Thoburn Design & Illustration

Like many high school kids, I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do after graduation. One of my best friends was headed for the Marines, and I thought, the Marines are cool, and I like their logo. (I once chose a school to attend based solely on it’s logo & mascot. That didn’t work out well either). I told my buddy that I might be interested in joining up with him, and he signed me up for a weekend boot camp for high school graduates considering a career in the military. Have you seen my resumé? Yeah, there’s no military service record on there. That little weekend getaway convinced me (rather quickly) that I was not cut out for it. I decided instead to draw pictures. However, the affinity for the Marines still remained and 20 years later our paths crossed once again. I got a call from Gannon Beck, an amazing illustrator and founder of Oo-Rah.com, a community that gives Marines a place to reestablish themselves with, and remain part of the Marine Corps community. He had seen my “Dont Tread On Me” poster and asked if I would be interested  in designing another version for t shirts. I was sketching before we even hung up!

Rather than trying to redesign the exact image of the coiled snake on the Gadsden Flag, I decided to take the three coils and re-imagine them. I did a version from the side and two different concepts head on. Since the audience is the Marine Corps I decided to wrap the snake around the Marine’s famous sword. The “banner” design was ultimately chosen and is slated for t-shirts as well as challenge coins.

I was absolutely thrilled when I found out that Refresh was coming to Winchester. I had previously been driving in to D.C. So you can only imagine how excited I was when asked to design the logo for it. For those not familiar with the area, Winchester is located at the northern most tip of Virginia. At only 15 miles from the West Virginia line, it’s the gateway to the Shenandoah valley in Virginia. It’s also well known for apples They grow in abundance here. Whitehouse Foods (the apple sauce company) is headquartered here and every spring Winchester hosts the Apple Blossom Festival. So it was no surprise that an apple had to be a part of the concept. The instructions I received stated that the refresh logo must contain the word “Refresh” along with the city name, and the refresh icon.

The hardest part of designing the logo using the apple theme, was trying to set it a part from Apple. While working on the logo I kept wondering if audiences, not familiar with refresh would think this was only geared towards apple users. I have no idea if this played into the decision to scrap these initial concepts by the client. While they were well received, the client was a bit leery of using the apple, and even seemed to think twice about centering the logo around it.

Round two saw the apple pared down to only a slice. These concepts were overwhelmingly well received as it negated the apple concerns and looked like it belonged among the other Refresh chapters. However there was the issue of the refresh “icon”. Since they were happy with the apple slices as they were, adding the icon to them was not an option. So, I decided to play with the text. I choose “Rezland” for the main font because of it’s clean, round, modern feel. The “E’s” made perfect circles, so I chopped the diagonal line and added arrows to form the refresh icon. Another clean san-serif font, “Engravers Gothic” was chosen for the secondary font on the city name. I pulled in the red from the apple and left the “e-icons” black.

The final apple slice was decided upon with one minor tweak; loose the shadow. With that change made, the new text was added and the logo was complete. You can see the final logo in action here: www.refreshwinchester.org

When I approached the design for the 2010 Leaders Conference host city logo, I knew almost immediately that I wanted to work Chicago’s unique skyline into it. After several failed, “Frankenstein-esque” attempts, I decided to form the letters from the negative space created between the buildings. This worked really well for the “H, I and A” since they have straight or angled lines, however the “C’s G and O” posed a problem. Adding depth and detail to the buildings allowed me to tie those into the curved forms of those letters, with the exception of the “O” which was left hanging out on the end. I decided the best option to tie it in with the rest of the logo was to “link” it with the “G”. I went with a cold color scheme to match the city skyscrapers and added a touch of “grit” and shading.

I’ve long been a fan of high contrasting black and white design. When done properly they can create an optical illusion of sorts as our minds begin to fill in what’s “missing”. They’re stark, bold and make the statement: “I will not be ignored”. Add in a splash of red and you’ve got a guaranteed captive audience. Recently, I was asked to design a logo similar in style to the Oceans Eleven poster. While researching, I noticed this tried-and-true formula has been used for years in designing movie posters. Below are some of my favorite examples. Feel free to add any suggestions I may have missed!

Amazing poster, for an amazing film!

I love the way this “updated” version plays off the original but using simple “cut outs”.

Not the official movie poster, but I loved how it tied all of the Bond movies together using the iconic swirled circle “eye” and silhouette of 007.

Love the hint of red on the small red rose.

Ok, not red, but in the same family.

Quite possibly the best example of them all.

Frank Miller is a master artist and storyteller, and his masterpiece is Sin City. I would race to my local comic store to pick up the next issue. I couldn’t take my eyes off his artwork. The movie was a nice homage to his work.

Every year I create an invitation for a non-profit organization’s national conference (not spec work). The invitation is typically 16-20 pages, 8.5×14 saddle stitched. It includes the typical conference stuff, like a brief write up on the host city or state, event schedule(s), guest speakers, registration forms and special sessions. Each of these special sessions require a logo of sorts. Below are three of logos I created as well one for the host state, Colorado.