Bad Wrap

My type mentor, Bob Trogman (drtype.wordpress.com), told me there are 3 rules to typography: legibility, legibility and legibility. I came across this logo, and while I think it is eye catching, the word "Wrap," in my opinion, is hard to read. I reset it using Rapier. It is not quite as edgy, but gets the job done.

Diamond 4 Realty

A good friend of mine wanted a redesign for her realty business. She wanted a logo and told me the name "Diamond 4" was based on an actual cattle brand. I took that concept and developed a graphic logo to illustrate the name. It was important that the "4" be open at the top, so I picked Benquiat for the logo. The body copy is set in Calibri.

RWH Investigations

This gentleman called me needing more business cards. He just needed a graphic designer to reproduce his card digitally to send to a printer because he didn't have art. But of course, I wanted a shot at redesigning it. He wanted to keep the illustration so I scanned it and brought it into Illustrator and turned it into a vector file. I changed the color and added a drop shadow for more drama. American Typewriter is the font I chose. It has a vintage feel and seemed to fit perfectly. He wasn't interested in a logo, so I just set his company name in the same font. A thumbprint was added for interest and the whole thing is anchored with a nice gradient.

Heart Puja

Jade Beaty contacted me to design a logo and business card for her Heart Pujas. She wanted to incorporate the Chakra colors, a lotus, a heart and bright yellow. The logo was created in Adobe Illustrator. This logo is good at giving the feeling of transformation, enlightenment and excitement...all things representative of the Heart Pujas. The oval shape above the logo suggests a temple. Typefaces used are Palette and Hypatia Sans Pro. (Please read about Jade Beaty's work at www.heartpuja.com)

Don King business card redesign

This client supplied me with a rough idea of what he had in mind for his card design. He didn't have a logo, and didn't want one. I set his company name in Papyrus. The card has a lot of information, but notice the phone number is still easy to spot and legible. I combined Adobe Garamond and Univers for the text.

Marie Class of 2008

 Here is a graduation announcement I designed for my daughter. The featured typeface is Ambassador Script, which has beautiful flourish options.

Jean and Marty's Wedding Announcement

 

Some good friends of mine got married in beautiful Estes Park and had a celtic themed wedding. I took the top photo and did a little Photoshop magic and used it in the announcement. The text is set in Stonehenge with some nice celtic clipart at the bottom.

G&H Decoy boxes

This is a design for the side of a duck decoy box. It is by far my biggest freelance project to date, and these boxes appeared in Cabella's stores around the country. There was a total of nine versions and the Photoshop files were huge! Designs also needed to be made for the sides of the boxes. The client supplied me with an idea of what they were looking for and asked me to polish it up. I decided to utilize a shape in the middle that the sample photos could sit in. The featured typeface is one of my favorites, Bernard. A little camo pattern around the edge and a nice sunset photo and the look will compete with anything out there. (Check out their website at: www.ghdecoys.com)

Chicago's Best menu redesign

Who hasn't walked into a locally owned restaurant and seen a menu like this one. There is no logo! The column width of the menu on the left is way too wide, without leaders to bring you to the price. The menu at right (back side) is poorly organized and confusing. The first thing that was needed was a logo. I used Marque Extended (www.signfonts.com) for "Chicago's Best".  The menu text is set in the always legible and reliable Times Roman and Helvetica Neue Black. The new menu is nicely organized for much easier reading, and notice the phone number is prominant and easily found. I utilized red and green to tie in to the Italian flag. This was an unsolicited redesign on my part, and this location closed shortly after my presentation. Needless to say, the design never saw the light of day, except here!

Don's Repair business card redesign

My neighbor, Mike, works for his father in a small engine repair shop, and they recently added landscaping to their list of services. When he handed me his business cards, I about fell over! He didn't even have a card with his name on it. He crossed off his father's name and wrote in his. You can see that he had to also write in "Lawn Service" and a new phone number (which isn't legible!) The card in the middle isn't much better, with the address stamped on the card crooked. I was dying to get him a new design. The new logo uses the typeface Marquee Extended (www.signfonts.com) and Frutiger. The shape of the logo suggests a lawn mower, which ties into both the small engine repair and lawn services. The logo states "Small Engine Repair" because that is their main business. The grass along the bottom adds visual interest and again ties into landscaping.

Thacker business card redesign

This client specializes in back pain treatment and management and had recently relocated to Colorado. His card before was very plain. When I approached him to redesign, he expressed an interest in incorporating the front range. I took panoramic pictures of our view from Longmont and brought them into Illustrator and traced over them to create the mountain graphic. The logo incorporates the script typeface Zapfino. The "y" needed to be modified so the acender was shorter. Arial was used on "Pain Relief" and the cross rule on the "A" was modified as well. The photo is taken from a royalty-free stock image.