The Brandit character evolved darkly, switching from a fun, primary, geometric dude to a much more stylized, vigilante-esque charater. The new website also reflects the brand update.

Almost all of the work I’ve done in the past year has been with The Brandit. Some of my favorite projects include Hello IT, Vizcaya Villa and the logo for St. Florian’s Brewing Company; you can peruse the WORK page to see some of the other stuff we’ve put out recently.

All the new art is the primary reason this website hasn’t been updated in a while, but now is the time to change that.

I recently added a couple new project pages to my portfolio, and two of my favorites are Lauryl Lane (who I’ve written about before, and whose case study you can read here) and Mile High Style, two stylists who have already seen excellent mileage from their identity overhauls.

Three weeks ago, Dan (Creative Director at The Brandit) and I went to the Craft Brewers Conference. It was the first experience for both of us, and we had a great time. We made a ton of great contacts in the industry, and hope to begin working with some craft brewers, startups and old standards alike, to develop their brand identities.

Stay tuned to see some work from that industry in the coming months.

The Brief

The initial project was actually a simple website redesign, but upon examining some important factors I decided to begin discussing a full identity update. Lane needed something special to distinguish her from any number of florist shops, the kind that make most of their money on Valentines day, and run-of-the-mill event stylists, who may or may not be wedding coordinators with good creative contacts. What sets Lane apart is her use of florals in everything she does, and she does do everything. A floral designer by training, the flowers are the centerpiece of her events and photoshoots.

Before addressing visual style, I embraced her singular combination of offerings (floral design in event styling) to make her brand proposition equally one-of-a-kind. I wanted to keep Lauryl’s name as the title, since she has quite a reputation, but supplement it with a tagline as unique as her services, and the term Botanical Stylist was born.

The quick subtitle is elegant, meaningful, and holds enough mystery for someone to perhaps ask for a fuller definition, which would allow Lane to explain her exclusive mixture of talents. To our knowledge there is no other botanical stylist in the United States, and we are taking the appropriate measures to protect this brand element on the web.

Having secured the text, it was time for the type.

Creative Development

For the actual logotype, the client wanted to stay within the calligraphy range, and we turned to the same talented artist who provided Lane’s first logo: Victoria Hoke Lane, the client’s mother.

The old logo, while attractive, was created a while ago and had a unique purpose: to describing the services visually. With the new subtitle, these illustrations became superfluous. Also, since our target market is decidedly high-end, the old logo, while executed nicely, was not the right style.

Old Logo

New Logo

I modified the calligraphy slightly to accommodate the important subtitle. The new logo is elegant and clean, displaying the correct tone of voice for Lauryl’s updated brand.

Website

Like the original logo, Lane’s original website was very heavy on the literal translation of the floral industry: lots of textures and background prints and browns and greens. Taking a less-is-more approach, I decided to let Lane’s work speak for itself, and minimize the amount of distracting background elements.

Old Website

New Website

There is still a fair bit of color, but the elements have been simplified and more white space allows the stunning images to take center stage. Not only is the work more elegantly displayed, but the information is streamlined. Cutting down navigation items (in this case from 8 to 5) is usually a challenge, but well worthwhile since most site visitors just want to see the work.

Lane also takes many of her own photographs, and wanted to protect them with a watermark. A simple button combining the two “l”s from her name is the perfect solution.

There are some new collateral elements planned for the future, like letterpress business cards and such, but Lauryl Lane has already taken an enormous step forward by updating her web-presence.

Here is the new website.

I worked with the associate pastor in charge of this curriculum development, as well as the senior pastor and youth minister, to develop an accompanying brand for the church’s bold vision.

The Brief

There were two distinct goals of this project. The first was raising general community awareness in the Saginaw area, and the second was simple visual improvement over the current logo. I aimed to kill two birds (no pun intended) with one stone.

I found many people, when asked what “Eagles View” was, were not aware that it was a church. Although many were not aware that the church existed at all, the current shorthand for the church was simply “Eagle’s View,” which did not give any indication that the church was, in fact, a church.

This anonymity issue was further exacerbated by the church’s location. Saginaw, Texas is home to Eagle Mountain Lake, and many local companies in the area have the word “eagle” in the name. Given the abbreviated name for the church was already something common, and the option of renaming quickly disqualified, I was left with the challenge of addressing what the church’s nickname.

I asked why “Eagles View” was the common shorthand, and when no answer could be found, aside from convenience,  I visited the church and found this old logo displayed on the side of the building.

Old Logo

Aside from the myriad of design troubles, like ineffective reproduction in one color (a common trouble with the church secretaries, who usually do all the reproduction), the word “church” was minimized in comparison to the word’s “Eagle’s View” and further obscured by the background bar. The logo did not show up this way in all its forms, but the issue was a common one.

So the first goal for me was to put the word “church” on an even playing field, but that leaves quite a mouthful to say. “EVC” was a sometimes-used nickname for the church, but the decision was made to promote it to full-time.

Another frustrating element was the apostrophe. This was used inconsistently on the web and in print, so the decision was made to remove it altogether. The use of a literal eagle was also quite common in the region, but I kept it as an option in case of an excellent idea.

