los angeles

happy monday

| heather parlato

not that it was ever much of a winter this year, but we did get a great snow day right after a light rain at the end of february. i’m standing on top of the snowy mountain you usually see in the distance above pasadena. beyond the hazy fog is san bernardino and los angeles.

the first acacia blooms have appeared in elysian park. i am so in love with these bright, yellow pom-pons. there are a couple of early blooming varieties, but in a few weeks they will be all over the park.

i just noticed these beauties down the street. i’ve been doing a lot more walking errands lately, which is really rewarding when the smell of sunshine and spring blossoms are in the air.

hiatus over!

| heather parlato

so yeah, i’ve been offline awhile. but i’m emerging from the media diet, undergoing a branding exercise and i’ll be back in many ways now that 2013 is underway, at places like creative mornings LA & stuff…!

angeles crest forest summer 2012

| heather parlato
downtown from the 2 highway

we took a drive though angeles crest forest for the first time in a couple years. the 2 highway was closed for rehabilitation for quite sometime, and though i love the local forest, reports of people driving too fast, crashing and dying right after the highway reopened was discouraging. we came up for an overnight stay in 2010, taking the upper tujunga route, and taking note of the fire damage before there was much chance for regrowth. it’s been 2 years since we spent any time up here, and with jason just returning from a long trip away, i decided it was time to visit camp switzer to see what shape it was in, and head up to chilao for lunch at newcomb’s ranch.

switzer trail by the creek

despite some cleared areas, the forest seems to have a lot of active regrowth, and shows far less damage than i thought. this particular area on the front of the mountain was mapped to show huge red swaths of station fire moving through it back in 2009, i imagined that it burned to the ground. instead, while many of the trees have been thinned out, the old growth oaks are still there, the trail is still shady, and there are new flowers—some of which i’ve never seen before.

wild lilies on the switzer trail

after a bit of searching, i am pretty sure these are leopard lilies. i have never seen these in angeles crest, and i have to wonder if some of the cleared growth and additional sun is responsible? in some places, their orange-dotted stalks cover the hillsides.

monkey flowers on the switzer trail

i also really loved these little guys, which are called monkey flowers, native to the sierras and doing well in the exact conditions of the switzer trail. i can’t remember if i’ve seen these before, but they sure are pretty.

golden yarrow on the switzer trail

golden yarrow isn’t an uncommon sight in the local mountains, but i took a picture of it anyway because they’re so cute. we also saw lots of wild raspberries, currently either in bloom or forming green berries following pollination. it will be interesting to check in later in the summer when they’re ripe!

another flower i passed over for whatever reason, turns out to have been a lucky decision: the poodle dog bush. they seem to have cropped up everywhere due to the soil disruption of the fire, and contain an irritant similar to poison oak. when we stopped at charleton flats, we noticed posted signs warning hikers not to smell or touch them. i’d love to have gotten some good shots of their proliferation under fire-scorched branches, but those were often right in the middle of hair-pin turns on the 2. i chose to watch the road instead.

cleared trees on the switzer trail

in some cleared areas, this is what you’ll see: trees that have been cut to prevent them from falling. interestingly, though, they are surrounded by green trees and new undergrowth, which is a far cry from the brown, bare earth of 2 years ago. so encouraging!

in addition to the forest regrowing, the roads are in great shape. aside from the 2, the road down to camp switzer has been repaved and fitted with drains for runoff. after our hike, we headed up to newcomb’s ranch and sat at the bar, chatting with other angelenos [it seemed like everyone up there lived somewhere right near downtown]. unfortunately, there were reports of a pretty bad motorcycle crash just up the road an hour before, so the reminders to stay safe and slow down still apply.

creative inspiration

| heather parlato


image: theAframe.la

on the heels of this past weekend’s dwell show, we’re talking about my hometown of LA today, namely how they took eight of 10 of the restaurant design awards. use kcet’s wrap up as your destination list and start experiencing these places firsthand!


image: kcet.com

i first heard about greenbar collective while working with mohawk bend, the managers of which were very excited to add them to their bar menu. greenbar collective is a distillery based in LA’s clean tech corridor downtown, producing organic infusions and liqueurs. in addition to their philosophy and production chain, i’m also a fan of their label design. check out alissa walker’s story about greenbar’s history for kcet: a boozy peek at the future of LA food.

also, as we take a turn into grilling season, if you’re looking to add something special to the cooler without buying pre-packaged drinks, mix-up your own recipes and ice them in mason jars. great idea!

