LittleLion Studio » Featured In

New Collection From The Modern Baby Company

LittleLion — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 23:48:40 +0000

Not too long ago I was pleased to be contacted by Jesseca Trujillo Bellemare, the founder and head of The Modern Baby Company. I guess serendipity stroke since exactly one day before that I came to know

about her company while browsing through chic websites catering for all things babies.

A few moons later, Jesseca, while pregnant of her third child, managed to pull off a new and more focused collection of onesies and mini art cards solely based on LittleLion Studio’s designs in which she primes in simplicity and elegance.

You can check and order the full array of products directly from her not to be missed website, also a refreshing departure from the limited styling Etsy stores.

Still reading? Stop! Click here! ;)

Fabric Contest At Spoonflower

LittleLion — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 14:39:20 +0000

Ever wanted to see or have the chance to purchase one of LittleLion’s designs on fabric? Better yet… how about winning 5 yards of quilting-weight cotton fabric featuring LittleLion Studio’s "Flower’s Scent" pattern for FREE?!? Yes, you heard me… for FREE!! Well, you just might, with a bit of effort and a pinch of luck. Keep reading…

Step 2 - Click to highlight it dark green.

Step 3 - Keep browsing through until you reach the last page (page 10) and hit the "I’m done. Save my votes" button.

Step 4 - Verify the casting of your vote.

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If you’re an avid LittleLion Studio fan, you might have noticed something familiar while visiting Spoonflower’s website… yes, that’s right… they use our very own Asanoha inspired "Ode to Japan" pattern on their header’s background as well as a LittleLion flower blossoming their logo. Maybe this will bring us good luck, who knows… ;-)

Spoonflower, makers of custom printed fabric is holding yet another "Garden Fabrics" contest and this time around the winning pattern will be made available for sale on their website and the designer will receive a complimentary 5 yard stretch.

Here’s what you have to do:

1) Go to the contest’s page and follow the four steps to cast your vote. Unfortunately the vote is not IP based so go ahead and vote as many times as you like, day after day, until April 15.

2) Come back here and leave a comment.

That’s all there is to it! If it so happens that LittleLion Studio scores this one, the 5 yard fabric will be drawn among those who leave comments. And even if you’re not the lucky one, *if we win* (and that is a big if!), everyone would still be able to put orders for the fabric at Spoonflower, so what are you waiting for?

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The voting process is a bit cumbersome, here are the steps:

Step 1 - Browse through the contest’s pages until you see the "Flower’s Scent" pattern (it will show up in a different page each time).

Lucky Jade

LittleLion — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:36:42 +0000

Lucky Jade is a children’s apparel brand with a zest for style. Like many others, the company was founded from Leslie Pitts stepping into motherhood and seeking the absolute best for her baby.

It wasn’t long until the high quality products made of cashmere and bamboo became a success. And in

Leslie’s quest for style, elegance and uniqueness, she resorted to LittleLion Studio’s prints.

What is great about it is that Lucky Jade managed to capture the whimsical side of our prints, finding lots of room for playing around with the elements. The result was impressive and can be verified on their website and all the fancy magazines and stores their product found a home at.

Design Porn

LittleLion — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:18:18 +0000

Design Porn is a Canadian based website for the design nuts among (inside of?) us. At first, I couldn’t quite figure out what to expect, what I would step into after clicking on a link with those two powerful words coupled, but once there it took me but a few seconds to realize that the beautifully twisted people from AmoebaCorp, a Toronto based design firm responsible for Design Porn, have a relation to design as humanity has to sex: a deep, delicious, inexplicable, insatiable, ever-lasting one. They built Design Porn for their peers and it shows.

For the love of me, I cannot explain the moronic depths I had to reach to totally ignore for the best of half an year the fact that Colleen Davidson, then a member of Design Porn, had elected me her favorite illustrator from iStockPhoto! Now… if you have spent the time to check some of the awesome illustrations available on iStockPhoto *and* also spent some time reviewing Design Porn’s selective stuff… well, you would be just as flattered as I am! They were even kind enough to make a brief animation showcasing some of my prints.

I won’t say Design Porn is a one-stop-shop for all things design because there is no such a thing for design, but I will go as far as telling you

that Design Porn is one the selected few I’ve been keeping my eyes on as of lately. Enjoy them!

