For the 35th episode of LCI’s Podcast, we hear from Nicole Block; founder of The Nic Studio. Nicole is an illustrator and designer, specializing in custom stationery, invitations, and commissioned art work. After learning that Nicole recently created a unique promotional piece for her studio using Pop-Tone paper – we reached out to her to learn more. The gregarious Nicole was kind enough to take the time to talk about the history of Nic Studio, her design, and a few of the perks of using Pop-Tone paper.
Click the following link to listen to the audio, or right click and “save as” to download the audio and listen at a later time.
LCI Paper Podcast #35 – Interview with Nicole Block of The Nic Studio
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Read the transcript of the interview below.
Nicole Block is an illustrator and custom invitation and stationery designer based in New York. You can see examples of Nicole’s beautiful designs at thenicstudio.com. After learning that Nicole recently created a unique promotional piece using Pop-Tone paper – a brand we very recently started carrying, I reached out to her to learn more. The very friendly Nicole was kind enough to take the time to discuss her design with me, and tell me a bit more about the perks of using Pop-Tone paper. Welcome to LCI’s podcast. My name is Kristen Desrosier, and my interview with Nicole starts now.
Nicole, please begin by telling me about Nic Studio. How did you get started?
I actually graduated college with a degree in illustration, but I made the move into design not long after, and I worked for a small publication for about four and a half years. I was their senior designer, and I art directed their magazine. All of a sudden one day the magazine was dissolved and the corporation decided to take their business in a different direction and let go of a third of us. I was married just four months before that, and I was doing some projects on the side for other brides and people that I knew. So about ten minutes after I was told that I was let go, I said, “ok then, I’ll start another business!” And literally – I don’t know if it was just the shock, and the, you know, the adrenaline; I don’t know what possessed me to say “oh that’s fine, I’ll just do something else!” – but the next day, I launched my Nic Events site, which was all my custom stationary, and it sort of just grew from there into the Nic Studio. So now I have everything that I do – all my paper products, and my illustration work, and my artwork, and everything – is under one roof.
Good for you! You definitely made a good decision!
Yeah! Yeah, I’m happy with my decision!
And what services do you offer?
I do stationery on all levels, custom – primarily wedding of course. But I do do corporate stationery, corporate and event invitations for that end of things. I also do illustrations, commissioned artwork; I do some illustrations like editorial illustrations and otherwise. I am also expanding as we speak into some more ready to order stuff. I have a small ready to order wedding invitation line right now, and I am expanding that and also expanding the offerings into note cards and printed posters.
Great. I was browsing through your site again this morning; and all of your work is beautiful by the way.
Thank you, thank you!
Alright, let’s talk about these notebooks you designed. They turned out great! Will you discuss the ideas behind the design?
Yeah, they’re actually supposed to be fake sketchbooks. They’re promo pieces that are getting mailed out to different publications and some different event planners than the ones that already know me. I mailed them out to mostly corporate and celebrity event planners. This is just the first round. There’s a lot more that have to go out. But basically, I was trying to come up with an interesting concept for a promo – one that would get me noticed and get my selling points across, while still delivering my spirit – which is – I’m very friendly, I’m very personal, and that’s how I like to run my business, and that’s how I like to communicate with my clients. So I wanted to showcase mostly my illustration skills and that was the idea behind the sketch book; so that they would receive a sketch book with my pieces in it as though that’s where they were originally drawn. When the recipient gets the sketch book, they are invited in to – participate with it – with a personalized handwritten note on the front and a little pencil, and as they enter in the sketch book, I sort of offer to help them with the sketch of their ideas and then it goes into my work. There’s even a few original illustrations from my process with a couple of the pieces that I’ve worked on. Eventually they get a little personalized note at the end about my business and me. Then, the rest of the sketchbook is about ten blank pages that they can use on their own, as the functioning sketchbook or notebook to sort of develop their own ideas.
Looking at the pictures you sent, I definitely got the personal vibe. I love the handwritten note. Now, did all the notes say the same thing?
No the notes on the front are pretty much all the same, they’re all handwritten, to the recipient, and they say, you know, “what would your ideal invitation look like,” and then, “why don’t you sketch it out?” Then when they get inside, every sketchbook was different according to who was getting it. So, some people got different pieces in it; everybody got a different note on the inside that was customized to them, and either their publication or their business. No two are exactly alike, and they were all hand made, so that makes them even more unique – each one.
I assume the cover of these was card stock, and then the insert sheets; were those text weight, or were they all cover? I couldn’t really tell from the photo.
Yeah, um actually they were all cover, but they were the lightest cover stock weight that Pop-Tone came in, which was sixty-five pound, which was one of the things that actually first drew me to Pop-Tone – because they had a nice cover weight stock rather than the heaviest text, which would still not be as heavy.
And what did you use to print on them?
I printed them all out on my Epson R1900 printer, cut them all down myself.
What about the Nic Logo on the front?
That is stamped. (ok) And I have a stamp of my logo and I used white pigment ink for the stamp.
Besides the weight of the paper, what else drew you to use Pop-Tone for this project?
Well, I love French Paper, and I’ve used them quite a bit. Especially for my own personal projects, I tend to gravitate towards their paper. So I was investigating their paper first, really, to see if they had anything that I wanted to use for this project. You know I needed something that was white, but I wanted something that really felt like sketchbook paper, and it couldn’t have too much texture, and I didn’t want it to come off like newsprint either. So, so the Pop-Tone line had. . . the two whites that they had were great, and I just sort of had to choose between the Sweet Tooth and – what’s the other one , the Whipped Cream? – and then I investigated it; and actually by your response on Twitter, as well as a good friend of mine who is another designer and illustrator – he’s worked on it a number of times and gave me a whole run down and told me what the paper weight was like, and what the texture was like, and I just liked the idea that it was nice and smooth, that it didn’t have any real flecks in it, but that it printed really nicely; because I needed something that could deliver the color well. It’s not something you often get, unfortunately, when you’re printing at home, on uncoated stock. You know, that can be a little difficult to deliver color right. This friend of mine told me that it had great paper color delivery, and the nice smooth texture, and then I looked and I saw that it was sixty-five pound, and I said “Oh, we’re in; that’s the winner,” It was perfect. It delivered the right sketchbook feel. I really wanted it to feel like a high-end sketchbook.
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We’d like to thank Nicole for taking the time to discuss the Nic Studio and her awesome sketchbook design with us. What’s your experience with Pop-Tone Paper? Post a comment, and tell us about it. We’d love to hear from you!
1 Comment
I love Pop Tone products!