LA river greenway
it took a lot of work and involvement from the community, but the LA river greenway was recently designated a national recreation trail. if you haven’t been down to visit the newer pocket parks or ride the greenway, i highly encourage it! explore on your own, or use this piece i wrote for LAist to find the parks and some of the backyard chickens along the way!

dwell on design 2012

| heather parlato

this past weekend, i took advantage of the designer’s pass to dwell on design to take in all the amazing products, interiors and fixtures exhibited there. i spent a lot of time in the outdoor section, looking at how far prefab housing has come. there were a few sample homes, like this one above, along some inflatable homes, beautiful airstreams and trailers like the cricket trailer and this rotating, hang-out thing, the g-pod.

with so many pretty things to look at, you can’t help but get ideas of what could be done in your own home. i mostly like my interior the way it is, but i definitely saw potential in accent pieces, like these beautiful organically-shaped lamps!

next time the show comes to town, designers take note: you can usually get a free pass by showing your credentials and filling out a quick survey. it’s a great chance to see what’s new in industrial design!

case study: re-imagining natural curiosities

| heather parlato

natural curiosities identity package

For the past 7 months, I’ve been hard at work with Natural Curiosities, a collective of artists and artisans working under the creative direction of Christopher Wilcox in a beautiful studio in the Jensen Recreation Center, here in Echo Park. They have evolved from roots in archival giclée printing and silk screen to application and specimen art, gold & silver leafing, aging and paper treating, and hand watercoloring. They have a specific aesthetic celebrating a time when both scientists and artists were constantly observing and cataloging nature, and they’ve brought this around from archives of illustrations to three-dimensional recreations and objet d’art. With all these new developments afoot, it was time to do a little identity refresh, and refocus the web site on communicating all the exciting news in more of a real-time way.

brand exploration

Starting with research, we did a full company-wide brand exploration. You never know what you might find when you interview everyone in a company, but it was exciting to see how passionate everyone was about their work and the family environment in the art house. They all offered great ideas and perspectives that we incorporated into a report, and further refined into a brand brief to guide the project. Natural Curiosities had already developed a lovely logo and wordmark, so the job of standardizing its ratio, lockup, and uses was easy.

identifying the challenges

The main goals boiled down to 2 things: create a marketing strategy that would communicate the brand philosophy, and design a web site that would serve both the marketing strategy and the clients. as a wholesaler, the clients of natural curiosities are partners and external sales rather than consumers, though the site is used as a catalog to consumers as well, and has to serve both markets seamlessly. The previous site was very strong on products, but needed more of a bridge to the promotional engine and client relations. Research told us that people really love interfacing with the staff and studio, so another goal was to bring more of that experience to the surface of all communications. On the technical side, this site was built in Drupal and would stay in Drupal, but had to become far easier to update by employees.

natural curiosities home page

a dynamic, art-focused home page

One of the first challenges we faced was how to pull specific pieces out of the archive and showcase them. With a catalog as big as that which Natural Curiosities sells, even after a streamlining, we’re still faced with many collections and sub-collections, relying on the user to find them either by browsing or searching. In reworking the home page, we decided on a 5-image slide show, showing a full-screen close-up of any one piece of art that Natural Curiosities would like to feature, with each linking to the appropriate product or collection. Previews from the art house is their way of visually showcasing breaking news or exciting products, which is very easy to update on the fly.

natural curiosities art catalog

the art catalog

Our first task was to map out the art catalog, which was no small feat. Flow charts, graphics and full wall murals were involved! The general feeling was that the categories and collections were not intuitive enough, so we reworked the names, resorted the art, refreshed the overall collection [adding new pieces, retiring others] and stacked it into a grid of highly-colorful art folios to reiterate the sense of archive. This is a main landing page for regular site users, so it has become more inviting, and easier to use.

natural curiosities search & products

enhanced search and products pages

Another section ripe for opportunity was the search function, which wasn’t returning as many results as it could, and showed the results more like data records than art. We installed a module that would perform a wider search, give the user options to narrow the search by category, and suggest alternatives, with results coming in as large thumbnails for quick preview and selection. The product pages have been rearranged to be image first, support information second for visually-driven clients. When authorized users are logged in, pricing and buying options appear here as well.

setting the mood

setting the mood

With clients in mind, we decided to add a design & interior-focused section to put art in context into the spotlight. This is a more extensive slide show which offers Natural Curiosities another way to showcase products, overlay editorial and cross-link styles from inspiration shots to related collections or blog posts. It’s also the first of a few more client-partnership aspects we’re building into the site.

explore & about sections

a look inside

Giving outsiders a look inside the studio, we created a section called explore which is starting out as a video gallery of art processes used at Natural Curiosities. The about section has given more weight to the story behind the formation of the collective, how they operate now, and the influence of the place as inspiration. Also featured in the about section is a retail location search, for retail customers looking to buy, and all the FAQ, shipping, privacy policy and terms & conditions information buyers may be looking for. These sections have been given the flexibility to grow as the art house has new things to share.

notes from the art house: the blog

a new & improved blog!

As another, more dynamic opportunity for communication, we’ve introduced a new blog with a unique layout from the rest of the site, and an editorial calendar to fill it with sources of beautiful design inspiration, product showcases, video posts and news missives. The blog is going to be a pivotal point of the communication strategy, as another place to bring clients into the natural curiosities experience.

