Glendale High Tennis Crest

Andy, my 17-year-old tennis prodigy, is playing his final year for Glendale High here in Springfield. As co-captain and graduating senior he gets to pick the team’s uniform and logo: That’s where I come in. Above is the crest Andy and I decided upon, featuring the school’s falcon mascot, crossed rackets and clenched balls (ha!), the founding date and the year of application.

Go Glendale! Go Andy!

UPDATE: I have replaced the art with correct school colors, Columbia Blue and red.

Spotted!

I stumbled upon the Booth Ranches Black Box I drafted In the produce department at the Price Cutter in Springfield, Missouri, while shopping for ingredients for leek soup. The box is cool. The soup was hot.

Finalist!

The little chap book for Sweet Street, How to Fulfill The Demands of the Art of Pastry Chefdom, has been chosen as one of fourteen finalist in Letterhead Font’s design competition. In the immortal words of Jimmy Wilson, "Look at me now!"

An Eternally Brief Post

Another quick post to announce the selection of another logo I drafted to be included in the upcoming LogoLounge Master Library series

Above is a logo concept I did for Larry Barnes at Eternal Screen Printing in Bakersfield back in 2002. LogoLounge and Rockport Publishers will include it in the book, Animals, Birds and Mythology.

Below is the final logo Larry picked:



Eternally cool.

A Cigar, Sweet Music & You

Less talk, more work.

This was done for Design Mark for the 17th Street Cigar Company in Bakersfield back in 2006.

That’s Marlin intern Jared Tomlinson.

Halogen

My pal Brian Williams, CD at Inspiration Networks, threw me a bone with an identity exploration for a documentary television network.

Halogen takes a faith-based approach to exploring real world issues without the all-too-common whitewashing or sappy storytelling many Christian programs trip over.

Up top are my favorite solutions to the problem. Below are sample pages for a Field Guide the network publishes to express the voice, tone and manner of the channel.

LogoLounge Master Series

A quick post to announce the selection of 6 logos I drafted to be included in the upcoming LogoLounge Master Library series.

The Master Library is a bit of a twist on the popular LogoLounge book series focusing on singular topics of reference including:
• Initials & Crests
• Typography
• People
• Animals, Birds and Mythology
• Shapes and Symbols
• Nature and Food
• Arts and Culture (including transportation, sports and architecture)

Here’s my work which LogoLounge and Rockport Publishers will include in the first book, Initials & Crests:

Separated at Birth

Is any idea really original? What’s old is new and what’s new is old?
I received an anonymous comment on my First Light post calling me to the carpet of unoriginality. The commenter pointed out a similar logo was created for another production company with a similar name and similar concept for an identity, Natural Light Films. Have I been called out?



The First Light Solution
Logo design, when it’s done well, seeks to create a visual play between the mark and the thing it represents. In my solution for First Light, I used a big door in the form of an ‘F’ revealing a crack of light for the movie production house. I wouldn’t say that a big ‘F’ by itself is compelling, nor is using light cascading from an open door original either. But the two together create an interesting representation of the specific nature of First Light:

“First Light can either be one of two things: 1. The big bang that brought you all to my blog, or 2. The first star a new telescope is trained upon. Either way, the metaphor is spot-on for what the production company is trying to do: Get young directors and writers funding to realize their digital movie making dreams.”

For a point of reference, and a look into the work done exploring the First Light problem, below are the options presented to the client:



The Natural Light Dimmer Switch
In the case of Natural Light the open door revealing a natural light source makes sense, but only in the literal form, and by itself, doesn’t create an ownable metaphor for the production company. On the Natural Light site there’s a brief statement outlining the mission of Natural Light:

“NATURAL LIGHT FILMS specializes in true to light documentary and television series production. We create programs that entertain, educate, motivate and involve each viewer as a participant in the lives and stories of each subject.”

So what do they mean by “True to Light?” I suppose it could be interpreted as presenting something as it is, or it could be faith-based. Whatever the reason, using an open door to represent the idea of “True to Light” simply isn’t unique. A quick search for ‘door’ and ‘light’ over at LogoLounge demonstrates the open door solution is a popular one:



What about my open door solution?
Clichés can be good, but most often they’re bad, occupying that place along the road where pedestrian design resides. Good logo design often employs clichés to build a familiar link between an audience and a company, but the best clichés are those with an unexpected or clever twist.

So, the bell has rung and the gloves have come off: The open door for Natural Light is a bit of a bore. It’s rendered well enough and it does make sense, but the ambitious contender simply sits in its corner hoping for another chance at the title. But really? With a glass jaw, and an open door to an alley littered with tired ideas, did the First Light logo ever have a shot, all the while lacking the heart of a champ?

