Last month, we embarked on what, for us, was a new way of using Instagram. We’ve found it to be both highly rewarding and somewhat troublesome and, after receiving some questions about it, we thought we’d do a brief write-up of the process here.

To be clear, we haven’t been using this process with our studio’s account—which dual functions as a personal account for me, Troy, and a professional design studio account—or with Katie’s personal account; this is something we’ve been using with the Instagram account for MooShoes Los Angeles, which we also manage. Many hats, friend. Many hats.

The process, which we’ve been calling set posting, but what’s more commonly called banner posting or tile posting, involves posting pictures in multiples of three to create larger banners when seen together on your profile page, as you see above and below here. This process isn’t really new in the world, it’s more new to us. In fact, there are plenty of third party apps that allow users to do this in a more streamlined manner than the way we do it—like BannerPic or GiantSquare or TilePic—but all of those and other similar apps get mixed reviews due to functionality issues, cost, and/or over-branding themselves on the end images. Plus we’re designers, meaning we love doing things the hard, DIY way.

When we post, whether it’s a original photograph or a collage or combination of illustrations or other design, we bring the images to be divided into PhotoShop whole, choosing the 3:1 view that’ll be seen as a whole in our profile view and then splitting up the three individual images with a 1:1 (square) crop and saving each for the Web at least 1080 pixels across (the current retina display quality for Instagram).

Then it’s a simple matter of uploading the three images.

Why do all the work for this? Well, for one, it’s cool-looking—one of the primary motivations for graphics designers in general, I’d say. More specifically, it’s both a way to get an edge over the visual competition for your followers and a way to pull them to your full profile page where your other posts, profile info, and URL are prominent. Providing a piece of the puzzle, so to speak, intrigues viewers and gives a break from the usual posting. From our month or so long experience and comments from users, we’ve noticed that it really engages and excites the audience when done right.

Once you start in and get used to it, you’ll also find that curating and planning for this kind of content stream will change how the original content is created. For instance, the third set down in the screen capture to the right—the one of Mick from 100 Tacos + Katie (which you can click on the see larger); with that image, we created a panoramic photo—so, wide and not tall—knowing that we were going to split it up in this way.

Pretty cool, right?

The rub? Well, there are a few:

1. If you choose to embark on this fun-yet-admittedly-arduous path, you need to realize that, from here on out, you’ll need to always post in multiples of three, otherwise, your profile page will get all jumbled up and the sets will skew, as they did recently for TOMS (right).

2. You also need to realize that, even if you commit to posting in multiples of three, you need to commit to doing so pretty quickly or all at once, ideally, otherwise you’ll have the same skewing problem until you get that third image (or sixth or ninth if you’re doing larger blocks) in there.

3. Though the intrigue and audience pulling’s awesome, you do risk confusing some of your less tech-/image-savvy audience members who don’t get why there’s a third of a shoe on their feed, for instance. We think it’s worth the risk; others may disagree.

In our minds, the main headaches are those first two—they throw you into a category of work that requires more planning and some more dedicated time, especially if the three images need three different captions. Most of the time, especially if the three are part of a whole, we create the first caption, tags and all, and copy before posting so we can then quickly paste them in to the other two images, making for a pretty streamlined process. Adding the hashtags quickly too allows for Instagram users to generally see your full, correctly assembled banner for a bit when exploring via hashtags, allowing for new opt ins.  We also generally edit images via Photoshop on a desktop rather than in IG, both so they’re ready to go for IG and so we can take advantage of the higher end perks of Photoshop. Also, we generally shoot on a wifi-less Canon SLR, so we have to transfer to a computer first anyway.

Again, there are easier ways to do this, so if you’re interested, feel free to look into those. We’re just self-abusing designers who love to create work for themselves, you know? In general though, we’ve seen more user engagement and a spike in account followers since taking this on. Plus it’s fun once you get used to the process.

A few more examples from our MooShoes Instagram feed below and one from Novel Swim by Brooklyn illustrator Laura Rosenbaum, who premiered her company’s IG account with a pretty cool illustrated nine-piece block. Awesome work, Laura.