+ Read more case studies here.
+ See more of our work for Natural Curiosities.

solar eclipse 2012

| heather parlato

here’s my contribution from the eclipse on sunday. i don’t have any fancy equipment, but we did rig up some reversed binoculars and poster board to watch the transition. i like the color shift that’s happening here.

i knew we were supposed to use pinhole technology to refract the eclipse into viewable form but what i hadn’t expected was that any abstract pinholes of light would create the same shape on shady walls everywhere!

damn good

| heather parlato
damn good by jason adam & tim lapetino
damn good by jason adam & tim lapetino

my buddies over at hexanine have just released damn good: top desiners discuss their all-time favorite projects with how books. i like this book for a few reasons. for one, it’s really well organized into project type, so each project is in a category with similar work. another thing i enjoy now that i know some of these authors is to see what they would curate as a set of work worth sharing. everyone has an opinion about what’s good, and we can easily look at their own portfolios, but it’s always fun to see what they like and are inspired by.

finally, i liked the feedback feature in this book. it’s not just a selection of nice pieces, it’s a chance to hear from the designers about their favorite parts of each project, which can sometimes reveal aspects readers couldn’t have guessed on first glance.

aiga la: speakeasy poster in damn good
aiga la: speakeasy poster in damn good

i’m honored to be among the group of damned good, here in the form of the aiga la: speakeasy poster, which was a really fun project for the 2010 aiga la fellows gala and celebration. the people who work with the los angeles chapter of aiga are a fantastic group, and this project was a great reflection of that.

see the aiga la fellows gala project here.

spring garden 2012

| heather parlato
garden spring 2012
garden spring 2012

i think it’s my 4th season with my little terraced garden that i built into our back wall & fence. in past years, i’d cram as much as i could into this space, hoping for the best, but i’ve had to learn [through repeated broken delusions] that this spot gets only 3-4 hours of full sun as it passes overhead to shine between our building and back fence. this means that, no matter what i do, i’ll only get about 5 tomatoes in this space, and if i plant zucchini, it will shade everything in the same terrace. the lower containers often have dappled shade from a nearby avocado tree, and are best for greens. i think i’ve finally accepted this and chosen a realistic selection of veggies for the space i have.

flowering arugala
flowering arugala

for one thing, this probably means that any fall gardens i plant are for winter greens only. some of the lettuces come up, but many don’t until early spring, which was the case with this arugula i forgot about. time to harvest that for salad and start over. the lemon balm i planted to confuse pests was not only easy to grow, it spreads easily too! i left babies in each location, but harvested the bulk and made a large quantity of tea.

upper garden, spring 2012
upper garden, spring 2012

leaving the compost to really break down all winter worked well. i turned it over and dug out the black gold to incorporate into each garden bed and container. i also let some of the garden stay wild. tomatoes from last year are flowering early this year and even have a few fruits, so i’m leaving them to see how they do. there’s also some spreading greek oregano that’s so soft and succulent, i left it as another pest deterrent even though it’s more than i’ll ever need. last thing i did is add potted mint to move around as needed. since pests are looking for their preferred plant’s attributes, scented herbs and bulbs [like onions & garlic] tend to confuse them, protecting the plants organically. this year i might try some bird feeders as well, see if i can get birds to eat some of the unwanted bugs.

what i planted this spring:

apache peppers – i hadn’t heard of these before, but since they came in a 6-pack and do well in containers, i bought them. they can get up to 80,000 scoville units in heat.

basil – there’s never enough basil, which is why i started with 2 plants, italian basil and lemon basil, and figured on planting seeds for a subsequent crop later in the summer.

bush beans – i’ve never really tried these and don’t exactly have high hopes based on my pea-failures, but i have the seeds and the trellises…

chamomile – i have never been successful with chamomile from seed, so i bought a plant. it likes full or partial sun, so it’s going in the partial container.

chives – if you think you can’t keep any plant alive, please try chives. i put them in a sunny container, ignore them, and they reseed themselves every year. i think my current batch has finally exhausted itself, so i decided to start over.

lacinato kale – if you like kale, you can’t really go wrong with a 6-pack of tuscan kale. they grow all year in southern california, and if you pick it fresh, it’s so tender you can enjoy it raw in a way you can’t with even farm-fresh kale that’s traveled.

leaf lettuce – i’m going to see how many crops of leaf lettuce varieties i can go through in the partial-sun containers.

lemon thyme – just as it sounds, lemon thyme has a lemony flavor and scent. i can’t think of a time that i’d object to this, so i skipped regular thyme and went straight for lemon [i’ll plant thyme seeds instead].

mexican zucchini – the description of these is that the skins are a variegated lighter green, which i’ve seen at the farmer’s market. i think they’ll be pretty, so i got 2 for good pollination.

micro-greens – though you don’t have to buy a pack of seeds called “micro greens” to do this, i did, and i think they’ll work out perfectly in my partial sun containers.

pea greens – my sunlight doesn’t do so well with full peas, but i’ve since learned that they’re fine to grow in containers just for the shoots & tendrils, so i’m aiming for those this year.

purslane – i harvested seeds all last summer & fall from the wild purslane that sprung up around my property, so this year i’m planting up the hanging full-sun containers on the front porch to take advantage of this amazing superfood.

scallions – what i wrote about chives goes the same for scallions. it’s so nice to grab some green onions from the front porch.