Something for the Trekkies! Sorry - TrekkERS right? A small collection of some logos from the Star Trek univers. More to come. Enjoy.
Authors unknown. Only for personal use.
1 AI : 200 KB
Download
"Star Trek"
Something for the Trekkies! Sorry - TrekkERS right? A small collection of some logos from the Star Trek univers. More to come. Enjoy.
Authors unknown. Only for personal use.
1 AI : 200 KB
Download
Power to the People
"Power to the People" graphic.
Our national leadership on all levels needs a re-boot. Regardless of what political OS you operate under it's pretty clear that our national leadership on all platforms needs to be defragmented. They all seem to suffer from a lack of mental RAM?
A national system isn't re-installed from the top down it's facilitated by the users. So when I thought of the saying "Power to the People" it cached this graphic idea.
"Power to the People" t-shirts.
So think different and restart your own convictions in a day and age of Compromise.
- View / Order Black Shirt Here
- View / Order White Shirt Here
Seek and You Will Find
Street Level Logo Design.
How do you motivate a group of stiff necked suits, or a room full of cubicle zombies, or any other garden variety form of corporate drone? Well, if you're "Street Level Adventures" you design custom treasure hunts to facilitate corporate team building for some of the nations largest companies.
Cycloptic Man.
The purpose behind the adventures is to help a team focus and operate in a unified manner. Because of that I decided to create a humanoid character with an all-seeing eye. A graphic nod to "E Pluribus Unum" if you will.
The adventures are fun and creative so I wanted the mark to be playful as well. The typography is all hand lettered too to go with the style of the artwork.
Unused Logo Concept.
This design approach played off of a man hole cover concept. Once again I kept the aesthetic playful and hand lettered the design.
Unused Logo Concept.
This business designs all types of adventures in various genres so I decided to play off a cloak and dagger theme motif. I liked it but felt it pigeon holed the perception of what type of genre adventures they offered, so it wasn't used.
"Comic balloons"
Another small collection of vectorized comic bubbles. Think I've uploaded some before?!?
Whatever...enjoy.
Author unknown.
1 AI : 1,3 MB
Download
"Football set"
All you need is football? Here's some stuff for you.
Author unknown. Only for personal use.
1 AI : 2,4 MB
Download
Graphic Homicide
Another victim of bad design.
Rarely do I talk about local design issues. But recently an article in a local news paper about a logo design demonstrated a text book case of how design can go so very wrong.
In order for you the blog reader to fully understand the context in which I'll be critiquing this design, I encourage you to go read the short article here. Or if the news paper decides to remove it you can download a PDF of the article here.
Diagraming a graphic homicide.
Design Crime Notes
Overall: This is a bad design period the end. It's not "Kinda OK" or "Not that bad" it's a victim of bad design, a graphic homicide if you will.
There isn't a distinct graphic tone for this design. It's all over the stylistic map in such an incoherent manner that it's no surprise that a board DID facilitate it.
The lack of a distinct hierarchy in the design makes for a very schizophrenic end result as well. Everything is competing for attention, which kind of reflects the board approval process it's gone through as well I suppose. Various factions all playing art director trying to get their element integrated.
I think there is too many visual compenents to begin with, but if it's mandatory to include a mountain, fish, and flowers than spend the time to weave them together in a compelling well crafted manner. What you have here is at best a mishmash design, which again may just be a reflection of the board mentality?
But the blame cannot rest on the board alone. A designer has to play a proactive roll in any creative process, not be intimidated by a client and help steer a board in the right direction. So the problem is two fold IMO. No agency, just in house designers with very little leverage and a swarm of board members who fancy themselves as art directors.
A. Photographic Elements: These glorified web graphics are unnecessary saddle bags full of bad design chops. They've been fused onto an already poorly crafted motif like love handles on a middle aged balding board member. Sure, some might find them cute, but realistically they are just visual fat that impedes the design health.
B. Typography Choice: The choice of the Optima typeface adds to the visual tension since the font itself has been referred to as a centrist font trying to merge characteristics of serif and sans serif typefaces. The fact it's hay day was in the mid 1970's makes the mark look dated from the get go.
C. Clip-Art: Like water and oil this art doesn't swim with the rest of the graphics stylistically, thus repelling each other. The so-called native american inspired graphic looks like something a hack designer would pull from an Art Explosion CD. It feels like clip-art because it's poorly illustrated and executed.
