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Photography Spain Travel

Spain / Annual Ciudad Real Fair

posted on October 20, 2015

Travel Spain / Ciudad Real Fair

Here’s a post I’ve been talking about for a little while. It’s a little visual peek into the local town fair that’s on every summer between August 15 and August 22. Many places in Spain have fairs around this time, because August 15 is a common holiday in the country (and other countries!) as the day of the Assumption of Mary. Many patron saints of towns are a Virgin Mary of some sort or another; ours is del Prado, which is my mom’s name.

On August 15, they take the sculpture down from where it stands in the cathedral, and it stays down for people to pay their respects until August 22. There are parades each day, and fireworks at the end of them; and then fireworks at midnight at the fair location.

It’s not particularly exciting, honestly, but a lot of it reminds me of my childhood. I used to love going on rides up until I was 11 or 12; I’m not sure what happened, but I’ve always still loved the fireworks. I remember families gathering at the bars, and I’m told there was a time when I was a little girl that my family went after the Witch Train ride when it set up around the province so I could ride it. I remember my grandfather spoiling me rotten and how they gave us free tickets at so many of the rides because he bought me so many.

I remember the swan stand because I was obsessed with it, though I can’t recall if I ever won anything! I didn’t do the fishing most of the time, anyway. There are a lot of target stands of various sorts, and a bingo tombola, and a bunch of other tombolas, and bars and — those are not really the things I remember fondly. For me, it was always the rides and the ice cream and the fireworks and the cotton candy. And the churros my grandfather or my parents bought.

My favorite ride as a kid was the baby Ferris wheel, and the Dragon, which I was too small for so my father usually rode with me.

I didn’t go to the fair for a few years when I was a teenager; I didn’t love going out with friends at night, and I relished the time alone when my parents and my sister went. Only for the past couple of years I’ve dragged my mom out to see the fireworks. It’s crowded, and I don’t really like rides anymore, and I’m painfully aware of how incredibly racist the mechanic bull rides are, and I wish I could deface them with graffiti, a desire I can honestly say had never crossed my mind before.

But still, there are fragments that stick. We look for them later and find them.
“Tears of things”: now that I’ve shed them, the line that most comes to me lately—
memory speaking in dactyls.

— Maryann Corbett, A Meditation on Dactylic Hexameter.
(Buy her books — affiliate link, but she’s my favorite poet)

 

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Blogging Portfolio

A Brand New Brand, A Brave New Blog

posted on October 8, 2015

A Brand New Brand, A Brave New Blog / Lix Hewett Design

Went a little grunge for the announcement there, but that’s the beauty of classics: they go with everything, effortlessly.

I’ve been meaning to redesign the site, restructure the content and essentially rebrand, short of changing my name or business interests, for over a year now. At one point last fall I even went as far as designing a mockup for a new blog design and having it developed in nearly its entirety by a friend, but she got busy, and I was stressed, and then I decided I hated my branding anyway. I wasn’t sold on the typography and I was bored to tears by my color palette.

For a year I waffled over what style I wanted, as there isn’t just one that appeals to me, and what went with whatever I wanted my blog to be. I narrowed down the topics I blogged about and I started to think about new categories that encompassed some of what I was doing but made it more intuitive to find and write about cohesively.

And then I moved back in with my parents, spent three months on the verge of a nervous breakdown, got my room back, and took September off. I was going to dedicate the last two weeks of September to the redesign, giving myself some time to rest after I got home from Barcelona.

Well, you guys know me. I started working on this on Saturday.

Surprisingly, it came together like a dream.

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11 Comments

Graphic Design Portfolio

Creative / Brand + Site Design / Bethany Owen Makeup

posted on June 18, 2015

I’ve got a new launch for you today! Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working on my good friend Bethany Owen’s new branding and website. We put the final touches — for now — on the website yesterday, and it is now ready for public consumption.

Branding and Logo Design / Bethany Owen Makeup / Lix Hewett / Graphic Designer

I had a blast working on this project. It ate my work brain for a few days, and it turns out that’s a great way to work! Lauren may be onto something there. One of the many upsides to working with a friend who actually trusts you is the freedom to experiment, and it was particularly convenient after my new (2013 release, inexpensive and 50% off on Amazon) Bamboo Pad arrived.