Faviconation

For quite some time, I have been fascinated with those little jewels up top in the URL address bar of our browsers to the cybernet. I think of them as a virtual lapel pin. Kind of like wearing a U.S. flag or Rotarian pin further stating the wearer’s allegiances.

Favicons are very much in vogue and seem to be a hallmark of better designed sites. Weighing in at 16 pixels square, getting the little icons to communicate the essence of the corresponding site isn’t always successful. Click the favicon collection above to see a downloadable mini-poster of favicons I like.

The solution that works well for this blog is right up there in the address line. The circular indent makes a nice pointer to the URL. It’s simple, it’s bold, and it relates to the identity of this blog.

Getting a favicon to work for your site is a snap:

1. Design your favicon (or download a free one)
2. Save it as an .ico file. (There is a Photoshop plugin to save your file in the right format, there is a site you can upload your art to that will save it properly, or you can try the favicon.ico Generator site to design and download your icon.)
3. Drop it into the root folder where your website resides and refresh your browser to see it work.

If you want to attach your favicon to a blog, here are links that explain how popular blogging sites accomplish this:

Blogger
Wordpress
Typepad
MovableType

Still not sold on the value of a favicon, take the advice of my wife, “It’s good for everyone to have a favicon.”

Fonstruct: The Democratization of Type

Online tools are becoming more ubiquitous, but more importantly, quite useful. FontShop has teamed up with Rob Meek (über type geek) and created an online font building application.

FontStruct makes designing, downloading and sharing fonts a snap. Simply choose different block shapes and grid sizes to build out all the glyphs commonly found in commercially produced fonts.



My first stab at a font using the tool is Madeline (today was her birthday!). The font is a contemporary digital sans serif display font. There are 98 glyphs including numerals, punctuation and lowercase letters.

Click here to download Madeline.

Madeline in use:

Mack? John Mack? Copy that.

Longtime ad man, creative director, agency principal and veteran wordsmith, John Mack wanted a simple portfolio site. So I helped out. Along the way I thought a simple expressive mark that reflected his sensibilites and style would help ground the site. Above is the result of the effort.

John Mack also wears really cool shirts.

First Light Logo

Mr. Tom Russell had his lovely wife (and my longtime friend) Courtney (Schieber) Russell enlisted me to work a mark up for a startup movie production company, First Light Productions.

Tom, professor of cinematography at Brigham Young University, filmmaker, and ex-ad exec, is an absolute riot. As evidence, checkout Napolean Dynomite. I swear, on all that is good and right in the world, that when I saw the movie I turned to my wife in the musty darkness of a dollar theater in Bako and whispered, “Holy guacamolé! That has to be directed by Tom.” I was close. Some of his students put the cult classic together, but Tom's influence was impossible to miss.

Tom, if he were Hawkeye Pierce, would have as his Trapper John McIntyre role filled by Bill Nelson. The two, along with cousin Steve Gabbitas, have worked on a gagillion projects over the years with the full-length dramatic comedy, Mr. Dungbettle as their fractured-family jewel.

First Light can either be one of two things: 1. The big bang that brought you all to my blog, or 2. The first star a new telescope is trained upon. Either way, the metaphor is spot-on for what the production company is trying to do: Get young directors and writers funding to realize their digital movie making dreams.

Tom, Courtney (Bill and Steve), you light up my life.

Bakersfield Jazz Festival Poster

Boom. In your face.

For ever and ever and ever I have done posters for the Bakersfield Jazz Festival on and off and on and off and now on again. Mark Ramsey is the A.D. on the gig and enlists my help to get a poster together every couple of years.

This year, Mark wanted to see something with silhouettes and a big splash of color—something to compliment the atmosphere the springtime event puts out. Marrying up the illustration with some expressive type, the poster is a departure from the past post-these-bills we've knocked out before.

Soccer Clubbing

Young Ben owns the soccer pitch.

My youngest son, Ben (Bubba), is an anomaly. I have done fairly well in sports, but I always had to work at it. Ben on the other hand is a natural. He plays on two soccer teams, one through the YMCA and the second is a competitive club team under the monicker of Magic Soccer.

Both teams have been without a proper logo, with the Y team using the provided t-shirts and the Magic Soccer team sporting cheap uniforms from South America. So it was time to get them branded properly.

The Cones, coached by Ben’s uncle Jon Timson, was named by Ben’s cousin George due to the brilliant orange of the Y shirts they wore during their undefeated season.

Magic Soccer is coached by Jonathan Marquez who is a fantastic, supportive leader for the U11 boys. Growing up between Missouri, San Diego and Venezuela, Jonathan’s coaching style has created an unstoppable force to be reckoned with.