Note to Design Porn people: I know I was featured in the Home Grown section, an area reserved for Canadian designers, so just to clarify matters, although I live in Montréal, I was born and raised in Brazil, from which I intrinsically inherit design influences, for better and for worse. :)

The Fighting Bear

LittleLion — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 14:11:42 +0000

This whole story I am about tell reminds me of a passage from the movie picture "Knocked Up", a romantic comedy starring Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl, in which they have a fight and in a blast of honesty, Ben Stone (played by Rogen) lets it all out of his chest and questions how humanity could have ever survived without "the baby books"! The way we live our lives nowadays truly begs this question, I believe. We are always so afraid, so distant, so cold, so well scripted that even if we mean good, we all can end up doing some pretty stupid things.

Such is the battle between CPSIA (Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act) and the Handmade Toy Alliance. One side wants to keep children safe (at least that’s their main discourse…), the other wants the freedom to pursue their creative and artistic talents commercially while rescuing kids from an increasingly oppressing mass media market for toys.

Basically, CPSIA will put thousands of small companies out of business since due to the one-of-a-kind innate characteristic of their products, it becomes impossible and impractical for them to submit and pass each and every item through the cumbersome and expensive CPSIA tests.

In Portuguese, the expression "common-sense" actually translates into "bom-senso" or "good-sense", which in this case although subtle a difference, is more what we really need. No matter where the toys come from, *nothing* will ever replace good parenting!

At a certain point during this discussion came Hasenpfeffer Incorporated, a small shop run by Daniela and Chris, threatened to be closed if CPSIA goes through with their broad rules. So instead of just sitting and watching, Hasenpfeffer Inc. came up with what I like to call the "Fighting Bear" which soon became symbol of the whole community in their fight against such a nonsensical piece of legislation that mixes Chinese mega manufacturers of large scale cheap plastic toys with Handcrafters all over the US of A in the same bag.

I am proud to say that "The Fighting Bear" is an original LittleLion Studio creation and was picked by Chris and Daniela without my knowledge, making my bumping into it online a "happy accident" so to speak.

If you want to get involved you can put The Fighting Bear logo on your website/blog, make donations or even purchase "CPSIA Buttons" featuring "The Fighting Bear" at Hasenpfeffer Inc’s store on Etsy.

Get involved, wave your banner and be a responsible parent! ;-)

The Stationery Position

LittleLion — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 17:42:49 +0000

Let’s pick up from where we’ve left off in the last post, shall we? Colors, colors, colors. Color palettes, color ways, Color Theory, color for you, color for me. Seldom does a client come by who truly edits my color ways in such a magnificent way as Lori, from The Stationery Position.

Quoting from her website, The Stationery Position is "a celebration of all things unique. Specializing in personalized note cards, announcements and invitations for all occasions, the stationery position is a surprising blend of modern sophistication and whimsical fun…" and I couldn’t agree more! Lori, herself, seems to be a unique individual who loves "fonts, tea and 3-legged cats"(yes, she adopted two of those!).

So why am I talking about her and her company? Well, if a designer as talented as she is, decides to base

huge chunks of her business on my work, I guess it entitles me to some pride, doesn’t it? The company offers fully customizable (no small feat!) stationery for personal, baby, kids and occasion notes. In the categories of her store where LittleLion Studio is present, it actually represents, on average, 84% of all the offerings (yes, I did the math… I am that nerdy…). What can I say to that but… wow!!!

Not without reason, Lori’s work ended up being featured in widely known websites about design, such as FFFFound and oh joy! for its distinct quality, clarity and elegance.

There is one thing though, which I read on The Stationery Position’s website that really stood out to me and I believe it to be the true link bonding our work: "Lori gets inspired by [...] anything that has usability, simplicity and emotion." Well said, Lori, well said.

Notwithstanding its irrelevance to this post, seeing Lori’s application of my docile whale prompted me to add this image… Brace yourselves, people, for one day you will eventually find some of my creations in the most unlikely places… ;-) [click image to enlarge].

