After nearly four years looking at the same boring blog layout and banner (Cake and Commerce - one girl's salt is another girl's fleur de sel) I decided to ask my friend Betty Turbo (aka Agnes), a wonderful cake maker and artist residing in Nashville, to design a banner for me in her signature style. Lots of cake. Bright colors. Obscure references to old cookbooks (she blew up an old cookbook photo of petit fours for the background). A good amount of pink.
What do you think? Good? Bad? Indifferent? Too girlie? Not girlie enough? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
And, if you get a moment, help me repay Betty's kindness (she did this as a favor!) and visit Betty's shop on Etsy. You'll be able to buy adorable screen prints, lino cuts, notecards, and digital prints such as the one below, her homage to William Carlos Williams:
"so much depends upon
a red wheelbarrow
glazed with buttercream icing
beside the white chickens"
I think the new design is cute. I love the wings on the cakes and the briefcases =D!
Posted by: Lauren | March 22, 2009 at 11:23 PM
Thanks Lauren! You can't even tell the cakes are gluten-free from the picture!
But they are. Really!
Posted by: Cake and Commerce | March 22, 2009 at 11:27 PM
Oh man, she even worked in the commerce aspect. Looking good.
(Hi, I've been reading your blog for a couple years now and I really like it)
Posted by: Steve | March 23, 2009 at 06:17 PM
Thanks Steve. Yup. Commerce. Lots of it. Most not good. But interesting.
Thanks for coming out of the woodwork for the props. I really appreciate it!
Posted by: Cake and Commerce | March 23, 2009 at 10:57 PM
I find the cartoon banner a grating contrast to your luscious food photography. And what do flying cakes have to do with anything here? Are you consulting for When Pigs Fly?
Also, it would be tremendously wonderful if your old posts didn't keep changing the apostrophes/single quotes every day and showing up as edited posts in RSS. I subscribe to many news feed, and this site is the only one that has that happen.
Posted by: Michael | March 24, 2009 at 03:18 PM
Thanks for the feedback, Michael.
I'll definitely try and change the RSS settings. Typepad is incredibly annoying to deal with and doesn't make it easy for me to make changes - I'm pretty code illiterate and I depend on them 100% for functionality.
As for the banner...hmm, you are the second person to say that. I'll seriously consider every opinion and eventually decide for myself how to proceed. Ideally I'll put something of my own up there...once I figure out photoshop.
Posted by: Cake and Commerce | March 24, 2009 at 11:23 PM