The City of La Quinta, California
In March 2023, we had the privilege of meeting the City of La Quinta Marketing Manager Marcie Graham at Alt Design Summit in Palm Springs. We describe Marcie as an absolute UNICORN because 1) she is magical, and 2) we literally manifested her by saying before the conference, “Hey, what if we could work with a city… not necessarily Palm Springs, but somewhere AROUND Palm Springs, and make a coloring and activity book for THEM?” Enter: FATE!! It was meant to be! Little did we know, at the same time, Marcie saw us featured on Alt’s instagram, and she thought, “I wonder if they could make my dream of a La Quinta A to Z book come TRUE?”
We met, and immediately recognized that we were a fit for one another! Marcie had wanted a La Quinta A to Z book for 2 years, but realized it was impossible to find an artist, a designer, AND coordinate the printing of the book all on her own. She needed someone who could just TAKE CARE OF IT. That’s what we do! And because she’s very smart, she saw this as a great opportunity to incorporate educational activities about California’s SB 1383 recycling and composting law! We saw it as an opportunity to make a double sided book! Make sure to watch the video at the beginning of this post to see the FLIP!
In the unrelenting heat of the summer desert, Holly, Alma, and Mike traveled out to La Quinta to explore the city ourselves (with family members!) and were NOT disappointed. We found a vibrant, exciting city with the right VIBE. La Quinta started out as a resort spot in the golden age of Hollywood when those working on set were contractually obligated to stay within a 2 hour drive of Hollywood. La Quinta was EXACTLY 2 hours away! We explored the city from A to Z and fell in love with its glamorous history and its modern present! (Not to mention the wildlife because we are SUCKERS for a good roadrunner!!) We pride ourselves in our extra-dedicated research skills! Holly’s husband Andrew put on a helmet in 110 degrees, grabbed a skateboard, and tested out the city’s famous skate park (X is for X park). We were thrilled to have a volunteer skateboarding expert with us to help make sure we got that page right!
Marcie’s job keeps her very busy, so she trusted us to take her ideas and run with them. All we needed was a call for Marcie to describe her vision, and point us to resources we could use to inform our work. Then we mostly left her alone and got to work!
For the recycling and composting portion of the book, our contact was the wonderful Clara Vera. Marcie told us that Clara is also very busy at her work, and we needed to protect her time. So we dug into every publicly available resource that La Quinta and Burrtec Waste Industries had put together about SB 1383, and got to know Clara through YouTube videos and trainings. Her passion for sustainability practices and correct education came through so vividly in her videos! Did I get a celebrity crush on Clara Vera? (I did.) I told our team, “My goal is to make Clara cry. I want her to see the pages we have done for her and see her goals and her vision completely brought to life!” After completing our recycling content, we arranged a zoom meeting with Marcie and Clara, so that Clara could check our info for accuracy and quickly communicate changes to us. On that call, Clara said that it may sound silly, but when she opened the work we had done, she cried because so much of her hard work and efforts were reflected in the content we produced. She said it felt like a career milestone. Mission accomplished.
One fun “extra” that Marcie and the city requested was to incorporate a seed paper insert! We developed a “pledge” card where readers could think about what change they wanted to make, write it out, and “plant” their new habits. In order to do this, we sourced custom seed paper with a mix of southwest seeds that could thrive in the La Quinta desert. The seeds were so chunky that letter press printing was the only available option, resulting in luxuriously delightful cards!
Marcie wanted to debut our books at La Quinta’s State of the City event in September, 2023. I’ll be honest—it was a bit of a push to get everything done so that the books could be printed and shipped to La Quinta on time! But do we ADHD artists thrive with pressure and immovable deadlines? We certainly do!
In the end, Marcie and the City of La Quinta (the official Gem of the Desert!) were pleased with the result! Hear it in Marcie’s words:
“We collaborated with Your Very Favorite on creating a book that showcased all of the wonderful things about our city, La Quinta, California. That ended up turning into a dual book in collaboration with Burrtec Waste Management where one side was all about La Quinta and the other focused on education of recycling/composting. The end result was this beautifully crafted piece that not only showed why we are called the Gem of the Desert, but also helped us to accurately and precisely educate our residents (both young and old) about the importance of recycling. This was definitely a passion project that was elevated by Alma and the team at Your Very Favorite. The attention to detail to so many little things that just made this even more special was beyond what I imagined. I appreciated the extra steps taken to ensure we were correctly representing our Cahuilla Indian ancestors. Alma connected with the Malki Museum so that everything Cahuilla in the book was approved and correct. She worked closely with Burrtec to make sure our “tips” on recycling and composting were correct so that we were in compliance with state mandates and regulations. We are so proud of the final product from the recycled paper to the seed paper insert to the smooth cover. We debuted them at our State of the City and had folks calling the next day to ask where they could purchase more. Our residents love them and our City Council was incredibly happy with the final product. Looking forward to more projects with Your Very Favorite and all they bring to make us shine!”
