We designed the Lost In Taste menu on Canva from Day 0. I knew from experience how helpful a Canva menu is for a constantly evolving restaurant, so this was a perfect fit for them.
The staff at Lost In Taste has done a great job adhering to the styling queues I created in the first template, and I’m always impressed with what they are able to add and change while sticking to all the design principles we put in place for them.
We also designed the logo, branding, and website for this business.
After several versions and many price updates, it was finally time to convert Kabuki’s menu to a Canva document they could edit themselves.
When we first created this menu, Canva was not as popular of choice for this kind of thing, so it was done in Adobe InDesign and Adobe Illustrator. This required the owner to pay me every time he needed to change.
After about 10 hours of work, he can now make these changes himself, put part of his marketing budget towards other things, and make price changes to the menu more frequently to keep up with fluctuating food costs.
Graphic design and layout for Amelia’s new album
Squarespace Website Design & Logo Design for Matt Lyerly of Matt Lyerly Fitness — a Fitness Coach who provides customized, sustainable, science-based athletic training programs for clients around the NRV who are looking to prioritize fitness in their daily lives.
Squarespace Website Design & Infographic Design for Qentoros Inc., whose mission is to create an FDA approved, off-the-shelf, scientifically proven orthobiologic for the treatment of musculoskeletal injuries in horses.
Squarespace Website Design & Logo Design for Simon Kinsinger of Kinsinger Financial — a Financial Coach who empowers individuals and families to achieve financial freedom.
This is the logo and brand design for Sprout Wellness, an inclusive wellness coach offering online personal training for people of all bodies and abilities who want to reach their health and wellness goals with gentle support and guidance in Blacksburg, Virginia.
Michaela loved the original logo we created for her, but it was time for an update that better fits her unique aesthetic! She was also long overdue for a website to help streamline client intake for new services.
We were going for something with a more retro/vintage feel; Michaela came prepared with plenty of inspiration. I’m proud of the minimal warped typography effect and the carefully chosen rainbow color scheme — hinting at her studio’s emphasis on pride and inclusivity without being too in-your-face. It turned out GREAT on her tote bags!
Logo and brand design for Music House of Blacksburg, a private music studio that offers piano lessons in Blacksburg, Virginia. The client’s goal was to create a cohesive brand for signage and online marketing. Her audience is primarily moms, parents of kids. She was looking for something thoughtful, professional, fun, encouraging.
Re-brand of New River Moving Arts. During this process I was responsible not only for the new logo design for 2-brands-in-one, but also for contributing to the re-naming process for the business. Blacksburg Dance Theater & Open Space Studios (formerly known as New River Moving Arts) is a multifaceted studio consisting of: dance, Pilates, martial arts, academics, and music education.
Squarespace website design for local sports bar and restaurant Lost In Taste. My goal was to echo the creativity the owner put into the brand and his restaurant decor. This is probably one of my favorite client sites, aesthetically. I am a sucker for an excellent dark color scheme and carefully chosen accents. We did all the photography for this project. We also designed the logo & branding for this business.
One of the biggest confusions for Hazelbea At Home customers was pick-up locations and times and delivery fees. On the old site, there was not a great way to host Hazelbea’s business model and fulfillment schedule. Each pick-up location has a different address and different hours, delivery fulfillment costs a fee and the delivery radius is limited. On the old site, there was a bit of thinking involved for the customer. Delivery fees had to be manually added to the customer’s cart.
It was a difficult (and confusing) call to make, but we ultimately ended up redesigning her entire Square site in favor of …also a Square site, but with all of the following problems solved:
streamlined & fool-proofed the interfaces for pick-up locations, pick-up times, and delivery fulfillment
merged and corrected item inventories
fixed sale & item report syncing problems between the Square POS dashboard and Square Online interfaces
made publishing weekly menus easier
On the new site, all of the individual pick-up locations and times are automated per order super clearly and the delivery radius is limited to counties/area codes that are chosen by the owner.
Logo & brand design for Crunch To Brunch featuring customized artwork by Maggie Perrin-Key. I really enjoyed tackling the challenges presented by this design concept. The idea for bringing Maggie onto this job came to me while I was literally mopping the floor at our cafe and thinking about the inspiration the client and I had been passing back and forth.
I found myself looking for an abstract pattern that conveyed movement when it felt like a light bulb came on over my head 💡 I'm so grateful that Mary Katherine and Maggie trusted my vision and allowed me to take them along on this wild little design ride. As always, along with source files, a LOT variations were included as part of this project delivery.
Squarespace site design for Building Beloved Communities, a non-profit consulting company based in Roanoke, VA. The biggest benefit of having a designer set up your Squarespace site for you is that you can skip all the learning curves and design indecision. When you join the Gray Matters family, we set you up for success and share with you our tips and tricks to use Squarespace like a pro too.
I had the pleasure of photographing the local mobile dog grooming business Pampered Pawz NRV LLC. Logan and Amanda have supported my CBD cafe since we opened — Logan is responsible for inspiring the Peanut Butter Cup smoothie on the menu! It has been amazing to watch their business grow over the past couple of years and to be supported by a fellow hard-working couple.
Brandy Renee McCann (Appalbrandy.com) reached out to us to replace her Wordpress site with something better. She came prepared with some examples of other writers’ sites that she liked. One of the main goals (besides typical things such as a general design upgrade and improvements to SEO) was to find a way to better showcase and organize the scope of Brandy’s writing work.
The owners of Blacksburg Books came to me for a logo for their new store. As a prospective new downtown Blacksburg business, they had a budget for this project which was just slightly below my standard logo price. Since my project prices are based on an approximate hourly rate, I was more than happy to negotiate. This model is a win for both of us because it means that my clients get what they need now for what they can afford right now, which enables them to grow. Later on down the road, if they want to make updates, they know they can come to me for a fair hourly or project rate again.
This client came to me for an 80’s/retro/vaporwave style logo design for a space-themed sports bar in Christiansburg, Virginia right down the road from my CBD store. Not only is this aesthetic is one of my all-time favorites to work with, but the owner also has creative ideas for fleshing out the brand in the near future through story-lines/characters and high-quality branded merchandise.
Since we completed this project we have also designed a Squarespace website for Lost In Taste.
This client came to me for an “emergency” website re-design. Yes, you read that correctly… An emergency!! Direct visits to the website worked as normal, but when you searched for her business on Google and clicked on the listing, you’d be re-directed to a totally different website that had nothing to do with her business. This problem was likely a result of either an outdated or insecure WordPress plug-in. I consulted my colleagues (who are more proficient in WordPress things than I), who agreed with my assessment of the situation. We determined it was easier and faster to start a whole new site from scratch than to try to fix the bug on the existing site.
ECC Test Lab (previously located in Blacksburg, VA — now in Richmond, VA) came to me for a logo refresh and total website overhaul. ECC is an accredited analytical and microbial laboratory whose mission is to provide our customers with the highest quality results in the fastest time possible. When they approached me, they were just beginning to expand from primarily hemp testing into a full range of product safety and quality testing for a variety of industries. They can accommodate most requests with a wide array of specialized instrumentation and combined expertise in chemical and microbial analysis.
Logo design for Grateful Growth yoga therapy, a yoga instructor in the Blacksburg, VA area. This logo design is inspired by the Grateful Dead logo, incorporates the Svasti Mudra, and incorporates astrological elements of fire and stars.