Lure Beauty Logo Design

Recently finished up this logo for Lure Beauty (a fabulous natural beauty company right in my hometown!).  Oh my goodness, their "Bite Me" citrus scented lotions are all kinds of amazing. The logo is already being used on their Facebook page and some of their new labels, and will be on their new website coming up in the next few months. In the meantime, sign up for their mailing list and get 25% of your first order....it's so worth it, they have a ton of great products, many on sale!

Next up, new label design for them, I have been doing lots of research :) Can't wait to see the new look all put together.

TB Hagstoz Branding

 

I had a fantastic time at the Philly Social Venture Institute conference this past weekend! I met lots of great people and learned so much to improve my business. I handed out so many my business cards, I ran out.  It also made me realize I haven't updated this blog in awhile and I have several projects I wanted to share.....

Earlier this summer, I had the privelidge of working on branding materials for 114 year old jewelery supply company, TB Hagstoz. A few years ago, I had designed and painted a sign for the outside of their retail store, and they had been using the image as an unofficial logo, but didn't have any consistant branding.  

I modified the design to work as a business card, and had a group photo shoot at their store. I am not a photographer, but I can fake it when necessary ;)  The end result was a business card with each employee's name on the front and a photo of them on the back. They became a bit of a novelty item with their customers, who wanted to collect them like trading cards, lol.

Next, I designed a header for their website and also added photography to their site.

Here's the site BEFORE the facelift:

And AFTER:

Ahh, I love it when things match :)) 

Check out the rest of their site HERE

Effen Your Mojo Logo Design

 

Logo Design for a "Think Outside the Box" Wellness company launching this Fall!

Rooted Lanscaping Logo Design

 Wow, it's been so long since I posted to this blog, I almost forgot how to log in. But I am happy to say that I haven't posted in awhile because I got super busy with some big design projects at the end of 2012, including this logo for Rooted Landscaping. 

Below are some of the other concepts I presented them - they didn't want the design to fall too far from the tree :)  and I do love drawing trees. The last design is what eventually became the final shown above - though I was partial to my art nouveau option #2 - art nouveau always seems to find a way into my logo concepts...hmmm......

GO Bananas for Fair Trade Campaign

GO Bananas Facebook Timeline Photo

It was a few months in the making, but the Go Bananas For Fair Trade Campaign I worked so hard on is finally live! For this project, I got to design and illustrate the logo, spot illustrations and all the promotional materials: 16 page tool kit, banana cutout, Facebook & web banners, poster & Powerpoint template - whew!

It was nice to use BOTH my illustration AND design skills on this project, hopefully I can do more work like this in the future - I really love to draw and don't get to do it professionally as much as I'd like (though I am going to be changing this in the next few months!).

To start the project off, my first job was to create the logo

Go Bananas for Fair Trade Logo

Next, I drew some spot illustrations & borders to be used on the website and campaign materials. These were done in illustrator, because vector art is so incredibly clean & useful in this type of project.

I don't think I need to mention that this was my favorite part of the entire project, hehe.

The biggest part of the campaign pack was the 16 page, text -heavy "Toolkit".

                          (cover)                                    (interior page)

 Then some web & facebook banners

(ooh, look, animation! Super easy to do in Photoshop!)

(facebook timeline photo)

A Poster

........And powerpoint templates.

If you'd like to see the Toolkit (or anything else in its entirety) everything is available to download from the Resources section of the Go Bananas website.

Go BANANAS for FAIR TRADE : Logo Design

Here's a quick little update on the start of a new project I'm working on for Fair Trade Towns. I just designed this logo for their new Fair Trade Bananas program and I'm currently working on some fun spot illustrations (yeah!).  I will share them when the project officially launches next month.

Hooray for FAIR TRADE !!!

Maiga Milbourne Logo Design

Above is the the final color version of a logo I finished a few weeks ago. I am really starting to get this logo design process down to a science :) Setting limits on the number of edits, writing a design timeline before starting, and guiding the client throughout the process, is making every new logo I design go smoother than the last. I'm going to share some tips in a "what I've learned"  post very soon!

the first 3 logo ideas from client's suggestions:

 Sadly, my hand-drawn version came out a bit too "art nouveau" and was nixed early on (though it would make a FANTASTIC logo if Maiga ever decides to tour with the Allman Brothers, haha).

 final grayscale version ( You can see how it has changed a bit from the first comp):

COLOR!

A quickie hand-lettered flyer

A couple of weeks ago, I designed a flyer for a clothing swap I am hosting through Yogawood. I was proud of myself for completing the entire thing from start to finish in less than 90 minutes in between the end of work and the start of the House Industries lecture. Then, I went to the House Industries lecture, saw their hand lettering, and was immediately humbled. This is a good thing, because seeing amazing work makes me strive to be better on my own projects.

I'm going to share my process, because it's a good abridged version of how I would work on a bigger job.

1) START WITH A SKETCH:

Before I do any computer work, I always start with sketches, to work out any inner demons and organize my brain. These pre-sketches are ROUGH, and normally would never seen by anyone but myself. 

2) REFINE:

I have a general idea of how I want the title to look, but it needs to be worked out a bit, so I worked on some slightly different comps. I would usually do 4-6 pages of different ideas over the course of a few days, but again, this is a quick job so I focused on 1 concept.

