If you’re in a creative field (or heck, any field, really) you may have struggled with a block—ideas aren’t flowing, you want to pull your hair out, and everything you make feels like hot garbage. Inspiration feels light years away from your current headspace. It’s the pits, right? Now I’m no wizard, and these ideas… Take a look
Curio’s Creative Director shares some thoughts and advice for streamlining the design process when time is at a premium Graphic designers are not supposed to work fast. The mantra in our industry is “you can have great design, or you can have fast design, but you can’t have both.” Fair: Designers make thousands of little… Take a look
Ed. Note: We recently found this fantastic article by Scott Jackson of Washington State University, which provides data-based evidence of how human perception and behaviour can be influenced by graphic design decisions. With permission from the author, we reprint the article below so you too can wow the guests at your next dinner party with… Take a look
Coordinating a graphic design project can be intimidating, especially if you’re not a graphic designer yourself. Whether you’re a marketing and communications coordinator, an entrepreneur, or a fellow creative, this condensed guide will provide you with essential advice to streamline the process and achieve excellent results when you’re collaborating with a third-party graphic design provider.
In 2003, Curio Studio was a team of three people. By 2023, we were all the way up to four. Why did we stay small? We’re SO glad you asked! If you own a small design agency AND you enjoy eating food on the regular, the advice you’ll hear most often is to hire more… Take a look
Or, How We Came to Love Designing for the Performing Arts As of 2023, Curio Studio has been around for 20 years. But it is no exaggeration to say that we might never have made it past year one if not for our clients working in the performing arts. “Northern Light Theatre was my first… Take a look
Can Illustrations enhance your educational materials? Our latest project for Athabasca University suggests it might be easier than you think! How people form connections is a favourite fixation of educators and sociologists alike. Curio recently had the pleasure of working with both in an illustration project for Athabasca University. AU, like any other world-class educational… Take a look
Over the last 1,000 weeks, we’ve had a lot of time to grow, to develop as artists, and to make choices based on what we think really matters. And this year, for the briefest of moments, we’re putting our pencils down to celebrate good fortune and great friends. We’ve chosen as a tagline for our… Take a look
Athleta is an athleisure-wear chain founded in 1998 and acquired ten years later by Gap Inc. To add some local personality to their debut in West Edmonton Mall, they enlisted Amanda Schutz (our Creative Director) to develop a custom illustration for the store. For a brand with this amount of equity, there is a lot… Take a look
Graham is Curio’s resident Person Who Knows Things. Besides being a dynamite creative in his own right, he’s exceptionally curious, and it is a genuine pleasure to hear him go off about the things he finds interesting. In this edition of GraNerdCorn (trademark pending), Graham discusses the importance of clean design apropos the following question… Take a look
Graphic design is at its best when it resonates beyond whatever our rods and cones can process. There is no shortage of great designs out there… but great designs and successful designs are not necessarily the same thing. What makes a design successful is, very simply, whether the design accomplishes the goals of the client. To that end, a good designer and a good client should kick off a design project by producing a good Creative Brief.
design illustration
“Illustrator-led Design” is not a real thing. It’s not in the dictionary and it’s not in the “inside-baseball” design lexicon. It’s something we made up. Admittedly, it’s not a super-intuitive term. But it’s the best way we can think to explain what makes Curio designers unique! So let’s talk about what we’re talking about when… Take a look