Yet another case of a blogger outgrowing a pre-canned WordPress theme.

Irene Seah is a sweet, funny, spiritual woman who (with occasional assistance from her two young daughters) has been writing a blog as part of her micro-business for a year or two.

It had become obvious to Irene that even though her generic blog looked nice, it didn’t really reflect her personality or that of her business. She was ready to take steps to remodel her digital digs — and that’s where I came in.

Because her business is so much about her, we decided to have an illustration of Irene interact with the shiny new logotype in the header graphic — to bring her literally right into the picture.

Simple, clean, calming and cool … we added stars, drenched everything in shades of blue (a colour with powerful spiritual significance for her) and created custom RSS, Email, and Twitter icons for the sidebar.

Irene loves her new online home, and even more satisfying — her daughters are delighted!

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This time around, the gods and goddesses spring into new life as 20th-century pop icons.

A swirl of enthusiastic emails and telephone calls inspired the motley crew you see below … and there are more on the way. Available as T-shirts? Naturally!

• Kali, dangerously badass-sexy as Shaft meets Cleopatra Jones;
• Shiva, soulful snake-headed club DJ, spinning the end-of-the-world trance;
• Hanuman the monkey god incarnate as mischievously innocent ’50s cartoon;
• Lakshmi, gracious and regal as Audrey Hepburn cruising down Hollywood boulevard.

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The “Dissolve-O-Matic” is the latest in the series of illustrations created for Havi Brooks’ self-work products, in the quirky style semi-officially dubbed “Steampunk meets Yellow Submarine.”

As I wrote about the first of these machines, they communicate a sort of alternate-reality functionality in a completely non-threatening way. This aligns beautifully with Havi’s brilliant copywriting and whimsically approachable brand, in both style and attitude.

This one is the metaphorical representation of a product designed to dissolve procrastination. You can almost hear the rattle and roar of this happy contraption at work … and if your curiousity is piqued by the rubber duckie, visit her other website.

My client calls me from the road, suddenly struck by a marketing vision. “Richard, I know what our next ad’s gotta be!”

As he describes this revelation, I see that he’s on to something. My own motorcycle riding has always made me feel environmentally virtuous, and with gas costing over 4 bucks a gallon, it does seem that now could finally be the effective moment to communicate this fiscal virtue to potential riders.

Thus, this month’s ad features a plea to quit worshipping the Oil God — or at least cut back a bit by riding a Harley.

The website’s name translates as “Movies and Stuff”, and that’s what this German-language podcast and blog is all about. It features movie reviews liberally interspersed with thoughts on pop music, Macintosh hardware, and other necessaries of modern life.

The silhouetted talking heads in the graphic represent the male-female duo who review the movies (and stuff) in unscripted conversation. This spirited back-and-forth inspired the vivid colors and funky early ’60s animated style … though it may also have to do with watching too many Dick Van Dyke show re-runs.

This CD package and illustration of an irritated rhino was created for a sprawling and powerful 12-piece band from Oakland, California. Picking up where the revolutionary Nigerian musician Fela Kuti left off, Albino! is all about “Heavy Heavy Afro-Beat”.

The producer came to Calyx Design with a general concept, a visual meant to evoke both the thumping power and political consciousness of the band: “I want a lonely rhino on an African plain”. This image, together with the music, inspired the visual style of the whole piece. Through use of textural tricks and emulation of batik or off-register screen-printing, it evokes the hand-made. Both roughly textured and densely detailed, it simultaneously evinces an aura of rawness and sophistication.

A little back story: I began studying German several years ago, and in an effort to improve my ear, started cruising the interweb searching for German-language podcasts that might help. The first one I discovered, in fact my first podcast experience of any kind, turned out to be a brand new effort by a young woman in Munich named Annik Rubens: Schlaflos in Muenchen.

She was so charming, funny and (thank goodness) clear-spoken that I sent her a fan letter, she responded, and a long-distance friendship was born. This illustrated graphic was simply a gesture of gratitude for the countless hours of entertainment (and education!) she provided.

In the intervening years the podcast has made Annik famous; she’s one of the best known internet personalities in the German-speaking world. And the graphic I created — featuring her beloved cat Tiger and Munich’s famous Frauenkirche — still sits atop her blog, enjoyed by thousands.

Presenting “Nellie”, pinup girl #3 in the Spicy SinSations brand mascots series.

This irreverently good-natured purveyor of adult toys is located in Portland, Oregon, center of a recent explosion of music, arts, and eco-positive hipster street culture. It’s a youthful and vibrant scene, the female contingent of which comprise a vital chunk of Spicy SinSations’ demographic.