We are Magic!

Booth Bear Label

Booth Ranches, a citrus grower in Orange Cove, California, was founded by the great-grandson of Times Mirror founder Harrison Gray Otis’s namesake, Otis Booth

Ranked number 181 by The Forbes 400, Mr. Booth leaves the day-to-day operations to his daughter Loren. She stumbled into my studio on a referral by interior designer Napier Hill, where we began working to develop the Booth brand.

The Otis Orchards label uses a variation of the iconic California Grizzly Bear from the state’s flag standing sentinel over the fruit of their labor. The bold graphic was designed to pay homage to the Booth family’s long history with Los Angeles and the Golden State.

L-Bird

“It's hard…to believe such a small airplane could cause so much chaos, death and destruction. But it did. It's even harder to understand how such a remarkable story could go untold for half a century.” L-Bird, The Little Plane That Did.

Emmy award winning director Brian Shipman spent nearly a decade producing L-Bird, The Little Plane That Did. Shipman chronicles the untold story of a single-engine tail dragger and the role it played for Allied success.

Brian Shipman’s sister-in-law Katy Kirkman was an assistant account executive at Marlin and knew from working in the business that her sister’s husband needed help. Shipman had already taken the DVD jacket design down the road with another artist but wasn’t happy. And no wonder: It didn’t inspire curiosity or desire to see the film. In fact, it would have only appealed to L-Birders and hardcore propeller heads.

Shipman and I thought of our favorite war flics and observed themes that reflected the content of the films. The obvious solution was to take the star of the movie and make it the star of the case. The plane is flying low onto a field of battle at sunrise reflecting the drama and reality of the L-Bird’s wartime contributions.

After I completed the DVD cover I also designed a website to help generate buzz for the project.

Working on the L-Bird jacket design gave me a glimpse into a small fragment of the big story that was World War II. Shipman sums it up well:

“At the start of World War II many officers thought the little planes were a joke. But before the war was half over field officers wouldn't go anywhere without them. Using L birds as spotters the US Army was able to place it's artillery with pinpoint accuracy. Anything that moved under the watchful eye of an L bird Pilot was immediately blown away. A remarkable landing device was developed so the planes could be used at sea on transport ships. With the Brodie System planes could land, refuel and take off again without their wheels ever touching the ground! This documentary reveals the only film in existence of the Brodie System and the incredible story of the men who flew these cloth covered planes into battle.”

Despite the terrible subtitle to the movie, “The Little Plane That Did”, the cover is a great lead-in to a story worth telling, and one that shouldn’t be forgotten.

The Amazing Chow

Sally Selby and I worked for The Bakersfield Californian for 7 years together (she much longer), and over the course of that time developed a great working realtionship. After I left, she just couldn’t bear it and soon became director of marketing for Klein, DeNatale, Goldner, Cooper, Rosenlieb & Kimball, LLP (whew!). KDG has been a client of mine for a number of years and I had the opportunity to not only work with Sally, but also the office manager, Sam Chow.

Eventually Sam headed to Chevron, so, in an effort to send him packing, KDG charged me to design a farewell poster for the soon-to-be defunct HR guy and firm nanny.

I was given quite a bit of latitude to portray Sam’s time with the firm. So I played up his reputation as being able to work ‘magic’ on any firm problem. ‘The Amazing Chow’ became the alias of which the going away party (or wake) would center. Using photographs, period reference, and a bit of time while I was in my last year at Syracuse, the ’Amazing Chow’ poster appeared out of thin air (yep, just like magic).

Buck Owens American Music Foundation Logo

My first real job as a graphic Designer was with The Bakersfield Californian under Glenn Hammett. We were both Cal Poly grads (which helped me land the job) as was another designer in town Mark Ramsey.

Glenn introduced me to Mark shortly after I started and since 1993 we have collaborated on hundreds of projects.

Back in November 0f '06 Mark asked for some logo ideas for the Buck Owens American Music Foundation, a foundation established after the Country music legend's death in 2006.

The idea was simple: Incorporate the iconic red, white and blue guitar into a logo that captures both the music and personality of Buck Owens.

Owens Corning Project Score Poster

Syracuse classmate Laura Britain runs a design firm in Hickory North Carolina and needed a series of posters created for Owens Corning. The posters are to announce the introduction of a new company-wide computer system from SAP. The illustration will depict a mid-century modernist train approaching the viewer over a series of three prints.

The project is ongoing. The next step is to photograph a train at Grant Beach Park for reference. It's been difficult getting the progression right as demonstrated below:



The typography is designed to reflect type treatments from the era. The trick is to avoid the typical cliché type choices so often seen in modern period pieces.