Wallaboo

LittleLion — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 14:06:50 +0000

Every one who has ever worked servicing clients directly carries a bag of horror stories to tell. In my case that couldn’t be farthest from the truth since I have been blessed with great clients in the skin of some awesome people.

One such person is Jose Kok, founder of the Dutch company Wallaboo, specialized in baby wraps, hooded blankets, footmufs and diaper bags. Kok’s "bag" is filled with love stories, with babies… Tired of looking around and not finding what she wanted, she cut and sewed an old

suede jacket into a baby wrap and from there to founding Wallaboo in 2006 was a snap.

Recently, her newest baby wrap featuring LittleLion’s "River Stones" seamless pattern was nominated for the "Kind und Jugend Innovation Award 2009", allegedly the largest trade fair for the baby market in the world.

Her nomination didn’t come as a surprise to me since I grew to realize that quality people tend to carry that characteristic to all aspects of their lives.

I remember Kok saying "it looks like people really like you here in The Netherlands" every time she bumped into something featuring one of my designs. She was even kind enough to send me an issue of "flow magazine" displaying some of my work. Interestingly enough, although I can read squat of Dutch, what really grabbed my attention was an article called "Beauty Queens" showing late twenties/early thirties Miss Universe Pageants pictures and their old age beauty 60 or so years later.

Make sure to visit Wallaboo to find about your closest retailer or to inquiry about international orders:

e-mail: info@wallaboo.nl
telephone: +31 306775707

Crochet-ing

LittleLion — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 05:58:24 +0000

As I said in my last post, it is really hard to find out where my stuff ends up being applied (and under which license), but when I do, most times, I am happy to report, they are used in items I wouldn’t mind have sitting in the living room, lying on the bed, hanging on the wall or sitting on shelf… not at all! ;-)

The "Crochet" seamless pattern is one of my favorite designs. It looks and feels good to the touch in one of Robin Beth’s letter press cards, as can be seen in the pictures. Handpressed by Robin herself, her cards are made from fine cotton paper. Custom orders are available at her website or her Etsy Store. I’ve made mine and received it in no time, even amidst the crazy holidays season mail traffic.

Zara Home’s Pod Chair (a Irish company, not the worldly renown Spaniard homonym) is a design I certainly like a lot. Here is the description they gave to it last year when they were made available: Inspired by the new interior trends of circles and flowers, this gorgeous rattan range is perfect for this summer. The pod chair is our answer to the whimsical garden seat.The resemblance to my "Crochet" pattern is striking and got me thinking if somehow it was inspired by or even directly based on my design. Were they? What do you think?

A Heart And A Bird

LittleLion — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 03:33:57 +0000

Creating microstock art is, as Mr. Gump would say, "like a box of chocolate, you never know what you’re gonna get". Translating this philosophy to the microstock market means that I never know where my designs end up being used. The rule is not having a clue whatsoever to an image’s final destination and even worse, not knowing if their use abides by the license terms they were purchased under. But this can of worms is a better fit for a different post under the "All Business" category.

Back on track, I remember the very first time I bumped into one of my images in commercial use. It was a couple of years ago, just another

boring day when I took the subway and sitting across from me was this gentleman flipping through some newspaper, nothing out of the ordinary, until he raised his arms revealing this huge heart in the back page, causing me an inner “wow” and a grin. It was “Heart”, one of my first images, a solid seller with close to a thousand licenses under its belt.

Sometimes a client or a fan sends me a note, a picture or a link to some product or web site using my images (which I am always thankful for so keep them coming!) but after a while in this market, one eventually starts seeing one’s images around ever so often.

One of the most memorable of such cases took place in late 2008 while browsing online when I came across a web page for the then recently released home fragrance diffuser from Urban Outfitters whose

advertising campaign and packaginghad been fully built on my “Japanese Theater III” graphic set. I still remember the inner wow and these are all mine feeling… I guess it was partly because I have always been a fan of “Anthropologie”, the store, and knowing Urban Outfitters was branch of the first was a bonus.

As usual, things change and sometimes bumping into my stuff on the streets or online is not always a pleasant experience, but that comes with the territory, I guess.

Anyway, I selected a few images for your viewing pleasure. Click on them for an enlarged version. In the meantime, keep sending me information about places, products and projects you found my images on. I very much appreciate it.