New Website

Hello & welcome to the new site! I am so happy to say that after a very long and winding road, it was well worth the wait.

I hope you take some time to take a look around. I am so thankful for my web partner in crime Danielle, and my wonderful friend and photographer, Michelle, who did a few shoots for some of the new photography you’ll see scattered around. The site is retina-friendly, and for the first time in history you can view Design Womb’s portflio of work in a visual gallery by category or type. I have shared some of the accolades, magazines and books I’ve been grateful and proud to be a part of these last handful of years.

This is also a great time to start gearing up for your future design projects that tend to spill over and delay into the fall, so be sure to send me a note if you have something brewing. Remember, the early bird takes the worm. Be sure to follow Design Womb on Facebook and Twitter for the most recent updates, or join our (mostly infrequent) email newsletter. You can also follow me on my personal account on Twitter.

Thanks for stopping by and please come back soon. I have some big and exciting news to share very soon. If you've been paying attention on the site, I am sure you can guess what it might be.

Disclaimer: Old blog posts are not retina-friendly.

Food Truck Design | Part 2

How does the food truck design process work? Paint or wrap? Raw or finished? Decals or hand-painted with custom signs or add-ons? This stuff takes time. Always more than you think.

As a new business, you acquire a food truck. You buy it new or used, have a truck modified or (gasp!), spend the big bucks and custom build a beauty. Before this step or while you are shopping, you have reached out to a branding team, such as Design Womb, to begin working on the name, logo design and branding collateral. The minute you knew what you were serving, you started. Every week counts leading into the big food truck debut.

When a client calls me with a food truck concept, we discuss the big list wish items, we create a proposal, prioritize the items and than immediately dive in. This list should include not only the truck design itself, but your menus, the food packing, website, uniforms and all the other branded collateral and swag. It is helpful to have your wish list with some realistic dates in mind when you contact Design Womb. Prepare to be asked a lot of questions. If your designer doesn't ask you questions and they can do all of this on a penny, find a new one. You'll end up spending twice as much having to start over if it isn't right from the beginning.

At this point, Design Womb continues to assist in the process. We can help find or source the right team to paint, wrap or decal the vehicle. We walk through a careful food truck design process which involves planning and templates that act as a blueprint for your truck. If you are printing and wrapping the truck, any good printer should be able to provide you with a template file to scale. This is very important. The goal is to leave nothing up for interpretation so there is very little wiggle room for change from design file to actual truck execution.

When your design is approved, Design Womb will assist in the material selections and color planning. We pre-press and set the files based on your client-approved paint, Pantone and color selections. Once these final art files make it to the truck wrapper, printer or painter, you might have a final vehicle within a matter of days, sometimes a week or two. Here is where I push every one of my clients to be sure to have a photo shoot of some sort planned. You're going to want those beauty shots of your brand new truck for press and marketing. Drawing on first-hand experience, its a lot easier for you to do this before your truck hits the streets. Once you get super busy, it is hard to justify shutting down for a few hours and becomes hard to capture some decent off hours to take photographs, or (dare I say it) your truck starts to get dirty or dinged up. This is also prime time to keep pushing forward with your other brand collateral and your website. Your website should update customers on truck locations, menu changes and events. That's a whole different blog post for another day.

Food Truck Design | Part 1

The moment a digital friend referred to me (jokingly) as The Food Truck Girl, I knew I had a situation. It all started back in 2010. My first was the Curry Up Now truck, which expanded into a small army of branded trucks in the Bay Area.

Shortly after in 2012, Curry Up Now's sexy sister The Dosa Republic launched with a brick & mortar and a food truck. Ok. Rewind. Technically, it started in 2009. Beachy Cream launched and they hit the streets of Los Angeles with a mobile ice cream cart and umbrella. Ice cream on wheels counts, right? Ice cream sandwiches & a heck of a lot of Indian food later, in 2012, Sajj launched its quick-serve falafel & shawarma concept and food truck.

Johnny Doughnuts took center stage with its retro deco in the fall of 2012. Mmmmmm, gourmet doughnuts and hot coffee. The truck is ready to roam and will launch this month. Bay Area folks, get ready. These guys aren't messing around and are a heck of a lot of fun.

The first half of 2013 packs a bold punch. Design Womb will collaborate on the branding and debut for the Drums & Crumbs food truck in Sonoma County (southern food, California spin) as well as KAMA Food Lab, a vegetarian (to start) customer-focused ethnic concept to hit the streets of San Francisco this summer/fall.

Pantry House | Handcrafted Provisions

Santa Cruz's Isabel Freed is launching Pantry House; a line of handcrafted jams, mustards, butters & sauces. Be on the lookout for the collaboration Design Womb did on the new branding, package design & website (where you'll be able to shop to order online) this spring/summer.

Homemade Granola

I've been making my own granola for the last 2-3 weeks. Breakfast is hard for me since I can't have eggs, wheat or dairy, so granola gives me the flexibility to switch it up and load up with delicious things like nuts, almond milk and chia or other nutritious seeds.

The new granola paired with this almond milk has become my new go-to breakfast. I've been using the recipe found in D.I.Y. Delicious and modifying it to my tastes, which have mostly been inspired by the delicious almond milk and granola over at The Mill in San Francisco. Here's what is in my current mixup:

DRY
4 cups thick oats
1-1.5 cups sliced almonds
~ 1/4 c. chia seed (visually decided)
3/4 c. raw pumpkin seeds
3/4-1c.unsweetened or juice sweetened corn flakes (for a crunchy texture)
1/3 c finely shredded (unsweetened) coconut

WET
Tip: heat up the honey slightly when you mix it with the oil, add these all together before you mix it in with the dry ingredients. You do not need to heat up the oil & agave.
1tsp cinnamon (or adjust to taste, start with less)
1/2-1 tsp. vanilla (based on your preference)
1/2 c. agave (if you opt for honey, start with
1/3c. and see how it looks)
1/3 c. vegetable oil or butter (I use oil)

Bake at 350° for 20-25 minutes, flipping halfway through. Be very careful and watch it as you bake the first batch. My oven actually only needed 6 minutes per side, 12 minutes total. I burned the first two batches on accident!

This is an example of the smaller caption-style text.