D. Mountain: At first I didn't see a mountain. I saw a green shark getting ready to eat a black fish. The saw tooth graphic is another weak attempt at native american style, and instead it adds unnecessary complexity. The rendering of the mountain is lame as well and the graphic birth mark they inserted on it's interior will just look like a hickey at smaller sizes. Brilliant!
In Closing: It's only taken this board two years to get this design result. If government can't initiate a logo design, why do we think it can run health care? (I digress.) The board needs to stop playing art director, stop using hack designers, and hire a legit agency to produce a professional solution.
The eventual eye sore.
If any board member or local citizen reads this post I challenge you to encourage our local leadership to put out an RFP to local design firms and let us show you how the creative process can produce a well crafted and creative design solution for the water tower. It won't take two years and it'll look professional.
The following is an opinion piece I wrote and submitted to the local paper in response to the water tower logo story. I hope they run it, but I won't hold my breath.
50 Miles From Good Design
What separates good design from bad design? Apparently 50 miles.
One could argue that the Pacific Northwest is a design mecca when it comes to communication arts. Portland of all cities in Oregon understands and values good design. Just drive around the city and it's hard not to see examples of it everywhere you go. Because of this attention to design Portland is globally-renowned for it's design community.
When a graphic logo is needed local Portland leaders and businesses appropriately turn to the local design community and lean on professional agencies to create what they need and the end result is creative, well crafted, and this reflects positively on Portland as a whole.
Public transportation has a nice "TriMet" logo and when Portland developed a new premiere shopping center they turned to a local design firm and produced the "Bridgeport Village" logo.
But for some reason if you travel a mere 50 miles south the attitude towards design changes and you have a city like Keizer producing the antithesis in "Keizer Station." Don't get me wrong the shopping experience is fine, I'm speaking in regard to the aesthetic of their logo, the design is bad and doesn't reflect the quality of the shopping experience.
Like Portland, the Keizer and Salem community have many talented design agencies they could be calling upon to produce well crafted and creative professional solutions for their graphic needs. Instead however Keizer chooses to create a logo design for their latest water tower graphic without tapping any local agency. You can view it here.
If you compare the quality of this water tower logo with that of Portland's "Park Smart" logo, you'll see the difference between good and bad design produced on behalf of an Oregon city. Portland values it and Keizer leadership has no clue.
Why is it that Portland design trumps Keizer design?
Portland values design, there fore they value the designers producing it and depend upon them and their agencies to guide and facilitate the creative process.
Keizer on the other hand, didn't hire any agency and instead has taken two years of board meetings and a fragmented design process to create what they now have which is at best unprofessional and at worse will reflect poorly upon the city when it's plastered on a 200 ft. water tower.
The good news is this can all be easily corrected. Keizer and Salem like Portland can have the same high standards of design appreciation and benefit from it too. It just takes leadership who'll acknowledge their own lack of understanding when it comes to the design process and realize they need to stop playing art director and be wise leaders by hiring a local design agency to give Keizer and it's community what they deserve, good design.
Another Walking Portfolio
"Phoenix" custom tattoo design.
Bret St. Amour a fellow art school graduate and friend hired me to design this custom tattoo design for him. He'll be doing a road trip to Miami Ink to have the design applied.
"Phoenix" back tattoo.
Bret has fought and defeated cancer three times so he wanted something that represented freedom and had wings and I suggested a Phoenix. He loved the idea and loves his new design.
When I create custom tattoo designs I provide PDF Flash Sheets to my client that includes a thermograph ready version of the artwork to make transferring the design easier at the tattoo shop and thus ensuring a more precise replication of my art.
To see other custom designs I've created read my post "Walking Portfolios."
Molar Madness
Game graphics for "Ramp Champ."
My good buddies over at the The IconFactory have released another great app for iPhone and iPod Touch users called "Ramp Champ."
They hired me to create an add-on level which I named "Molar Madness."
You can check out more about this project on my primary design site here. Or head on over to the iTunes App Store and get more information.
I've had fun playing with it for a while now in beta and the final is even better, it's a blast!
The Saramond Quests
"Iron Dragons" book cover design.
A friend of mine by the name of Derek P. Gilbert is a multi-talented guy. He has done podcasting, worked as a rock music DJ on radio, hosting a FM talk radio show, a barber shop quartet member, seller of steel, and an author. He's like a utility player in baseball who can play any position he needs, to get the job done. And if that wasn't enough, he's also a really nice guy as well.
