I just received word that a logo I created for the NTU will be published in LogoLounge book 8. This is a juried competition featuring hundreds of thousands of logos. This makes the fourth logo I’ve designed to make it into their collection of books. Below is the chosen logo which was used as temporary tattoos.
The books will be published, and available for purchase, in the spring of 2014.
I received a call from an ad agency in Dallas asking me if I’d be interested in taking on a logo project. After I agreed, they informed me that I was one of a couple different artists selected to work on a new logo for Borden. Borden, founded in 1857, is one of the top ten largest companies in America. They were considering updating their logo and were especially interested in my silhouette style logos, specifically, the Mechanics Program. Elsie, the company’s mascot has been through numerous revisions over the years.
The first thing I set out to do was simplify Elsie’s face. I tried two completely new ideas, opting for a head-on view and a third based off their current three-quarter view.
They felt the first two deviated too far from the original, whereas the third version was closer to what they were looking for. I added in some very simple daisies, and experimented with how it would work reversed on a solid background.
With the head completed, I moved on to Elsie’s body. As you can see from the samples through the years, Elsis’s never had a full body. I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to experiment with the idea of giving her one. So I played around with several different poses.
All were very well-received, but they were only interested in proceeding with the fourth, less anamorphic sample. This time they wanted it even simpler. They instructed me to completely strip the details in the face, and all the shading. I provided one final sample before the project came to a halt (the colors were randomly chosen to show contrast).
The client ultimately rejected the idea to revise their logo, and decided to stay with their current one. If you’re interested, Chris Whetzel (another artist selected to work on this project), has a similar blog post on his creative process. I really loved his interpretation, it’s a very nice update.
I was pretty excited when a local charity approached me to create their logo. Here’s a description I was given from their materials:
The Souper Natural Kitchen was created to raise money to purchase fresh, local whole food to those in need in the community. Through a series of monthly SouperTuesday “soup” dinners, the community will have an opportunity to provide its financial support to those in need, get a terrific meal, a cooking class and connect with our local farmers.
The challenge they presented me with was to blend farm, fresh, soup and charity all into one logo. Below are just a few of the initial sketches.
The client immediately fell in love with vegetable soup bowl (far right). Rather than create my usual smooth, streamlined logo which I’m partial too, I felt that this would look best if it retained it’s sketchy natural (organic) appearance. So I had to transform the clean smooth lines I had created in illustrator, into chunky, sketchy grungy ones.
This was done using Illustrator’s “roughen” filter under Effect -> Distort & Transform. The size was set to almost nothing (.3) while the detail was set to 100%. Once I was happy with the results, it was time to apply some color. This time I didn’t want to do it in Photoshop. I wanted this logo to look sketched and watercolored, but to be completely vector. So I added strokes inside of each element and applied a watercolor brush to each one.
Once I was happy with the final results, I added in the text, applying the same technique used on the lines of the bowl. I started with a typewriter font, and roughened it up a bit.
The bowl was placed on top, and a checkered pattered was added around “kitchen” for the final, completed logo (below).
Just in case you’re wondering, yes, with a name like that I had draw up a few sketches just for fun.
I’ve always been a huge fan of M.C. Escher. I assume that most people are and share great respect for the man and his work. When I was asked to create a logo for Gravity, I drew from Escher for inspiration. Among several sketches I did, one included Escher’s “impossible triangle”.
I rotated the triangle so that it was upside down, rounded all the corners, then “broke” the top bar apart, and added another bar to form the letter “G”. This was all done in Illustrator based off of my sketch.
After the outline was completed, I added solid gray and applied gradient overlays to each section which helped to add more depth and dimension. Once completed in Illustrator I opened it in Photoshop to apply a brushed metal look. Noise was added, followed by a motion blur to each individual section in the correct direction. For the rounded corners separate radial blurs were applied, and layer masks were added to hide what was not needed.
After all the corners were done, color was then applied and a shadow was added under it. Below are examples of how it’s being used.
or, how many clichéd Florida icons can you squeeze into one word? When I was asked to create a logotype for a convention to be held in Orlando Florida next year, I wasn’t sure where to start. I had sketched out several different ideas that I kind of liked.
But there was one idea I kept coming back to. I had tried to avoid it because of the clichéd nature of it. I decided to give it a shot, after the first round concepts were rejected. After living in Orlando for almost a decade, I know first hand that it’s an inspiring city with lots of fun and entertaining elements to choose from. I wanted to capture the fun and excitement of the city but wasn’t sure which element to settle on, so I just decided to throw a different one in for each letter.
This concept unitized the different entertainment themed elements forming lower-case letters. I was most concerned about the readability of the “r”. With it being inside the “o” I was afraid people wouldn’t see it as a letter.
Once completed in Illustrator, I added a splash around the dolphin to emphasize the “r”. Even though I was very happy with the final result the client rejected it due to poor readability. When tested, people thought it read “Atlanta”. I still don’t see it, but if you’re reading this and you’re with the Convention Center and Visitor’s Bureau of Atlanta, this bad boy is available if you’re interested . . . of course, I’m only kidding. I wasn’t ready to completely give up on this concept, so I decided to change from lower-case to upper-case letters.
I scrapped the idea of using the dolphin as the “r”, but I couldn’t have the hoop without him so I moved Flipper to the top left and kept the splash. Now he was jumping more into the “o” as opposed to out of it. A flamingo would now form the letter r. With all the elements in place, I dropped black letters in behind the illustrations and placed it back on the blue field. This helped to make everything pop and poor readability was no longer an issue. This version received final approval.
Here’s some close-ups of the different elements.
Here’s the logo in use on a promo poster.