Creative Development

The target market for EVC, as already discussed, is young families. The general member age is from 25-45, into which young families fit nicely. The recent explosion of suburban housing developments in the area is a boon for this growing congregation.

Although this information is highly useful in marketing campaigns, it also gives me some visual cues to take. I wanted the identity system to be friendly, but structured. A hand-scripted cursive for the icon, and a recognizable sans-serif give the logo that combination

Visually, the focus is giving the three words eagles, view and church, equal playing time. By making the new shorthand, EVC, into the icon, I could then reduce the current logo’s four elements, the swoosh, the eagle, the title (Eagle’s View) and the subtitle (Church) down to two: an icon featuring the nickname, and a title with the whole name. The use of EVC in the icon is essential to bringing the new shorthand into common use, especially since it will be used on its own in many cases.

New Logo

Branding Guide

The use of a guide is specifically useful to EVC. They have many different people reproducing the logo in various forms, and this can mean a variety of abuses. I developed a system by which users of the logo elements can steward its use with care.

Click here to view the EVC Branding Guide.

The response to the new logo has been excellent, and the accompanying branding guide has eliminated the issues the church was previously facing with logo variation and mis-use.

The new face of EVC is making itself known in Saginaw, Texas.

N.I.P.P.S

The National Identity & Publication Protection Service is an internal project designed to poke fun at government agencies / design firms that tend to defend the status quo. This was only one part of a larger ad campaign, but the mark we invented was pretty fun.

League of Heroes

If you’ve been to the Nickelfish website, you’ve seen the image of the staff as their superhero alter egos. We invented a logo to use with these characters, but it has yet to be utilized in its fullest form.

Bombadil Battalion

Shortly before I left, Nickelfish split their staff into three production teams, each with some sort of hilarious name. Our team name was Bombadil Battalion, after the famed Tom Bombadil of The Fellowship of the ring. A team logo was also charged, and I included the feathered cap, beer stein, and music note as symbols of our patron saint.

Blowing Minds Since 2002

This last project was simply a t-shirt design we developed for our own team. Internal stuff like this is usually a ton of fun, and every once and a while you have to work on something that distracts from the day-to-day.

However, every once and a while I see an artist whose work so blows me away that I simply must comment on it. Ladies and gentlemen: David Adrian Smith.

From his own site…

Dave Smith is a name that has become synonymous in sign-writing circles with high quality, hand crafted reverse glass signs and decorative mirrors. It is fair to say that now-a-days this is the main thrust of his work. There is, however, more to his story.

His career in sign-writing began in 1984, when he left Westlands School in Torquay, aged 16 and was apprenticed for 5 years with Gordon Farr & two associates. These gentleman were traditional sign-writers, who had come up through the ranks and Gordon, in particular had an almost uncanny ability to paint letters, accurately laid out, without even a preliminary sketch. Under their tutelage, Dave became an accomplished draftsman, accurate letter painter & talented pictorialist…

I first became aware of David A. Smith only a matter of weeks ago, when I saw a link of his work on the new John Mayer album art.

Here is one of him sketching the album art.

While I cannot post every image from his site that I would like, I can encourage you to go check out his work on his website. His process and quality are truly inspirational, and make me strive to produce better and better images. I do not know that I have ever felt so inadequate in my own design work as after watching this video.

On another note, I know I haven’t updated the portfolio area with new work in quite a while, but I hope to be remedying that soon. Many new projects have been taking place with The Brandit, and consume the vast majority of my design time. I’ll be sure to alert you when I do.

Graham Gibson, Jon Ho, Aaron Craig, David Chalk are musical group The Northern. This Manhattan rock and roll quartet of misplaced Texans releases their new album, The Shadowlands, on June 15th in NYC. If you are interested in going, check out their respective webbed sites for more information:

The Northern on Twitter: twitter.com/thenorthernnyc
The Northern on the Web: thenorthern.com/
The Northern on Facebook: facebook.com/TheNorthernMusic

On their blog you can see this new post about the logo. I had better get a shirt or something for this.

The Shadowlands releases on iTunes June 19th.

Throughout most concepts I wanted to retain either an element of “fun” or “film.” Catch the Moment provides their services at events, and records the special memories on film, so the intersection of the two is what I wanted to capture. (Hence the old Hollywood logo from the last post.)

The vintage movie theater sign above alluded to classic film, and the bright, fun color scheme below allowed for a little more flexibility.

At the end of the day, the client wanted a more contemporary approach than the vintage stylings I had through my early concepts. This “filmstrip” concept was a contender, but not a finalist.

And there you go: more interesting concepts left on the cutting room floor (pun very much intended.)

On the whole, strategy and concept decisions are more important to brand development than creative execution, but I wanted to show a step-by-step artistic review of my execution process as well. Here are the visual steps I used to create a “Catch the Moment” logo concept, which is pretty indicative of my normal logo design process.

Note: Catch the Moment did not choose this direction for their final logo. You can see the artwork they selected by visiting their website. Zaib Malik designed the final mark; I have referenced him before in this post.

