TriciaBaugher.com

Most recently I've been spending my free time on recreating my portfolio website. It recently became a goal of mine to organize my work, files and portfolio to have everything in one place. Over the course of several years, I find that I have work on several different laptops and workspaces scattered within many different folders. I officially have an external hard drive that is organized with work from the past ten years or so, and better yet - a brand new portfolio website!

I started by sifting through the endless templates available for purchase on Theme Forest. This is a great place to find really creative templates to customize. I found one I liked and, well, could not for the life of me figure out where to start. It's been several years since I worked with code and this particular site was way more complicated than I could handle. Therefore, I went back to find a more simpler site that'd be based in HTML. I was relieved when I opened these files and they made a LOT more sense.

I ended up working in Dreamweaver with the code/design split view. I found this really helpful as I was essentially relearning how to edit code. Through lots of trial and error, I got the site to a point that I was extremely happy with. I created a few templates in Photoshop to have a consistent look to my images. I also wrote content for each project to provide additional insights into my thoughts and processes behind each design. 

I stripped the website template down to the bare minimum, having only my portfolio be the landing page and a simple about me page. I can always build upon this in the future, but for now I am really pleased with the simplicity. I tested the desktop and mobile versions relentlessly as the site is built to be responsive. I plan to continue to add a few more pieces of work to it, while keeping everything up to date. It feels great to have a working website again!

I also learned about meta tags throughout this process. I don't recall twitter cards and og meta tags back when I had been designing in HTML before. This again took plenty of trial and error, but anything can be found in a good ol' Google search.

Check it out for yourself! TriciaBaugher.com

Squarespace Website Mocks

Here are some new "glamour shots", aka Photoshop composites, of the two Squarespace websites I have designed at Lancaster Archery.

LancasterArcheryFoundation.org

CompetitionArcheryMedia.com

I find it very critical when mocking up website designs to include desktop and mobile versions. Tablet versions can also be included in the mocks when necessary. I always like to feature the index page on the desktop version and additional pages on other formats when able.

2021-2022 Lancaster Archery Catalogs

The 2021-2022 Lancaster Archery Catalogs began hitting mailboxes last Saturday. The now 580 page catalog consists of over 110 vendor advertisements, more than 450 pages of products, arrow charts, content pages and cover pages.

This year looked a bit different without the Archery Tradeshow (ATA) in January, but the catalog production process seemed to still go quite smoothly. We were able to start production a bit earlier since there was less travel, and we were able to complete production within three months. I led the production schedule to assure that we would hit our targets along the way. Everyone worked as a solid team throughout the entire process and we can all be proud of the final result!

Above is a glance inside at some of our bows we have included in our catalog. It also includes a push to the Lancaster Archery YouTube channel featuring a playlist of recent bow reviews. It was great to be able to inject some content throughout the catalog in addition to all of the products and advertisements.

Our social media coordinator launched some graphics and we began including catalog callouts in some print and digital ads. Below is a social graphic that includes the cover.

For our internal staff we also get spiral bound catalogs printed. These catalogs are a bit larger in size, feature a heavier paper weight to make them much more durable and a spiral to allow for more flexibility. I use mine throughout the year to keep notes on products and it is essentially the master of the production process for the following year.

They are certainly not a cheap option, however, they are produced with high quality that allows them to withstand paging through them daily, being tossed in bags during travel and adding notes throughout an entire year.

The digital catalog is also available at the link in the footer of LancasterArchery.com or directly here. Customers can page through digitally and click on item numbers to go to the product page on our website. Customers can also request a catalog and get one sent in the mail. Currently when you place an order on our site, you will also receive one with your order.

I hope everyone is enjoying the 2021-2022 Lancaster Archery catalogs. A lot of time and effort goes into creating these, and I am happy to say I believe this is the best one yet. I look forward to continuing to improve processes to make production go smoothly and also find more solutions to make this an even better resource guide for archers and dealers.