No huge piece here, just, if you ever get a chance, definitely go see Grace Jones perform live.

No matter what else is going on.

Just. Go.

Photo above by Drew A. Kelley; below, a shot Katie got of of Ms. Jones performing alongside the supermoon lunar eclipse at the Hollywood Bowl last night.

Epic.

We’re holding a cocktail benefit for local non-profit Art for Animals’ Sake at MooShoes LA Saturday night and, as part of the art-centric, rat-centric event, our design studio created these limited edition prints that’ll be available night of.

The Rattie Uprising, as AAS is calling it, will feature artwork for sale to benefit the group, like our prints; vegan food + cocktails; and general merriment and celebration in honor of our smaller animal friends. Much like the raven + crow, the rat’s been stigmatized largely in western culture, so we feel our furry friends’ pain and are happy that someone’s giving voice to them.

Below, some fun facts about rats paired with adorably cute photos of them and a promo video, all courtesy of David Walega of Art for Animals’ Sake.

If you’re in the LA area Saturday, check out info on the event and RSVP via Facebook.

Following in the footsteps of the ‘official’ announcement of our new apparel line yesterday, we wanted to highlight another relatively new animal-friendly t-shirt venture based here in Los Angeles, BEETxBEET, a company with the mission to “save the planet one vegan at a time”.

I attended the vegan-food-filled, DJ-rific one year anniversary party this past Saturday and finally got a chance to meet BEETxBEET owner, Jacky Wasserman (pictured right).

As the company states on their site, “BEETxBEET creates t-shirts to spread healthy propaganda while educating the general public about conscious eating and the environmental issues surrounding food. We provide you a tool to be a sound board for the important causes that need a voice while being fashionable at the same time so you can feel empowered representing our tees where ever you go.”

We’re big fans—I picked up two of our shirts, but it was tough not to walk away from the party with all of them in tow—and think you should be too.

Visit BEETxBEET’s site to see the rest of their product range and shop directly from the company. We’re hoping to carry their shirts at MooShoes soon too.

Black + white photos via BEETxBEET.

raven + crow studio now has an apparel line! We’ve been meaning to officially announce this for a while now, but wanted to wait until everything was available online.

The line, which we’ve dubbed The Kindness Collection, is available through mooshoes.com and in-store at MooShoes LA + MooSheos NYC. The designs for the shirts are based on the prints we did last winter but, truth be told, it took us a while to get everything in order for the shirts themselves as we had some pretty rigorous, self-imposed requirements for how they were to be made.

We’d first considered going the American Apparel route, but, with rumors of the company soon moving production overseas to China and the creepy ex-CEO who (we hear) is actually very much still involved in the company, we decided to take our time on these to make sure we lined up a team we could really be proud of.

In the end, we found a great, smaller scale apparel company located right here in Los Angeles that pays their workers fairly and sources a variety of innovative, sustainably made materials—ours are a mix of soft, organic cotton and recycled plastic bottles. The final cost of making shirts this way inevitably higher, but our hope is that our customer will understand that this is a reflection of us not wanting to cut corners in the process—paying local workers what they should be paid, not what we can get away with paying; lessening our ecological footprint, as it were, with the production of the line; and relying on small, local businesses to keep our money local.

Check them out online or in-store and let us know what you think.

We’re small-batching the shirts for now so we can switch up designs and keep things fresh, so keep an eye out for new ones in the winter/spring.

As mentioned yesterday, we recently hosted a pop-up vegan fashion event and cocktail reception at MooShoes Los Angeles with Joshua Katcher of the Discerning Brute + Brave GentleMan. Mateo Hoke—Chief Cocktail Editor of award-winning Oakland vegan restaurant, Millennium—donated his skills to the night, providing two recipes to help us celebrate, one alcoholic, one not.

