lello news

We’re a visual bunch here at lello. Trying to get the feel for a t-shirt design from a computer screen just doesn’t cut it. Right or wrong, part of our design process is to create rough mock-ups of the final tee designs by printing, cutting and taping our art to the intended toddler t-shirt. We’ll play with colors, size and positioning on different tees until we get something we think works. Then we’ll talk about it, revise the art and print, cut and tape again.

What we finally arrive at is something we really like… and hope you will too. Stay tuned… our 2008 spring/summer of kids tees will be dropping very soon!

Yep, the t-shirts arrive the other day and I spent a good chunk of this past Saturday morning checking inventory with Jackson. A rather unpleasant task made pleasant by a very upbeat and driven 3 year old. It’s pretty clear that he’s got solid project management skills just like his mama.

For this round of tees we’ve decided to use Rabbit Skins which are manufactured by a company called L.A.T. Sportswear. We sampled a variety of shirts and decided on RS for a bunch of reasons, the primary ones being fit, comfort and color choices. Their customer service also rocks, which in this day and age, is a big selling factor for me.

The art and shirts have been delivered to the screen printer and it looks like the first run will happen towards the end of next week. We’re all pretty excited around here.

One of my New Year’s resolutions was a promise to myself to post more frequent updates to the lello Website. We’ll… it’s now the beginning of April and looking at the Website and number of times I’ve posted, it’s pretty obvious, that like my well-intentioned-work-out-regime, this resolution is also out the window.

That said, I would like to take a quick minute to mention that we’re busily working on new toddler t-shirt designs that should be ready for sale in May (May of this year… for those skeptics out there). In-fact, I’ve been working like a possessed man lately trying to get everything lined up and to the screen printer by (ahem) today… which is now looking like Monday (doh).

Aaannnnyhooo… once I deliver the art and have a minute to breathe, I’ll circle back and give you enthusiasts a sneak peek at the t-shirt designs, etc. I promise.

As promised, we’ve updated the website to include a Clothing section, featuring our very first t-shirt, the Maplewood, NJ Tee. Limited sizes are available, and once they’re gone, they’re gone forever. A more extensive online store is still on its way as additional designs become available, but for now, take a look and give us your thoughts!

It turns out that starting a business doing something you’re really passionate about while managing a career and family takes quite a bit longer than we’d expected, so we haven’t been as guerilla-like as we’d planned to be about advertising just yet. Fortunately, our first experience doing a mural for a paying customer was everything we hoped it would be, and - speaking for myself - it seems as though everyone walked away very happy with the end result. I’m still a little dumbfounded by the fact that I got to draw pictures on someone’s walls AND get paid for it… my mother is no doubt, very impressed.

The job was to paint an elephant, lion, giraffe and a zebra - all emerging from behind various windows and doors. I’ve left pieces of the moldings and windowsills visible in a few of the pictures to give some frame of reference in terms of scale.

(Click the picture to view more)

Art is far from a science, but I tried to be as systematic as I could be in documenting things such as how long the process took from start-to-finish, which colors work well together, and how different types of weather/humidity affect the time it takes paint to dry. All of my copious note-taking meant that things took a bit longer than they otherwise would’ve, but until it all becomes second nature, it’ll be handy to have the info to refer back to next time.

I was also reminded several times during this process that I am my own worst critic, and it’s nice to have a wife to give you tough love and tell you when it’s time to stop obsessing over the color of the giraffe’s spots or the size of the elephant’s ears. (Asian elephants have smaller ears than African elephants, btw. It’s all about temperature regulation. Thank you, Wikipedia.)

Thanks as well to Mr. and Mrs. Halm for hiring me to adorn their children’s walls. I hope the animals will always be as special to them as they’ve been to me!

Tomorrow is the big day… lello’s debut at the Mayfest street festival! We joke that someone must’ve slipped a contract into the big stack of papers we signed the day we closed on our house in Maplewood four years ago, obliging us to have a child as our first matter of business. There have been at least a dozen kids born on our little block since then, and when we look out our bedroom window these days and see everyone playing ball in the street or selling pink lemonade on their front lawns, it feels like we’ve struck gold to have found that small-town closeness that we almost thought didn’t exist anymore.

Fortunately, the town is also very welcoming of home-grown businesses. Our neighborhood toy store, the funky little coffee shop, the bead shop and the knitknack yarn store… they’re all locally owned and operated, and people are proud to shop there and show their support for the community. To foster that home-town pride and get our business name out there, Mike designed his first Maplewood t-shirt for kids. We had no idea how many to print up, so it’s possible that either Jackson and Sadie will be wearing them until they graduate, or we’ll have to apologize to everyone at Mayfest for selling out so quickly. Let’s hope it’s the latter… there are certainly worse problems to have your first day in business!

Here’s a pic of our friend Jordan modeling the shirt for everyone.

If you can’t make it to the Mayfest and you’re interested in purchasing a shirt, shoot us an email.