Terre Hill

A little over two years ago, we bought our first home in Terre Hill, Pennsylvania. In true fashion, I wanted to design a few décor items for our home. The main being a canvas to hang in the entryway right inside our front door. The canvas would be seen coming into the home, and also from the one hallway. 

I loved the concept of overlapping typography and decided to do a large "B" for our last names in the background with "Terre Hill, Pennsylvania" in a script typeface on top of the "B". I experimented with various background colors and textures until landing on a light wooded image. I also included our settlement date, which has actually been quite nice to reference the exact day! 

The large "B" is in Baskerville, one of my favorite serif fonts. The location is in a version of the very popular script font Bombshell. The date is also in Baskerville to tie everything together.

I then had this printed on a canvas, which added another textural element. The finished product is 13" x 36". Overall I am very pleased with how this canvas came out. It's a nice bright and unique piece for our home.

Lancaster Archery YouTube Thumbnails

Each fall bow companies work hard to launch their new bows for archery enthusiasts to get excited about and head out to their local pro shops. Lancaster Archery Supply will get these bows in and do thorough bow review videos. The content of these videos is unmatched, and they get a lot of views on YouTube. One way we improved these pieces of content this past year was to create custom YouTube thumbnails for our bow reviews. I essentially created a template to include the LAS logo, the bow brand, bow name, a screenshot of the bow in the video and then a clipped image of the bow from a product photograph. Most of these product bows are outlined to really pop off of the video thumbnail and stand out.

We noticed a significant increase in clicks with these custom thumbnails as it really makes it easier on the viewers to know exactly what they are ready to watch. When you look at these thumbnails in a sea of others on YouTube, they truly do pop.

Below are a few of the thumbnails I had created in the past year to increase viewer engagement.

Bri's Business Cards

 I'm still catching up with some different projects I've done over the past few years. This one goes all the way back to August of 2019. A friend, Bri, asked if I could design a business card for her as she began her career as an esthetician. She came with some inspiration and then I took it to pencil and paper.

The concept revolved around half of an elephant face, wildflowers and color. Below shows my initial sketch of a full elephant and then half of it traced with micron pen and wildflowers sprinkled in the background.

From there I scanned the drawing into Adobe Illustrator and did an image trace of half of the elephant to transform it into a vector file. I always do a bit of cleaning up to make the line work more smooth. An image trace at the right threshold can do a decent job, but it always looks better tidied up.

At this point, I took the vector image above into Adobe Photoshop. I wanted to add some splashes of color, almost in a bohemian style. I used various brushes, transparencies, splatters, etc. to get the final image.

To finish up this project for Bri, I mocked this image on a couple different business card concepts so she can see some different color, typeface and patterned concepts.

This was definitely a project I was excited about and it was easy to get inspired to create the final product. Cheers to successful friends!

Lancaster Archery Foundation

The Lancaster Archery Foundation launched late spring 2021. Designs and concepts have been in the work for quite some time before that. Design-wise it all started with the logo. I wanted to create something that was clean, modern and simplistic while tying it to the Lancaster Archery brand. I experimented with typeface weights, stacking and the orientation. Below is the final logo.

From there I began to design a website via Squarespace. I started with a Squarespace template and designed several page mocks in Photoshop. From there I created an outline of copy needs for the Foundation team to complete the content of the site. 

I began sourcing images for the different pages. For images we needed, such as the board of director photos, I found examples to give to our in-house photographer. Eventually when all images and content were compiled, we were able to pull everything together for the website.

At launch, the website consisted of eight different pages utilizing various template components including a contact form and donation page. Our in-house videographer created a video for the Foundation launch and I designed a YouTube thumbnail for that video.

Overall this project took a great deal of coordination to get various departments communicating, making decisions and gathering assets for the launch. In the end it came together quite well. 

Check out the current website here: LancasterArcheryFoundation.org