ReadyMade: Instructions for everyday life

We’re so excited about the release of new products from Yellow Owl Workshop and Chronicle Books that we’re giving away 5 sets them today! Here’s how to enter for your chance to be a randomly chosen winner of a Yellow Owl LCD Notecards and Yellow Owl Notebook Set:

1.) Become a follower of Readymadetweets on twitter.

2.) Post “Hey @Readymadetweets, color me Yellow (Owl) http://bit.ly/cZGZXr” in your twitter feed between now and 5 pm Central time today.

We’ll post the winners first thing Tuesday morning and until then, scroll down to read a bit of the back story of the products from Yellow Owl’s own Christine Schmidt!

RM How long has this collaboration with Chronicle been in the works?
Schmidt Probably a year and a half.

RM What’s been the biggest surprise in working with a big publishing company?
Schmidt Sweet, sweet Freedom!  I usually work by myself in the vacuum of my own studio.  Ideas, drawing and prints are the easy part. It is the material sourcing, production details and budget concerns that swallow my time.  With these projects I had all design liberty without the production concerns. I guess it is a big publishing company, but the whole experience was very personal.  I collaborated with two crazy talented people, Jason Sacher (editor) and Kristen Hewitt (design director) and it felt like working on a art project with two pals.

RM I know that you all worked together to build on your line, but to tweak it slightly to create new products—was that as hard as it sounds?
Schmidt With both projects we pushed the original ideas further and expanded them in to a series.  We took the format of the notepads, changed the art and made the interior pages and binding three florescent colors.  We kept the covers natural chipboard with screen printed white ink.   I actually submitted designs for the notepad series then resubmitted all new designs a week later.  I was looking at the way Native American artists would depict the natural world with repeated geometric shapes and wanted to carry that premise to the notepad covers.  Anybody that has had the misfortune of seeing me order off a restaurant menus could tell you, I am annoyingly indecisive. But I still like these designs much more.

We kept the LCD notecards basically the same, but made our own envelopes with a singular LCD character to show postage stamp placement. I still carry my debossed white LCD cards in my line, but I love the versatility of the three different sizes and the fun florescent colors.  And you get so many cards you could send one to everybody!

The most difficult part of the process was the waiting!  With my own line I draw and print almost immediately so it goes from idea to actual product sometimes within a few hours.  I had to wait months to see the final product.  Just like submitting a roll of film (remember those?) for development.  You wait and wait and even though you know what it is basically going to look like, you are so thrilled to see the final product.

RM Do you have a favorite product or aspect of a product? (I love the elastic on the notebooks!)
Schmidt Yeah I dig the elastic bands on the notepad set!  That idea was all Kristen and Jay and it does a great job of reasserting the color palette while adding a functional element.  But I think my favorite part is the the pencil from the LCD notecard set.  Kristen ran all over town trying to find just the right color and I would receive these amazing little packages of pencils with little scribbled color charts. That has got to be the best part of collaboration.  A dead-serious lengthy discussion about colored pencils.  I am a lucky gal!