featuring client projects and other fun things that we’d like to share with you.

First I’d like to share this great site of inspiring colour trends and combinations I stumbled across, called Design Seeds.

They feature daily photographs with colour palettes pulled from the images that you can use for inspiration and ideas.

Sometimes as a designer you can get stuck using the same colours or favorite colours you know will work for a project but why not mix it up a little bit and try something new? Challenge yourself and stretch your colour sense! Sometimes a happy accident will come along and a colour combination you thought would never work, suddenly works like magic. They even have a WordPress widget you can add to your own website for a daily dose of colour fun, (check it out on the sidebar over there to your left)!

Check it out for some great inspiration!