As we wrote in yesterday’s piece, the alcoholic cocktail recipe was built by Mateo around a locally made amaro—Greenbar Distillery‘s Grand Poppy Organic Aperitive, a bitter brandy hand-crafted in downtown Los Angeles by distilling organic grapes and then “infusing and re-distilling California-inspired botanicals to bring you an American amaro ideal with soda or wine and for cocktails.”

Mateo’s take on the best way to showcase the Grand Poppy’s flavor profile—a 1-to-1-to-1 blend with a smooth bourbon and sweet vermouth. As he told me:

“There’s a really great organic amaro being made in LA called Grand Poppy. It’s infused with CA botanicals and is bright and floral and delicious. I like to let it shine by mixing with equal parts of a softer bourbon and a nice vermouth, like Carpano Antica.”

Mateo gave us permission to share the recipe, so, for those of you who enjoyed it at the MooShoes event or this past weekend at our anniversary party, you can now make it yourself at home. We give you what we christened Joshua’s namesake cocktail—The Brave GentleMan, a floral-forward, bright, bold take on a Boulevardier:

1oz Grand Poppy
1oz Bourbon (we used Bulleit, but any smooth bourbon will work well)
1oz Carpano Antica (or any other quality sweet vermouth)
Stir with ice and strain into you glassware
Garnish with a lemon peel (express the oil onto for extra depth)

Mateo also gave us what turned out to be a wildly popular alcohol-free cocktail—it’s perfect to provide an exciting option for your non-drinking friends at your next shindig or feature at future baby showers. Mateo again:

“For an N/A cocktail, muddle 5 slices cucumber, half a lime, and 5 mint leaves in a shaker and add 1oz simple syrup (1:1 ratio). Top with soda (or vegan ginger beer), and garnish with a cucumber slice. Hella good.”

Hella good is right. Enjoy.

I won’t lie to you—running two businesses is a lot of work. After our official opening of MooShoes Los Angeles nearly a year ago, Katie + I began to realize that more than a few people assumed that move meant we’d shuttered our design studio. Clearly that’s very much not the case. Truth be told, we’re busier now than we likely ever have been. And, whereas we’re truly lucky to be able to lean on very helpful owners back in New York and extremely capable staff both here in LA and back in NYC, acting as Creative Directors for MooShoes can be overwhelming sometimes…but it’s also wildly rewarding.

Case in point, a few weeks back, we held a pop-up fashion event in the store with longtime friend, Joshua Katcher, who is about to open up his very first store back in Brooklyn (you can read an interview we did with him on vegan fashion last month to find out more). As part of the event, we threw a cocktail reception in the evening and asked the Chief Cocktail Editor of award-winning Oakland vegan restaurant, Millennium—Mateo Hoke—to lend his skills from afar and contribute a couple recipes. One that he contributed involved an amaro made right here in Los Angeles—Greenbar Distillery‘s Grand Poppy Organic Aperitive. Turned out, everyone I called in town was out of the stuff. Quite a pain, right? But when I contacted the distillery directly, they got back to me right away and invited us to come by to pick a few bottles up. When Katie + I made it down, we ended up meeting Melkon Khosrovian (pictured above), who, with his wife, owns the distillery and was kind enough to give us a private tour of their operations.

As Khosrovian told us, his family is Armenian, and family dinners customarily involve vodka shots. Khosrovian’s then girlfriend, now wife, Litty Mathew, was not a fan of the harsh taste though and, once engaged, he started infusing vodkas with natural flavors to soften the taste and allow Mathew to participate in his family’s tradition. Soon after, Mathew—who happens to be a trained chef herself—started collaborating on the process and friends and family caught on, asking for more than the occasional holiday gift of infused creations. Eventually, the hobby turned into a business, with Khosrovian + Mathew opening their doors in 2004.

As the write on their Web site:

“Soon, their unique spirits won many awards. But Melkon and Litty couldn’t take all the credit. They learned their successes also hinged on some silent partners — the farmers who grew their ingredients. Several had moved to organic farming, resulting in more aromatic, flavorful produce…which led to more flavorful, aromatic spirits.