The thing about my obsession with hand-written logos (I’ve done a few before, though my clients ended up going with another option) is that my handwriting is terrible. Also, I pick up pens weird. But it’s fun, and it’s great to be able to write straight into Illustrator and use its brushes and play around with it instead of fingerpaint on my tiny phone screen like I used to do. That’s how I drew my blog signature and my own portfolio logo.

Another thing I got to do was suggest Squarespace to Bethany. I’d been wanting to try out that platform for a while; you may have noticed it’s got really popular among designers lately, and I love the look and portfolio functionality of it. I’m absolutely not ready to switch myself, for various reasons, but I can see the appeal. It’s very intuitive, the templates are gorgeous, and you can do certain things — like set up Disqus and Google Analytics, add a slider, lay out a page template, put in a gallery block, or connect a mailing list — with a quick copy/paste in the settings, whereas on WordPress you need a plugin and then some.

It also has a space for custom CSS, though this time I didn’t use it. The standard options turned out a beautiful website, but I’m definitely curious to learn how to change more of it. Still, one of the reasons I love self-hosted WordPress is the control and sheer access you have to the bowels of your site, and I missed that on Squarespace.

But overall, I absolutely see why so many people use it and I’m very happy I decided to offer it as an option in my design packages.

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Oxford the Cat Photography

Photography / Oxford the Cat, A Year On

posted on May 6, 2015

So I got a 50mm lens. I paid for it in part with a voucher I received for writing a post about cats, so I see it fitting that I introduce you all to it with, well.

Cat pictures.

oxford-patio-firsts

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Graphic Design Portfolio

Creative / Design / Mr and Mrs T Plus Three Media Kit

posted on April 12, 2015

Amy first got in touch with me via Etsy looking for a custom about widget. Then she hired me to move her blog from Blogger to self-hosted WordPress, and design a media kit. The migration went off without a hitch, but of course the media kit is the show-off piece.

I worked with her photos and her old header, a beautiful illustrated piece, and came up with a colorful design full of pastels and softness and fun. I think it represents her blog beautifully.

media-kit-amy-treasure-750

You can check out my portfolio to see more media kits and make an enquiry, or purchase directly through Etsy.

3 Comments

Events Photography Wedding Inspiration

Photography / Event / Brides Magazine

posted on April 8, 2015

You may remember when I posted about the Hot Hair event, I mentioned afterwards I’d gone and crashed a wedding inspiration showcase. Well, ‘crashing’ is exaggerating — I asked if I could go in, and I asked if I could shoot. I admit I only asked one of the vendors and just took it as blanket permission for the whole event, but I doubt anyone will mind.

Still, go there I did, and I went around the room with my camera at ISO two-billion because it was so dark at that point — and came out of it with some photos I’m quite proud of, including wedding dress photos and a couple of flat lays that scream Instagram. I’m posting them here as what I hope will be the first of regular wedding-related posts leading up to me somehow going for the wedding photography thing, hard. Wedding brands, call me!

bridesmag-card

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2 Comments

Events Photography

Photography / Event / Hot Hair at the Renaissance Hotel St Pancras

posted on April 6, 2015

hhbloggerevent-card

On March 26, I had the chance to attend a Hot Hair event organized by Michelle from Thou Shalt Not Covet as a photographer slash guest. It was a small gathering of bloggers in the Billiards Room at the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, and it was lovely. Zoe and I arrived at the same time and were welcomed with glasses of — I believe — rum and coke (I could be mistaken), and canapes made the rounds several times. There was also wine and bowls of nuts and that’s probably more snack talk than you wanted to hear.

Bloggers chatted, tried on hairpieces and wigs, learned about how to care for them and were able to see how extensions and hairpieces could easily alter their look in awesome ways. I myself tried on a wig for fun, because I’d always wanted to know how I’d look as a blonde, and the answer was bad. Terrible.

However, I saw the changes in many of my fellow bloggers’ looks and was very impressed. Xtine and Barbie looked lovely in ponytails, and I particularly loved the curly piece Laura walked out of the event wearing. These makeovers and more are documented in the pictures below.

