Frances's blog

An unused type exploration for Grip's tshirts for the HOW Conference this summer.

Buttons for St Patrick's day! Check out photos from the event by Anthony Barlich. You are loved!

A contribution to my friend Jillian Barthold's zine BearBook. The first issue's theme was teeth. Hurray for fun projects and silly lettering.

This poster is from the Spring 2011 Silver Tongue series, so not spectacularly recent, but I felt like it was worth mentioning since the only direction I received was: "Use this picture of the author in an astronaut suit."

Creating the promotional materials for the 2011 Wicker Park Children's Carnival was a dream. The parameters were pretty loose, so I made a pattern out of the hippest tastes of summer and did a bit of lettering. Thanks to Missio Dei for such a fun project!

This poster was created for the Say Something Poster Project competition and gallery show. We were given the opportunity to use poster design to  inspire, motivate and educate teenagers, which was a bit intimidating. I decided my ultimate goal was to communicate hope and combined detailed images of textures to create a composite of the phrase "this too shall pass." 

Due to the support of incredibly kind people, this poster was selected as one of the 25 semi-finalists in the project's innaugural show. Many thanks for voting & encouraging!

Some of our tuition dollars go to support resources like lynda.com, and this poster was designed to raise awareness for access. 

As a rule, I try to only be friends with very talented people. My friend Katherine is gifted in many ways, and it was a joy to design the poster for her viola performance junior recital at Belmont University in Nashville. Girl's got serious skillz. 
photo by Mary Lauren Mansfield.

ballpoint pens write real smooth on bananas, but I'm sure you knew that already. A good friend's design for a Chiquita banana sticker contest was chosen, and we had a banana party to celebrate. There were so many bananas, and it was fun to have a reason to play with our food.

classy photos by my friend Ting Shen.

I had the joy of contributing to this year's artnog, a wonderful, warm & fuzzy event in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago consisting of art, food and carols. The downstairs gallery featured 15 local artists' work on the theme of anticipation. Click through to see more photos of the event.

I chose to make the word Certain as beautiful as possible and created a 16x20 piece with sawdust on glass. 

Special thanks to my pal Zach Harris for the photo.

Remember that cupcake card? My friend's mom had me make a version for her work's chili cook off. So much fun, easy to personalize and PDF. Bam.

I have two Sooner Sisters who are very different but equally ridiculous. Apparently at the University of Oklahoma it's fairly easy to establish a student organization and receive not only university funding, but also a snazzy office in the student union. Several years ago my older sister was a charter member of "Cake Day"*, and this fall my younger sister became vice president of the newly formed "Sooner Curling Club."

Let it be noted that they do not have access to curling equipment or facilities, none of them have any curling experience, and none are particularly concerned with these obstacles. What matters is that they have a facebook group, a place to meet and a brand new logo.

*On Cake Day you gather your closest friends and loved ones and celebrate by eating a cake. I was never contacted to create a logo for that organization, unfortunately.

Students in Design held a screenprinting event during New Student Open House. For an arts and media school, the tshirts for sale in our bookstore are definitely lacking. Students In Design selected three designs to print on recycled shirts and sell.

Submission for STA's student scholarship competition (type as meta communication). I explored so many concepts and arrived here. This piece was added to the collection of the Chicago Design Archive.

The line comes from Mumford & Son's song "Awake My Soul." Today is the day you become a fan.

This concept wasn't chosen (sad face), but it was such a fun project to conceive and execute during my summer at BMDllc.