I finally got around to listening to his first audio book "Iron Dragons" about five months ago. I'll admit I'm not a huge fan of fantasy so that is why I put off getting into it for about a year. Well needless to say once I started listening to his book I was hooked, it's a compelling story with a nice twist and rich character development.
Since Derek has a voice for radio he also reads the book too, the fact it's FREE to anyone who wants to listen via Podiobooks.com is a no-brainer.
I was less impressed with the books cover however. I didn't think it did the story justice and felt the series needed to have a branded look established since this is "Book One of The Saramond Quests."
I had to tread lightly though, you see his wife Sharon designed the book cover and I didn't want to offend anyone, especially a friends better half.
Well, I never had to approach Derek because he beat me to it, and asked me to design a consistent brand for him. He's donated a lot of time sharing his work with everyone so I didn't mind sharing some of mine as well. If in the process I can help a friends work get the attention it deserves that is reward enough IMO.
"The Saramond Quests" brand logo.
Since these books will live online I kept the design streamlined. Each book will be branded with a new color but keep the same general format to create a branded coherent series. The first book is the crown jewel in the story arch so we settled on purple, this also had a lot to do with the fact that I negotiated a deal with one of the top fantasy artists in this genre Ciruelo Cabral. He gave us permission to use his dragon illustration on the cover. I was thrilled that he allowed us the privilege to use his art for this project, thank you Ciruelo!
Combine the incredible dragon art with a new branding for "The Saramond Quests" and we now have a firm visual foundation for future covers. Derek of course loves the new cover and I'll be helping him with his future covers as well.
"The Saramond Quests" brand logo.
I thought the iconic dragon looked pretty cool so I created a t-shirt design with it.
Derek has also just released another FREE audio book called "The God Conspiracy" which is in a totally different genre but once again another fun listen.
I didn't however design this latest cover, his wife did. Like Schultz on Hogan's Heros "I see nothing!"
Yoon Lee print
"Expansion II" by Yoon Lee (2009)
9"x27" archival pigment print in an edition of 30 (+2ap/+2pp)
this print, my second print (as proper printing), comes archivally framed in two variations --
ed. 1-15: glossy print face-mounted to plexi, mounted on 4ply museum board, with hidden cleate+spacer frame
ed. 16-30: matte print with uv lamination, mounted on aluminum, with hidden cleate+spacer frame
retail (archivally framed, as noted above) is $1200
available from the luggage store sometime soon
you can see a bigger image of Yoon's print here
my first print, with Tiffany Bozic, is discussed here
"Beer logos"
A little collection of german beer vector logos.
Author unknown. Only for personal use.
1 AI : 2 MB
Download
"Mixed sillhouettes"
A small collection of some vector sillhouettes.
Author unknown. Only for personal use.
1 AI : 1,2 MB
Download
The Designers of Summer
I love baseball. The sport, the history, the stats and even the analogies. I played it all the time growing up and during my summers in high school me and my friends would drive up to Seattle and hang out at the Kingdome all day collecting autographs, catching balls during batting practice and of course enjoying the game. (As much as one could enjoy it, because the Mariners really sucked back then)
I also collected baseball cards growing up. I had an awesome collection with hundreds of some of the best MLB all-stars from rookie all the way through to their retirement. Unfortunately after I graduated from art school it took me eight months to get my first job, the economy like now was pretty bad and I sold my collection to get some quick cash. (I still regret that decision)
In 1997 I accepted a job at Upper Deck Company as a senior designer in their baseball division. I worked at Upper Deck for three years and it was a great experience and I made some awesome friends I still keep in contact with to this day.
I was quickly blown away by how far trading cards had come since I was a collector. In fact you'll find the highest form of print technology in the trading card industry and they're always looking for next form of print tech they can integrate into cards.
The following is a grab bag sampling of a few of the hundreds of trading cards etc. I designed at Upper Deck.
1998 UD3™ card design.
The approach I took with this set was to make the card itself look like a high tech user interface. The design integrated a multitude of print technologies and I really liked how the whole set came out.
As in every industry however they're are always critics and the trading card industry is legion with them. One guy that goes by the name of "Bull Dog" made the following comment on the above design.
Maybe Bull Dog was right seeing as this card is worth a whopping quarter now?
Victory™ brand logo design.
I designed several brand logos for Upper Deck while I worked there and unfortunately Victory™ is one of them. I say that because I had exactly half a day to design a brand logo and at the end of that day we were going to meet with marketing and pick a direction for this new line of product.
