Jumping Duck Records/Time Flies CD Cover

My friend Nathan TR Shaw asked if I could help him with his CD cover and record label. He wanted the best possible presentation possible for the release of his first album. I've always wanted to work on an album cover, so naturally, I accepted.

He and his wife already had a good vision and photos they wanted to use for the cover, so it was just a matter of pairing the right type to match the personality of the music and that fit it in the cover artwork (photos from their trip to Guatemala). I had a few choices for him and he chose Quicksand, a nice serif font with clean lines and smooth corners for a more approachable and friendly feel. Once the type was approved, I converted the CD cover to a banner to be used on his website.

Now for the hard part. He needed a logo for his record label, Jumping Duck Records. As far as I know, ducks don't jump. So how in the world to convey the concept? He didn't want anything cartoony either. So I ran through a few options. Maybe the "jumping" was the thumping of the music, so the duck could have headphones. The duck in a standing position in the center of the record.

After trying many variations and none of them quite working, I set it aside for a bit. When I came back to the project and did some more research, I found an fantastic shot of a duck taking off. While not jumping exactly, it might convey the idea a bit better. So I used the photo as reference and how had the image of a Duck "jumping", but it still wasn't quite working with the type. So I got some input from my friend and then did some more placement options until I found the right combination. But something still wasn't quite right...so I decided to adjust the letters: some above the baseline, some below to also convey the "jumping" aspect. This did the trick, the logo now had that dynamic quality it had been missing!

My friend and his wife were pleased with the results and hopefully, he will sell a lot of CDs. You can buy a copy of the finished CD starting today at his website: nathantrshaw.com

Custom Fit Construction Logo

This was my first-ever barter project. My friend started his own construction business, Custom Fit Construction after being downsized in the economic downturn. He and his wife had developed a tagline and had a starter logo to get them off the ground, but wanted something a bit more clean and crisp as he expands his business and looks for a larger customer base.

I happened to need a new patio, so we worked out an agreement and work began just as the weather turned cold at the end of 2010. Alas, my long-desired patio would have to wait until Spring, but that's okay, I could still work on the logo in the meantime...

The original concept for his logo was "Solving Your Remodeling Puzzles" and they wanted to stick with that, so I used that as my basis and went to work and developed four concepts. I mocked up the logo in a business card format to help the client visualize the final outcome and help speed up development time.

Version A: standard "wood" version to imply the basis of nearly all construction. Cliché, but hey, gotta get it out of your system, plus you can't go wrong with an awesome background texture:

Version B: I kept the wood texture (from my friend Von's book: Crumble. Crackle. Burn. Great resource for any designer!) and added a puzzle element in keeping with the company's tagline:

Version C: I custom fit each letter of the words "Custom Fit Construction" together like puzzle pieces:

Version D: I developed a more puzzle look for the logo while keeping the type clean and crisp. For the background I took photos of wood, concrete, brick, floor tile and gravel all around my house one sunny Saturday in November:

My friends really liked version D, but wanted it to be a bit cleaner looking so I made the the background white and changed the type to the green from version C to reflect that he does do green construction too.

I reworked the textures a bit for the final version as seen here:

So far my friend really likes the new logo and looks forward to implementing it across all media.

Wedding Invites for Sarah & Jon

Wow, it's been a busy year for me. So busy that I forgot to post several cool projects that I completed this year. Here's one of them...

I met Sarah through mutual friends a few years ago. She is a bright, bubbly, enthusiastic person. We both share a love of creativity and her energy really inspires me.I had known her for a few years when she met Jon. He is a bit quieter than Sarah, but he is a great guy, funny and fun to be with. They make a great couple, and I was honored when they asked me to design their wedding invitations and save the date cards.

I was a bit nervous, as this was my first ever wedding invitation, so I wanted to be sure I got it just right. I started my usual process of meeting with the bridge and groom to discuss the color palette for the wedding as well as to determine what theirpersonal tastes were. Once I had a better of idea of what their expectations were, I got to work doing research and sketches. Ialso started looking through my library of type to see which one would work best for the invitations.

Here's a look at a page of sketches....

As I was sketching, I doodled out a fancy "S" and "J" to represent the bridge and groom...

As I moved on to the digital mockups, I brought the cute little flowers and the fancy monograms with me. I wanted everything I did to be handmade by me so I all sketched everything by hand and then retraced each element with my Wacom tablet into Illustrator.

Here are the individual monograms...

And here are 2 unused concepts for the inviations...

After developing a few concepts for review by Sarah and Jon, I took their feedback and went back for another round. They really wanted to keep the invitations simple yet elegant. So I removed the floral elements and stuck with just the monograms joined together to symbolize their union as a couple. We also met with my fabulous friend and all around awesome person, Annie, who owns a local upscale stationery store, The Envelope. The couple chose a sparkly champagne paper with a darker navy-esque blue to back up the invitations. Annie suggested envelope liners to add a touch of elegance to the envelopes. To save on costs, I hand assembled the envelope liners and invitations. Thankfully, there were only 90 invitations to produce!

For the save the date cards, I designed the layout and per the couple's request, we had them printed at our local photo lab (which seems to be the trend these days) so they could send them out as their holiday cards/save the date cards. The final save the date cards printed on photo paper at our local photo lab and mailed by the future bride and groom...

And the final invitations and reply cards...

The couple informs me that they still get raves on their invitations to this day (as of this writing, almost 4 months after their wedding). They were extremely pleased with how the invitations turned out. While I was nervous when I first started on this project, I was also pleased with the results. And like any good designer, I was happy that the client was happy with the end product. It is a great feeling knowing that I could use my design skills to help make my friends' special day even more special.

You Get What You Pay For: Logo Edition

The folks over at R29 decided to host their own "logo Olympics" to see how 4 inexpensive online logo design sites would perform on a side-by-side comparison. It's a long read, but well worth your time.

I Love My Job!

Being an in-house designer, I get a huge variety of design related tasks: everything from boring forms to photography to design, to a bit of Flash and everything in between. Some days, the job just rocks, though, and today was one of those days!

I was tasked with developing food allergen icons for our redesigned website. There are eight major food allergens are: milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, nuts, peanuts, soy, and wheat.

I wanted something simple that would read well super small (we'd use them in print too), but would convey the meaning quickly. I wanted to use the letters if possible, as I felt that would give me the result I desired. But just doing the letters by themselves didn't seem like it would be the answer. So I did a bit of research and soon it struck me that I could use the asterisk in the icon! Asterisks are commonly associated with notes, warnings or other info.

I originally wanted to put the letter inside the icon, but that just didn't read well at all, so I ended up put them side by side. And as soon as I did that, I just knew it was the answer. My face lit up and I was giddy as little kid again. This is what design is about: finding that one simple yet elegant solution that does its job and looks awesome. Today was a perfect day for design and this is what I live for!

Feel free to share why you love your job and/or the great projects/jobs you've had where you really felt in the at the top of your game.

Here's how the icons turned out (click to view the entire image):