Their minds were made. ORGANICS HELD THE KEY TO BETTER TASTING SPIRITS. Today, Greenbar Craft Distillery produces and distributes the world’s biggest portfolio of organic spirits—all made by hand with real ingredients.”

In addition to championing the value of local, organic ingredients, Greenbar plants a tree for every bottle of spirits they sell, and, by my math, they’re doing pretty well—they’ve plated more than 451,000 trees to date. As Khosrovian told us, producing such a wide range of products—from vodka to gin to tequilas and whiskeys and rums—is rare for such small operations, but they’ve pushed the boundaries of technology in their field, working to develop a cutting edge continuous column still (pictured to the right) to allow a streamlined processing of multiple forms of liquor.

As Melkon told us, the driving force to push the business to grow and be the best it could be has always been their appreciation of fine tastes and quality ingredients—they know what they want and, with their out-of-the-industry backgrounds, often come up with equally out-of-the-box solutions to problems that result in innovation. For instance,  he explained that they looked to California wine-makers to develop a new way of distilling their rum, first fermenting molasses in temperature-controlled tanks with white wine yeast, allowing for an extended fermentation that—along with the traditional double distillation that follows—makes for a richer and more refined rum. They then follow the distillation with micro oxygenation—a technique California wine-makers to mellow out their tannic reds—as opposed to the traditional Caribbean practice of barrel-aging and charcoal filtering, which, he said, strips out most of rum’s flavor.

In a similar vein, Melkon told us that the flavor profile for the Grand Poppy—which we were on a crusade to find that day—was inspired by hikes he + Litty took through Griffith Park and all of the native botanicals that fill the air there.

We’ll share the recipes Mateo passed on to us tomorrow; they were both huge hits, by the way. In the meantime, we recommend stopping by the distillery for a tour or tasting (times + info on both on Greenbar’s site). You can also search Greenbar’s extensive database of recipes for some fun new ideas.

Below, Melkon + Katie discussing the distillation process next to their whiskey casks; Melkon showing us the browned and uncooked wood planks they use in “giant tea bags” to flavor their whiskeys; their original still; the Skybox tasting room; Katie, showing off our winnings; some of Greenbar’s products; some of the natural ingredients that go into those products; and the Greener façade.

Remembering today.

We recently did some event branding and social media design work for Nell Alk, a NYC-based writer, editor, and event planner who’s starting in on a philanthropic series of her own design named Only Connect: Aligning for Animals.

The first event under this new fundraising, philanthropic umbrella she’s created is Laughing for Animals, a comedy showcase that’ll be benefitting our mutual friends at Woodstock Animal Farm Sanctuary.

As Nell puts it:

“LAUGHING FOR ANIMALS: A COMEDY SHOWCASE TO BENEFIT WOODSTOCK FARM SANCTUARY is an event open to the public organized by Only Connect: Aligning for Animals, a fresh concept created by Nell Alk. A comedy showcase to raise awareness, raise money and raise the roof, the evening will include performances by headlining comedian Myq Kaplan, opening comedienne Kate Wolff and MC Alex Carabaño. Anticipate crave-worthy comfort food from vegan chef Jay Astafa, reds and whites from Whitecliff Wines, and dessert courtesy of Dun-Well Doughnuts. Also look forward to great gift bags, fantastic (and plentiful) raffle prizes and photo ops on the red carpet. Expect to rub elbows with WOODSTOCK FARM SANCTUARY co-founders Jenny Brown and Doug Abel, and say hello to the brains behind EXHIBIT C., Daphne Cheng.”

Laughing for Animals takes place at Exhibit C on the Lower East Side in NYC the night of Wednesday, September 24. More information and tickets available via their EventBrite page.

A gentle reminder—for us as much or more than others—to reconnect with the why of what you do as often as possible.

Pictured, Katie with Maria, the rescued goat and celebrated resident of Farm Sanctuary‘s Southern California Shelter, a shirt drive north of Los Angeles.