My Very First Logo

Well, it's probably not my very first logo; I probably designed some others when I was in High School and before that (mostly for hand-crafted "magazines" and comics that my friend and I "published" - as in "made one copy on notebook paper"), but I didn't come across any of those sorting through a huge pile of business cards this afternoon.

This is a mockup of a label for a pretend beer product that was developed as the class project in a class on Advertising in the Wharton School of Business. I took this class to fulfill one of my elective requirements for my Electrical Engineering degree. So this makes it sometime in 1979 or 1980 or thereabouts.

The class was set up as an Advertising Agency and I was the head of the Creative Department. We also storyboarded a 1-minute commercial. I remember being part of the presentation to representatives from Annhauser-Bush. It wasn't anything like Mad Men.

Anatomy of a Logo

I have an assignment to help relaunch a business which includes a logo and beautifying a wordpress site. They will be offering holistic services, including health coaching, and an interesting program to work on one's self. I'll talk more about that in another post when the site's ready to launch.

In the meantime, the business name is Little Stone Bridge Pathworking and I decided that a literal treatment is needed for this logo. And that it needed to be hand-drawn, because I wanted it to look charming, hand-crafted with care, and personal, which embodies some of the emotions and values of the endeavor.

I started by searching stone bridge photos online. I roughed the bridge out with a pencil and then inked it in.

Then I scanned the drawing and manipulated it in Adobe Illustrator.

And then brought it into Photoshop to color it.

It's complex, but I really am pleased with the way this turned out.

Challenge 5: I'm Drawing a Blank

In this challenge, I had 60 minutes to design a 9x12 folder for a paint company as part of a rebranding effort. The folder must have 90% white space showing in the overall design.  What I have trouble with is calculating that 10% ink would look like. But I came up with this, produced in Adobe Illustrator:

If this were a real client and a real job, I'm sure it would go through several iterations before final approval. I find this particular challenge slightly amusing, since I just spent the last month working on a major rebranding effort at work, which included a 9x12 die cut folder.

This particular design uses a slightly modified paint brush icon from The Noun Project. I didn't spend time working up a company name or logo, using the paint brush as the de-facto company logo.  At some point, my portfolio will get redone and I'll post the "real" folder that was sent to the printers' last week.

Sorry for the gap in posting. Lots of overtime at work, to get the rebranded collateral finished for an upcoming trade show, plus college financial aid application deadlines (prompting the completion of 2011 taxes) kept me from doing anything for myself for a couple of weeks.