Design – Page 4 – Thoburn Design & Illustration

Refresh Winchester

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

Chicago Promo Poster

I recently posted the logo I created for the 2010 conference held in Chicago. Below is the promo poster I just wrapped up for display at this years conference.

Chicago promo poster 2010

2010 Chicago Logo

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.

twittercons

Just a couple of twitter icons I created. Right click on image and select “save link as” to download zip file that includes all PNG and two Photoshop files for easy customization. All for free . . . enjoy!

Ben Franklin’s Mini E

Ben Franklins Mini E

My second entry in the Mini E competition. (see previous post)

Bright Ideas

MiniSpace is hosting a design competition on their website in honor of the new Mini E, an all electric Mini Cooper. Hence the theme “electrified”. My entry is above. To check it out along with all of the other really great designs follow this link. While you’re there poke around the site a little. It’s really cool and a great place for Mini enthusiasts and artists of all kinds. It’s a great place to meet creative people and showcase talent.