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5 Comments

Graphic Design Portfolio

Branding + Blog Design for Nirvana Cakery

posted on April 1, 2015

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have heard me talk about this blog design a time or two. I followed my ideal stream to design it: logo, mockup, graphics, coding, fixes. It’s the first time I’ve dared to design a mockup and hope I’d be able to code it on my own, and I’m really pleasantly surprised and surprisingly pleased with the experience.

The blog in question is a new food blog by London-based Hana Mendes, and it’s called Nirvana Cakery.

Branding + Blog Design for WordPress Food Blog Nirvana Cakery

She wanted an elegant logo with soft pastels, greens and grays and pale pinks. I had a blast putting this together for her. She provided tons of visuals, and once I saw the blog content she was planning on releasing, everything gelled quite easily. Her photos are gorgeous and I think we ended up with a design that complements her photography style perfectly.

The first logo draft was further from what she’d envisioned, though I love it on its own right and wanted to include it as a discarded concept on the branding guide. It was hand-lettered and left me itching to design a blog for someone who wants that kind of style. But for Hana, I stepped away from the playfulness and went for soft and beautiful, lovely watercolor textures, a lovely serif font for body text and plenty of top border accents in green and pink.

See the full design on my portfolio here, or check out the live site! Would love to know what you think, but if you get distracted by the recipes — especially the chocolate and raspberry vegan cupcakes she just posted; what a way to launch — well, I will understand. ;)

You can find more of my design work on my portfolio, and read about the services I offer here.

5 Comments

Fashion Photography Portfolio Pretty Things Showcases

Creative / Product Photography for Jewellery by EMS

posted on February 19, 2015

JEMS by Lix Hewett / London Product Photographer

A while ago — let’s not say how long — I met up with Emma from JEMS to have a chat and so I could return a memory locket of hers I’d previously photographed (and which she got published on a magazine!) and take some photos of her beautiful, quirky unique jewelry. (You really can’t take the American out of my English; I’m sorry. I tried. It felt wrong.) We had a little walk around Belsize Park — she was in London from Leeds, for an event — and picked a spot to get some photos.

I photographed the pieces she was carrying on her, and took a few more portrait-like shots as well. I’m sharing them with you all here on the blog today. I hope you love her work as much as I do. And if you’re interested in hiring a photographer, go here or here!

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1 Comment

Graphic Design Portfolio

Creative / Design / A Classic Notion Media Kit

posted on February 13, 2015

IT’S A MIRACLE! I have finished (and started! Starting was the hardest part!) my own media kit. It only took a year since the first media kit I ever designed for someone else, and me feeling like I may want to start pitching brands instead of waiting to be contacted. It took me ages to dig into it, but I was excited about the self-portraits I got on Friday, and somehow I decided which person to write the copy in and once that was done, everything came together fairly nicely without too many bumps in the road. (I may have redesigned the second page roughly five times, but that’s par for the course for print design with me.) I even got to put a credits footer on it, which I bloody love because I love crediting people and I think it looks super professional, plus it’s like, the right thing to do and shit.

I spend a lot of time designing media kits for other people and sort of going on about how convenient they are, but with most of my work, I have to go out on a limb and hope that’s true because — well, it’s not like I can afford myself, and I’m doing fine. Ish. But wow, I’ve been feeling the lack of a media kit really, truly heartily these past few weeks. I’m so happy I finally have one at the ready, and I love how it pretty much showcases all the things I do — print design, photography, modeling, copywriting — at once on top of informing people about my blog.

Media Kit Design: Lix Hewett Lifestyle Blog

See a larger version on my portfolio.

If you’d like a media kit design, feel free to contact me through my portfolio or purchase directly through Etsy. If you’re based in London, I can give you a special price for a media kit + portrait shoot, too. Get in touch!

17 Comments

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Meet Lix

Welcome to my blog! I'm Lix: full-time graphic designer for bloggers and freelancers, and part-time photographer. I'm an unapologetic cat lady and perpetually angry feminist nightmare. I like attention and pretty things, and that's why I run a lifestyle blog. Learn more.
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