Frances Close

Grand Rapids Community Foundation is always looking for new opportunities to engage with the community and bring life to it. Their new identity reflects their multifaceted nature and future forward attitude, while conveying the sense of energy that they have as an organization. This complete brand overhaul consists of a new logo, website, advertising, social media, and collateral. Designed at Plenty.

Visit grfoundation.org​

Friends of Grand Rapids Parks launched a new initiative encouraging people throughout the city to help track and add to the urban canopy, raising awareness of the importance of trees within our lives. The Urban Forest Project website is a hub for mapping trees and telling their stories. The interactive tree map is designed to collect data, including location, size, species, and more, while other sections on the site provide opportunities to get involved with the project. Along with this website, tree tags were hung throughout the city to raise awareness of the value that individual trees can bring. Designed at Plenty.

Winner of a ​Gold Addy
Visit urbanforestproject.com

​

Camp weddings are always a good time, but mix in some glamour and you have a fun wedding invitation! This suite picked up on a black and white palette, while adding pops of gold throughout in the form of a belly band inviting guests to stay over night, gold ink on a main black card, and gold flecked envelopes. All cards were letterpressed by Freshly Squeezed Print Shop.

Each year AIGA Chicago hosts their Annual Members Meeting, bringing the Chicago community together to inspire and inform. The Snapshot Book serves as a takeaway to recap the years events, awards, and highlight the evenings keynote speaker. This year's book was designed to address the concern that the relevance of the organization needs to extend beyond traditional designers, reaching emerging artists and non-traditional designers alike. We engaged over 20 people to help bring the book to life through collaborative exercises. The result being a playful and open ended experiment that encapsulated the idea of "living design."

This annual report for the Guild for the Blind takes on the general theme of meeting you where you are, alluding to the fact that the Guild helps people on an individual basis and at their own pace. The concept of "getting there together" was born out of the need to speak to both service recipients and donors alike. The report took on the form of a pocket map to reinforce the idea that the Guild serves as a guide to help individuals get to where they need and want to be and to emphasize the extent to which they serve people all across the country.

Alpha Omega Homeschooling wanted to rebrand themselves and revitalize their online presence to remain a leader in an ever-changing market. Their new identity speaks to the homeschooling aspect of their business and is comprised of a new logo, color palette, type system, and icon set. 

The website was designed to keep user needs at the forefront, especially keeping in mind that homeschool newcomers make up a large percentage of their audience. By beginning with personas, wireframes, and information architecture, the new site design speaks clearly to the target audience. Designed at Visualhero.

​Stafford is known for their personable and friendly approach to business, and needed a new website to reflect it. This site positions them as a partner and collaborator, along with leaders within the printing and publishing industry. The design includes an interactive timeline that highlights their rich history and the fact that they are a thriving family-owned business. Along with the site design, I also created the identity and photography. Designed at Plenty.

Visit go-stafford.com​

Each year Friends of Grand Rapids Parks hosts a gala to raise funds for their organization. This years event theme was inspired by lush nature scenes and collage. The website concept picks up on this, and is meant to be a parallax scrolling site. Other materials created for the event include a risograph-printed invitation and a photo wall made entirely from ferns and flowers that served as the backdrop to the evening. Designed at Plenty.

This personal wedding invitation suite truly encapsulates the idea of fun through storytelling and buzzwords. The save the dates poke fun at the fact that we waited nine years to finally take the plunge and the series created buzz about the event with each guests receiving a different card from the series. The outer enclosure illustrates stories from our relationship while the individual cards include fun and friendly details about the event.

​Letterpress done by Steracle Press. Recognized in HOW Magazine.

Friends of Grand Rapids Parks is a great resource for finding parks within the city. This redesign of their parkfinder tool organizes the parks in an intuitive manner and includes features that allow users to upload their own photos and contribute to the tree map via the Urban Forest Project. Designed at Plenty.​

An invitation suite inspired by location, this set picks up on elements of camping in the woods through the use of collaged elements.

This accordion folded book derives from an interest in learning more about sound perception. The content visually translates ideas surrounding audio and a day in sound is represented through a time line that fills the margins of the pages. The book is large in scale and hangs over a frame. It is viewed by sliding the pages rather than flipping them. Currently part of the Grand Valley State University permanent art collection.

Product catalog concept for custom bike makers Independent Fabrications (IF). Contains a screw post binding and a gate folded cover. Typography throughout customized and designed with bike parts to further emphasize the customization that IF brings to their frames.

Done in collaboration with a dear friend, this book compiles new and classic recipes made and photographed by us throughout the year. It is an archive of our food endeavors and a reminder to never stop experimenting.

​Reserve places a lot of emphasis on their farm-to-table offerings. These lunch and dinner menus are an extension of their brand expression and designed to be flexible enough to change items out as fast as they do, keeping up with their seasonal menus. Designed at Plenty.

This book interprets the poetry of John Cage through textural images created by a process of taking a photo, then extracting the photo with a series of scrapings and added paint layers. The images are hidden between french folded perforated pages that need to be torn open to be revealed, creating a sense of sound as tear them open.