We were working late the other night at HOP & JAUNT’s office in the warehouse district of downtown New Orleans. There was a crawfish boil going on at the bar next door, but other than that it was a pretty quiet night. Suddenly, we heard this loud crash outside, and then roar of cheers and laughter. We jumped up from our computers and ran outside.

Sure enough there was a wreck outside. Some poor guy in a van got hit by a police car. Fortunately, the only thing injured was the police officer’s pride. The bar crowd got a big kick out of that.

John’s goal was to start this past week with creating an illustration of what he saw around town everyday. Luckily we’ve been swamped with work and illustrating for clients this past week, the downside is that he’s not quite able to create a drawing a day as hoped. But here’s the first couple, let’s encourage John to keep it up!

Day 1: View From Our Office The Day After The BSC Championship

Day 2: Morning Commute Sight: Tall Bike Guy & Smart Car Lady

Day 3: Its a nice, warm January day. And sometimes the people in the hotel across the street don’t realize we can see into their windows.

We recently ran across a Rowdy Tater reference while in Mississippi. What is a Rowdy Tater? It’s a fried chicken and french fry mini-store located next to gas stations. Though we never got to eat at one as we left Mississippi right before their grand opening we have fond feeling for the chain, as it was one of John’s earlier character design projects.

Loved the western themed "Rowdy" taters

John desigened all the "wanted" posters that was put up all around the store

Rowdy Taters - store bathroom

Carnival season is in motion here in New Orleans. The houses have exchanged their Christmas decor for the purple, gold, and green of Mardi Gras. Flags are hung and King Cakes are baking. Its like having a second Christmas coming, and we are anxiously awaiting to celebrate and watch the parades from our small office on St. Charles Avenue.

So in honor of our first Mardi Gras while living in the NOLA, today we are offering up a small parade of our own. A parade of some our recent design work done for some truly amazing travel bloggers and writers.

Astahaya: Private Caribbean Charter

www.astahaya.com

Astahaya.com was actually our very first job as ‘The Traveling Designers’. We met the owners (Tom & Christian) while boat sitting in Curacao, and we all became fast friends. They wanted a website to showcase their beautiful yacht for private charters, and well, we were more than happy to help. In fact, the entire website was designed and built from the spacious salon of Astahaya. We recently updated the website with new information. Working on it again brought back a lot of fond memories of our journey through the Caribbean and of all the friends we made. If you would like to see some amazing photos of a truly spectacular yacht, be sure to check out Astahaya.

Traveling Savage

www.traveling-savage.com

Keith of Traveling Savage was another of our early clients. In his “State of the Savage” January addess, Keith explained that he would be taking a greater focus on Scotland at Traveling-Savage.com. So, naturally, we helped to update his header and logo with a bit more of a Scottish look. He has a great blog with some really talented writing. And who doesn’t love Scotland?!

How to Travel the World of $50 Dollars a Day

Ebook layout for Nomadic Matt.

We’ve worked with Matt of Nomadic Matt.com since the very early days of HOP & JAUNT. We’ve done several ebook designs for Matt, and recently we’ve added one more. Matt’s latest work “How to Travel the World on $50 Dollars a Day” offers sound and effective advice on reducing the costs of your travels. In addition, the ebook comes complete with over $700 worth of travel coupons. Not to mention, the pages of great illustration!

The Neon Jungle Princess

www.thejungleprincess.com

Above shows the new header art we did for Abby of The Jungle Princess. Abby is making the transition from a Tropical Costa Rican Village to the Neon Jungles of Las Vegas, and we helped to update her website to suit her new surroundings. She’s a great writer with lots of personal insight on making real change happen in your life.

Travel Bug Juice

www.travelbugjuice.com

When Kelly first came to us looking to re-design Travel Bug Juice we could tell this was going to be a unique and fun project. Working together we created a brand new site that oozes travel bug juice fun! The site has a unique map feature to help you find the stories that interest you and Kelly’s depth of content will keep you hooked for hours.