Well, guess which one marketing loved. Yep, dumb move and all the other designers groaned knowing they'd have to work this beast into their designs. I got a lot of sarcastic feedback from my fellow creatives over that one and it was all well deserved too.
Victory™ brand card design.
The Victory™ brand by Upper Deck was like the Toyota Tercel of Upper Decks products. No frills, basic full-color printing and not much else. But I still tried to make the design as interesting as I could for the childhood collectors who this was targeted at. (Nevermind the hideous logo I cursed our department with)
Another Victory™ brand insert card.
When designing cards at Upper Deck we had access to a photo room that archived thousands of pictures of pro athletes. I could pull the slides and scan them for my specific design and to use in my final mechanicals. The photo guys would use my design as a guide to pick the remaining set of player photos, and production would use my digital files to set up the gang run of all the cards.
"A Piece of History" Babe Ruth bat card.
Upper Deck is the industry leader when it comes to sports collectibles, creating unique one of a kind products for very avid fans of professional sports. Not every fan can afford an original bat used by Babe Ruth however, so Upper Deck purchased one from Sotheby's and decided to share the wealth with collectors everywhere by putting pieces of the bat on trading cards.
They had me design the official branded card that would showcase this piece of history.
As much fun as this project was the absolute best part of it was being able to handle this bat myself and take a few swings with it. Knowing it was destined to be cut into pieces, I insisted we photograph it and use that image in the card design as well. One VP at Upper Deck liked my work so much he gave me one of the cards when it was finally produced.
1999 Upper Deck Encore insert card.
This image doesn't do this card justice. It has a nice rainbow foil substrate it was printed on along with silver foil stamping. This was one of my favorite insert cards I designed while working there IMO.
1999 Upper Deck Century insert card.
I was kind of like a roaming designer at Upper Deck, I'd work on MLB, NBA, NFL and in this case NHL product lines. I know nothing about hockey, but due to the popularity of the whole "Techno" vibe I had developed for the other sports we adapted it to the new set of hockey cards.
1999 Upper Deck Retro brand foil pack design.
Foil pack design was always a hit or miss form of printing. Sometimes the flexography came out nice and other times it looked like a retarded monkey printed it. This specific design worked well for flexo.
1998 Upper Deck bobblehead cards.
One friend I made at Upper Deck was a very talented lead designer named Wayne Wilcoxen. The guy is brilliant when it comes to paper engineering (Anything actually) and he figured out a production method that allowed a card to lay flat in the package but once opened could be assembled into a paper bobble head doll.
I helped in picking the photos and did all the illustrations for the various sports. If I had these growing up they would have been no-brainer bb gun targets. ;-P
1999 Upper Deck PowerDeck CD card designs.
Upper Deck has never been shy about trying new approaches to trading card collecting. These CD cards had short videos on them, audio, interactive menus, and stats. All though well intentioned this product was not very well received by the collecting community. Simply put they prefer paper products.
Now if Upper Deck could integrate a Harry Potter like interactive paper experience they may have something they could bank on.
1999 Upper Deck PowerDeck POP mobile design.
This picture makes it hard to determine the scale of this mobile but the pyramid part of it was about 14 inches square at the top. I was responsible for all the marketing pieces for this new product launch and when it bombed the marketing guy I was working with (One of the nicest marketing people I've ever worked with BTW) was fired.
It's been nearly a decade since I worked at Upper Deck but they are a client of mine now and I still create a variety of work for them and consider my former employer one of the best jobs I ever had.
I also collected baseball cards growing up. I had an awesome collection with hundreds of some of the best MLB all-stars from rookie all the way through to their retirement. Unfortunately after I graduated from art school it took me eight months to get my first job, the economy like now was pretty bad and I sold my collection to get some quick cash. (I still regret that decision)
In 1997 I accepted a job at Upper Deck Company as a senior designer in their baseball division. I worked at Upper Deck for three years and it was a great experience and I made some awesome friends I still keep in contact with to this day.
I was quickly blown away by how far trading cards had come since I was a collector. In fact you'll find the highest form of print technology in the trading card industry and they're always looking for next form of print tech they can integrate into cards.
Some of the technologies I designed for were:
- Printing full-color with multiple spot colors
- Metallic Inks
- Foil Stamping
- Embossing
- Die-Cutting
- Laser Cutting
- Holographic Foil and Imagery
- Custom Packaging and Paper Engineering
- Flexography
- Embroidery
The following is a grab bag sampling of a few of the hundreds of trading cards etc. I designed at Upper Deck.
