Studio Calico Origins....

When Emily and I were planning our blog week, she decided to post all of those awesome tutorials about pleating, but I was struggling to come up with a topic. I'd thought about showing the evolution of Studio Calico. How we have progressed from our very first kit to designing our own papers. After much consideration, I decided that it would be better to put together a series of posts about the origin of Studio Calico instead. It's pretty good timing for a little history lesson since we will be celebrating our 2nd anniversary with the release of the July kit.

Bernadette Peters once said, "You've got to be original, because if you're like someone else, what do they need you for? " I can think of no other quote that better sums up what April and Scarlet have created with Studio Calico. From the very beginning, they set out to be different from the other kit clubs that were out there. Their kit club was going to be cutting edge, with a hint of vintage flair. They met with Stephen, our resident graphic designer, and talked about what had been done by other companies and their brands. They also discussed the personality of the new company, the name of the new company and what they wanted our brand to be. They concluded that they wanted a higher-end product, with a cleaner and less cluttered look.

Their first hurdle was coming up with a name for their new venture. According to April, "We knew from the beginning that we wanted Studio in the title. We tried lots of different combinations, but finally settled on Studio Calico because the domain name was available." They decided right then and there that each kit would include the black, white and Kraft cardstock that has become their trademark. I don't know about any of you, but I'd never even seen a layout on Kraft until Studio Calico came along. Now every time I open a scrapbook magazine, the pages are covered with Kraft cardstock!

Once they had their name down, it was time to come up with a logo....something that would brand Studio Calico and make it stand out from the competition. I knew that Stephen had a big hand in creating our logo, so I called him up and asked him to give me the 411 on how it all went down. Here is what he had to say, "April called me up wanting both a website and a brand in a month. Which is nearly an insane turnaround considering the complexity of the site she had envisioned. So the branding for SC was rushed at the very VERY least. Knowing the clean look was being developed and knowing April's personal style, I wanted a logo that complimented & contrasted that look. I only presented 2 logos to them (Scarlet & April). The first one was a very modern, very clean mark and the second is what you've seen ... stable but playful ... clean but busy ... old but new. They hated the first one (Which was great) because I liked the second one better myself. It was based on the Affair typeface. The swooshes are highly edited to inner-connect. After some tweaking to the original concept ... basically fixing the result of a rushed design ... the logo was approved."

So here they are ladies, the original concepts for the Studio Calico logo. Here is the modern design that Stephen referred to:

And here is the original working layout of the Studio Calico logo that you have all come to know and love:

I thought that you might also like to see a couple of the other ideas that they kicked around. At first, they thought about using April's handwriting as the logo:

I also managed to convince Stephen to copy a page of his sketch book for me. You can see what his doodles looked like from the original brainstorming session.

That is all of the history lesson that you get to see today. Tomorrow I'll give you some more of the goods from my interview with Stephen and show you some of his favorite designs.

Stay tuned......
Lorie