With that in mind, “Nellie” is, well, just your typical bicycle-riding striped-stockings-and-hoodie-wearing co-op-shopping Alberta Street girl!

» Pinup #1 — Jocelyn
» Pinup #2 — Candace

Presenting “Candace”, pinup girl #2 in the series of brand mascots created for Spicy SinSations. The company identifies itself, as oughtta be obvious, as “naughty+friendly+fun”!

I created each of the girls to speak to a different demographic sector, and “Candace “speaks to a suburbanite woman — the mother next door with a bit of sexy flair. I mean, there it is — martini glass, garters, oh my! Spicy’s owner neatly summarizes the concept as “Gidget grows up.”

» Pinup #1 — Jocelyn
» Pinup #3 — Nellie

Presenting the first of the “Spicy Pinup Girls”, a series of mascots created especially to support the Spicy SinSations “naughty+friendly+fun” brand.

Cute, no? This first pinup — I’ve dubbed her “Jocelyn” — has a tough and tattooed neo-rockabilly style. She was created especially for use on a sponsorship banner at Portland’s new hipster roller derby league, the Rose City Rollers.

» Pinup #2 — Candace
» Pinup #3 — Nellie

Havi Brooks will inform you that she’s not at all a visual person, but when digging for ways to describe her series of self-work programs, eBooks and audio products, the images that popped up were “big, crazy, friendly machines”.

My visual translation: “Steampunk meets the Yellow Submarine.”

The machines are amiable mechanical mash-ups, communicating a sort of alternate-reality functionality in a completely non-threatening way. This aligns beautifully with Havi’s brilliant copywriting and whimsically approachable brand — both in terms of style (clean lines and flat areas of bright color) and attitude (friendly and welcoming).

This particular mechanical wonder represents a product designed to calm people down so they can be productive. In Havi’s own words, “The Destuckification Station will train you to stop the paralysis in its tracks so you can go back to getting excited about what you do. And do it.”

(And if this contraption grabs you, take a look at the Dissolve-O-Matic!)

The appropriately mysterious final page of the graphic series “The Enigmatic Adventures of Isabel Ash, portraying our heroine’s disappearance into the San Francisco fog. The story was begun simply as an experiment with a graphic illustration style, for no other reason than that I had always wanted to draw a comic book!

The terms of the challenge I set for myself involved drawing each page by hand using tools that few living persons have ever seen… pencil, paper, ink and erasers. The series ran from 1999 to 2003, with a single page appearing four times a year at the back of the cult vintage scooter magazine Scoot Quarterly. It’s very interesting to see the evolution of the drawing style during those four years of intermittent work.

Eventually the labor of drawing these pages, compelled me to (somewhat guiltily) abruptly drop the project after 16 episodes, but I still receive fan mail through the comic’s website, www.isabelash.com.

Roaring out of the Pacific Ocean into the pale light of a sickle moon — it’s the Night Rider (supply your own citizenry-terrifying folkloric explanation here). And what would a svelte apparition such as this ride? A Harley Fat Boy, of course.

Introduced in an ad, then rolled out in a series of posters, T-shirts and hoodies, the Night Rider has become the unofficial mascot of Santa Cruz Harley-Davidson.

Roxie! The second of Santa Cruz Harley’s two stylized pinup girls, and the tougher of the pair. These two vintage motorcycle lovers were created for the Santa Cruz Harley dealership. Like Veronica, Roxie was introduced through a print ad, then brought to T-shirts

These illustrations combine digital technology with old-fashioned pencil lead; a loose graphite sketch itself is scanned, edited and careful colorized to produce the final result.

Why “Roxie”? Well, much like Veronica …

Veronica! The first of a pair of stylized pinup girls astride vintage motorcycles, both created for the Santa Cruz Harley dealership. She made her debut in a print advertisement, but popular demand soon brought her to T-shirts.

These illustrations combine digital technology with old-fashioned pencil lead; a loose graphite sketch itself is scanned, edited and careful colorized to produce the final result.

Why “Veronica”? Hmm, seems to me as though she named herself.

(As did Roxie.)

It’s a motorcycle poster. No, it is! The begoggled beauty with a penetrating gaze rests artfully on an almost-hidden representation of a “Bomber Bike” — one of a series of custom Harleys created by Mike James.

The flowing lines and stylized forms of this motorcycle evoke the decorative Art Nouveau/Jugendstil movement of the the last century, so for inspiration I turned to the posters of Alphonse Mucha … with a nod to San Francisco’s Fillmore.

Thematic illustration of the vintage Harley Davidson dealership in Santa Cruz, California. The colors and layout reflect both the California coast and Roaring Twenties when the building was new.