1998 UD3™ card design.
The approach I took with this set was to make the card itself look like a high tech user interface. The design integrated a multitude of print technologies and I really liked how the whole set came out.
As in every industry however they're are always critics and the trading card industry is legion with them. One guy that goes by the name of "Bull Dog" made the following comment on the above design.
"This card set has everything but the kitchen sink. I hate it."
Maybe Bull Dog was right seeing as this card is worth a whopping quarter now?
Victory™ brand logo design.
I designed several brand logos for Upper Deck while I worked there and unfortunately Victory™ is one of them. I say that because I had exactly half a day to design a brand logo and at the end of that day we were going to meet with marketing and pick a direction for this new line of product.
I had done about 3-4 designs and put them up in the conference room along with other designers concepts and than at the last moment I stuck this one up. I didn't really like it that much but thought "One more won't hurt."
Well, guess which one marketing loved. Yep, dumb move and all the other designers groaned knowing they'd have to work this beast into their designs. I got a lot of sarcastic feedback from my fellow creatives over that one and it was all well deserved too.
Victory™ brand card design.
The Victory™ brand by Upper Deck was like the Toyota Tercel of Upper Decks products. No frills, basic full-color printing and not much else. But I still tried to make the design as interesting as I could for the childhood collectors who this was targeted at. (Nevermind the hideous logo I cursed our department with)
Another Victory™ brand insert card.
When designing cards at Upper Deck we had access to a photo room that archived thousands of pictures of pro athletes. I could pull the slides and scan them for my specific design and to use in my final mechanicals. The photo guys would use my design as a guide to pick the remaining set of player photos, and production would use my digital files to set up the gang run of all the cards.
"A Piece of History" Babe Ruth bat card.
Upper Deck is the industry leader when it comes to sports collectibles, creating unique one of a kind products for very avid fans of professional sports. Not every fan can afford an original bat used by Babe Ruth however, so Upper Deck purchased one from Sotheby's and decided to share the wealth with collectors everywhere by putting pieces of the bat on trading cards.
They had me design the official branded card that would showcase this piece of history.
As much fun as this project was the absolute best part of it was being able to handle this bat myself and take a few swings with it. Knowing it was destined to be cut into pieces, I insisted we photograph it and use that image in the card design as well. One VP at Upper Deck liked my work so much he gave me one of the cards when it was finally produced.
1999 Upper Deck Encore insert card.
This image doesn't do this card justice. It has a nice rainbow foil substrate it was printed on along with silver foil stamping. This was one of my favorite insert cards I designed while working there IMO.
1999 Upper Deck Century insert card.
I was kind of like a roaming designer at Upper Deck, I'd work on MLB, NBA, NFL and in this case NHL product lines. I know nothing about hockey, but due to the popularity of the whole "Techno" vibe I had developed for the other sports we adapted it to the new set of hockey cards.
1999 Upper Deck Retro brand foil pack design.
Foil pack design was always a hit or miss form of printing. Sometimes the flexography came out nice and other times it looked like a retarded monkey printed it. This specific design worked well for flexo.
1998 Upper Deck bobblehead cards.
One friend I made at Upper Deck was a very talented lead designer named Wayne Wilcoxen. The guy is brilliant when it comes to paper engineering (Anything actually) and he figured out a production method that allowed a card to lay flat in the package but once opened could be assembled into a paper bobble head doll.
I helped in picking the photos and did all the illustrations for the various sports. If I had these growing up they would have been no-brainer bb gun targets. ;-P
1999 Upper Deck PowerDeck CD card designs.
Upper Deck has never been shy about trying new approaches to trading card collecting. These CD cards had short videos on them, audio, interactive menus, and stats. All though well intentioned this product was not very well received by the collecting community. Simply put they prefer paper products.
Now if Upper Deck could integrate a Harry Potter like interactive paper experience they may have something they could bank on.
1999 Upper Deck PowerDeck POP mobile design.
This picture makes it hard to determine the scale of this mobile but the pyramid part of it was about 14 inches square at the top. I was responsible for all the marketing pieces for this new product launch and when it bombed the marketing guy I was working with (One of the nicest marketing people I've ever worked with BTW) was fired.
It's been nearly a decade since I worked at Upper Deck but they are a client of mine now and I still create a variety of work for them and consider my former employer one of the best jobs I ever had.
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