3) ENLARGE & REFINE:

Okay, I've found a design that I like, but it's a teeny tiny 1 inch drawing, and I need it to fit on a 8.5 x 11 inch flyer, so I scan it into the computer, enlarge it, then print it out the size that I want. Except it's a grainy mess, so I need to work on it again. I would usually use tracing paper for this part, except I was at work, and had none. So in a pinch, I used the window as a giant light table, and it worked really well! I'm used black micron pens of various point size to trace over the drawing.

4) COMPUTER CLEAN-UP:

While my sketch is way better than it was, it's still a little messy, at this point I scan it back into the computer and fix any sloppy line work.

 

5) COLOR: 

I don't even started to think about color until I have the logo design down. You don't want to confuse yourself. At this point I have generally have an idea of some colors that I think would work well, but I'm open to suggestions. So I head over to colour lovers and do a palette search using a color or theme I'd like to see. I forget the exact term I used, but here are some potential palettes I liked.

I color all my projects digitally, and for logos I would normally vectorize & use Illustrator, but this is a fast job, so I keep it bitmap & colored in Photoshop .

6) TEXT LAYOUT:

I do this part using Photoshop, or inDesign, depending on the project. I use the guideline and paragraph alignment tools to make sure everything is laid out in a professional way.

Done, yeah!

SHAMELESS PLUG: If you are a woman & live nearby, please come to the swap on May 6th! Clothing Swaps are so much fun, and I promise you will leave with some awesome new finds. Also, it's FREE, just bring a canned food donation for the Food Bank of South Jersey.You can sign up on facebook here or on the yogawood special events page here so we have a general idea of how many people to expect!

House Industries Lecture

I was so psyched to attend the recent Philly AIGA House Industries lecture. I spent most of my college years lusting after the fonts in their beautifully designed catalogs, so it was incredibly amazing to see them in person. They are seriously the rockstars of type. (please excuse crappy photos taken by my cell phone in low light, they don't do their work justice!)

Rockstar poster design by House Industries for John Mayer!

The main focus of the lecture was to introduce their photo lettering service - PLINC. Instead of buying an entire font, you can now buy a custom "type setting" of up to 40 characters, (not including spaces) for just $7 (and potentially less if you sign up for a subscription to the service). Best of all, the type comes with few restrictions, meaning you can use it FOR ALMOST ANYTHING - making it perfect for logos, headlines, or where ever else you might need a unique font.

Below is a shot of PLINC in action:

 But wait, there's more! From now until April 15, you can download 3 type settings for FREE, using coupon code PHILLY (do I sound like an infomercial yet? ;)

For more information on how PLINC works, click here.  If I've already convinced you it's the greatest thing since Photoshop, then start using it now.

-If you are not already familiar with House Industries, prepare to be awed by their amazing work. And sign up for a catalog and some free fonts while your at it!

***UPDATE: Here are 2 quotes I made at work using my free type settings - (they will be sold as large wall decals at a national retailer this fall).

using "chicamakomiko"

using "whimsy"

My Pictures with Santa - Marketing Campaign

Wow, I think that must has been my longest lapse between updates, ever. But it's not that I haven't been busy, in fact, just the opposite....which is why I haven't posted :)

Last month I got to work with ProsDigital on a HUGE project - a logo, website, flyer, and multiple email blasts for Cherry Hill Photo (If you live in the South Jersey area and have taken your child to see Santa at the mall, then you have probably seen my work!). 

First, I designed a logo for their new website...

Next it was a brand new website, which enable customers to download a free digital  version of their Santa photo. I can't take credit for the structure of the site or the variable data programing, that was done by ProsDigital :) However I used a new program, Adobe Muse, to make the site a lot prettier. This was my first time using Adobe Muse and I like it so much better than Dreamweaver. The site is live at mypicturewithsanta.net, but you won't be able to view all the pages without a photo code.

Next up,  a flyer which is given out to all their customers when the get their Santa photos taken.

And finally, an email marketing campaign for when people order their online photos. There are several versions of this, depending if the customer has ordered their photos yet or not.

I have a few more projects I had also finished in the last month, but I will save them for the next post, I have some online Christmas shopping to do :)))

The Logo Process

Last week I finished a logo design for the fabulously talented photographer, Brittany Claire of 4littlemen& girlytwins fame (Okay, I admit it, I have been a huge fan & reader of her blog for nearly 3 years now, perhaps even obsessively checking for updates while I should be working, hehe). 

Here is the process I went through before getting a final design that she liked (she's an artist too, so she was picky :))

1. Brittany sent me links to several other logos & photography websites that she liked. This helps me get a good feel for the typography, style & colors she was most interested in. She also made some suggestions she'd like to see: a cool camera, use of {brackets}, and/or a flower. From these I came up with the following comps.

  

2. Next, she picked #1 as her favorite, but wanted a few tweaks, like: change the font, change the color scheme, and add brackets around "photography".  From these suggestions I came up with the next round of comps.

 3. Again, #1 was her favorite, but she wanted the flower colors and connecting flower stem of #2. So from this, I came up with..............

..............The Final!!!

And here is what it looks like as a watermark on one of her photos:

 Next up is working on her photography website, which she is updating in preparation for her Photography Road Trip tour this winter. Check out her site here to see the cities she will be appearing in and book your session!