92% (or so) of the time I will begin by sketching with pen on paper. If I’m in a rush, I sometimes don’t start on paper, but then I just end up wasting time on the computer for a few hours, and go back to paper anyway, wishing I had just started there. Maybe I should have learned my lesson by know. Anyway, here are some intial sketches.

Initial Sketches

After a few concepts, I settled on an old video camera as the image, and wanted to utilize a vintage Hollywood style.

Defining specific lines and forms is not as important to me in the sketching phase as figuring out how the whole image will work together. Composition, as well as general visual style, is really what I want to figure out while I’m in the sketching phase. This particular logo was really well described in the sketch phase, even more detailed than usual, so the next steps were relatively quick.

Shape out the Area

Note: Notice how in this phase I dropped the “button” that was on the left hand side of the circle. Often I will loose superfluous elements when going from sketch phase to illustration, but in this case I might have just forgotten about it. Oh well.

Do the lineart

Balance Elements / Text

Experiment with Colors

If I have a difficult time picking a color scheme, sometimes I will reduce the illustration to a greyscale version just to see where I want my darkest and lightest values. After I get this to work the way I like, I can easily explore schemes with the appropriate lightness and darkness.

Greyscale Version

Final Colors

All in all I am quite happy with how the final logo turned out. The colors and illustration style work together to create a fun, vintage tone. Although this particular brand would likely only exist online or in digital media, I felt compelled to create a couple simplified permutations of the logo in case of unexpected black and white printing from a desktop printer or similar situation.

Greyscale Variant

Single Color

Here is my old workspace, old chair in the foreground:

Nickelfish provides it’s employees with high-quality ergonomic chairs which are adjustable in more ways than one would care to know. This lies in stark contrast to my own $6 yard sale chair, and after less than one full workweek in it my lower back was beginning to pay the price. Not to mention that the chair and desk are both too short.

I have recently heard rumblings from friends and the internets alike about how standing desks are going to save the planet. While this might be a bit overstated, I did notice how much my sedentary, desk-hunching and car-driving lifestyle (totaling nearly 12 hours a day) affected my energy and overall fitness level (the latter gauged loosely by my endurance in intramural sports and weekly jogs). Let’s just say it affected it negatively.

I also began to experience a not insignificant level of back pain and soreness since switching work environments, and this appeared to be directly related to my bad working posture due to my desk/chair configuration.

Since I do not possess $500 to spend on a fancy chair, nor am I inclined to invest in a heavy-duty new desk that I will just have to move in a couple months (more on that later), I decided to disregard looks and go for a synthesis of functionality and frugality: build my own standing desk on top of my existing desk.

Step 1: Sketch

I used an ergonomic workspace planner to figure out the appropriate height for my keyboard and monitor and sketched from there. The original plan for the tabletops included some brackets and tabletops from Ikea, but I was doing this on a budget.

The goal was to build the desk for $50 or less, so pre-fab tabletops and fancy brackets were out of the question. My wife and I visited Home Depot to see if they offered a budget solution.

Step 2: Purchase Stuff

We discovered laminated pine boards pre-cut to the exact depths I needed for my new tabletops (who knew?). They were cheap and looked nice.

2×4 framing braces would provide more than enough support for my needs, so we picked up 12 to attach to the top and bottom of the middle shelf and then attach the entire construction to my existing Target desktop.

Home Depot has a rack of cheap 2x4s from which we culled our tabletop supports, and since I don’t own any power tools (aside from a borrowed electric drill) paid the 50 cents per cut to have them trim the boards and 2x4s to length.

Possibly because he was in a good mood the guy at the checkout didn’t charge me for the salvaged 2X4s or the cuts. Screws and a sanding block rounded out the purchases at a tidy $47.59.

Step 3: Sand

I did not finish these boards with stain or paint, but elected to sand the edges of my tabletops since I would be resting both my hands and computer equipment on it.

Step 4: Assemble

The first step was to remove the existing Target desktop from the frame, which primarily meant unscrewing the expanding bolts that keep cheap pressboard furniture together.

As I began to layout the structural elements and measure for the supports, I realized the Home Depot guys hadn’t trimmed my 2x4s exactly the same length. A quick run back to the store remedied the problem.

After assembling the desk elements together we had to affix it to the desktop. Quick Tip: use masking tape on laminate surfaces to make it easier to mark screwholes AND prevent the laminate from splitting when you drill into it.

My wife Olivia, who helped me build it, is here seen tightening the fasteners that will keep the whole thing on the frame. We also nailed the desk backing material back in place onto the desktop.

And there you go: a standing desk for $50.

After two weeks of use I am used to the perpetual standing, but the soles of my feet are noticeably sore after a long day. I will be purchasing a mat soon that I hope will relieve that issue. However, since switching I haven’t had a hint of back pain and my running endurance has increased. Coincidence? Possibly, but there is definitely something to not hunching over a desk 10 hours a day…

The nautical theme is clearly portrayed in the font choice, colors, background textures and iconography. Notice how we have four different elements from the name all combining to build the icon: the “O” of Anchor joins with an actual anchor, generating a life preserver out of the “O” and a cross out of the anchor.