Go! Girl Guides

www.gogirlguides.com

Not one to be caught sitting on her laurels Kelly was dreaming up Go! Girl Guides even while overhauling her current blog, Travel Bug Juice. Now a reality and rapidly gaining steam and growing Go! Girl Guides is a site and to-come-print guides for women, solo travelers, and volunteers. Keep you eye’s on this site as it’s going to taking off!

The Ultimate Tech Guide for Travelers

eBook layout for FoXnoMad

The Ultimate Tech Guide for Travelers is an ebook layout we did for Anil of FoXnoMad. In his book Anil explains how travelers can become more tech savvy with their digital gear, and he offers tips for coping with the hassles of technology while traveling. We found it to be quite handy.

Custom Header Art
We’ve done quite a few new header designs lately for some really great travel blogs.

Runaway Jane

www.runawayjane.com

A fun, illustrative new look for Runaway Jane.

C’est Christine

www.cestchristine.com

C’est Christine got a colorful, new header depicting some of her most inspiring places.

A View to a Thrill

www.aviewtoathrill.net

I enjoyed drawing the perspective of looking down from a hot air balloon in this illustration for A View to a Thrill.

www.thesocialmediasyndicate.com

A custom header for the Social Media Syndicate’s Mongolian Rally.

If you may be interested in adding a new look to your website or blog, feel free to send us an email at thecrew@hopandjaunt.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

Happy Mardi Gras!

Aly & John
HOP & JAUNT

Celebrating Latin America at Ground Level Cover Art

Today we have a guest post from Steven Roll of Travelojos, the Latin America Travel Blog. We recently worked with Steven helping him design and format his new ebook “Celebrating Latin America at Ground Level”, which is available for free download here.

Below, Steven shares a little about his project and how “Hop & Jaunt helped him deliver on his commitment to produce an e-book that highlighted the talents of the Latin America travel blogging community.”

A Wrapping Worthy of the Gift by Steven Roll

” One of the things I’ve come to love about travel blogging since I started Travelojos in December, 2008 is that it motivates me to put actions behind my words. That makes me fortunate because I truly enjoy what I write about: traveling to Latin America, learning Spanish, and enjoying the culture even when I’m at home in the Washington, D.C. area.

Before I started blogging, I never would have pushed myself to do things like enroll in a language immersion program in Guatemala this year.

Another one of my goals for 2010 was to publish a free e-book featuring the work of other Latin America travel bloggers.

The idea behind Latin America at Ground Level was to have expats or regular travelers to Latin America write about the region’s pleasures and endless contradictions. Each would contribute a short personal essay about a special aspect of Latin America and what it means to them.

I contacted all of my favorite bloggers and asked them to participate. There was only one condition: each contributor had to allow his or her readers to download the e-book for free. In other words, participating in the project meant agreeing to share the gift.

In the words of mega-blogger Seth Godin:

When done properly, gifts work like nothing else. A gift gladly accepted changes everything. The imbalance creates motion, motion that pushes us to a new equilibrium, motion that creates connection.

Connecting with my readers and other Latin America enthusiasts was exactly what I was aiming for.

The challenge was doing it in an effective format. As usual, I started out by trying to do it on the cheap. My buddy was going to do the layout work for the e-book using some templates on Word. But the results weren’t worthy of my blogging friends’ contributions. It felt like wrapping an engagement ring in newspaper.

It wasn’t until a friend recommended designers Hop & Jaunt that I found the gift wrap my e-book deserved. What I liked even better than the fair price we agreed upon was the enthusiasm for the project that Hop & Jaunt’s John Clark showed from the very beginning.

He offered several different excellent designs and formats to choose from. John also took care of time consuming technical details such as right sizing all of the photos.

The final result was an e-book that came out even better than I had originally envisioned.

With my goal accomplished, it truly is the season for Thanksgiving and gifts.”