All week long we are collaborating with Fall For Local to feature 5 local businesses that will be participating at the Fall for Local event on October 22.  You can read a new post each day during this Week of Local on the Fall for Local blog.

DESIGN LOVE CO.

There’s an adage that relates a woman’s mind to an Internet browser with thousands of tabs open. And as women know, keeping so many tabs organized is a full time job in itself. Which is why Design Love Co. is every woman’s best friend. 

Founded by Marissa Cristina, Design Love Co. is, “the modern woman’s sanctuary for fashionable luxe paper organization”. Currently, the company creates a twelve-month planner. This is no ordinary planner, though—it comes with sections for goal setting, billing / expenses / budgeting, to do lists, and both task—and appointment-based sections for each week. And it’s all bound and designed to fit in a professional and sophisticated book within your purse.

Marissa grew up with an interest in stationary—while most of us were decorating our high school agendas with magazine cut-outs, Marissa was designing her own pockets and finding ways to reorganize its layout. She took business at university for a year and a half before moving into communications. There, she landed an internship in graphic design, focusing on print and pre-press. After taking a yearlong course in typography studies where she learned to bind books, Marissa starting making her own planners. What started out as gifts for friends soon became an Etsy shop. Two years ago, Marissa made Design Love Co. into a full-time job and recently moved into an office space.

Marissa designs and chooses all elements of the planners, which are available on her website in both a black-and-white and a colour version. And when she’s not designing next year’s planner, Marissa is looking for ways to expand the business. With all this going on, it’s a good thing Marissa knows where to get her hands on a good planner!