Software engineer Dominic Chang approached me about branding a new start up. After discussing the project, we decided the best approach would be to come up with a unique name for the company. The name emplementation essentially is a combination of “electronic” and “implementation”. Chang also liked the tagline that BM presented, “elegant business solutions.”

The logo and business cards are shown. The start up website is being developed. Check back soon for the final site.

admin Corporate electronics, software

Viva Creative called again. They needed a quick turnaround for a logo with a small budget. It was for a fundraising auction for a school. It was important for the logo to look good in B&W. It was to be used on the cover of the auction catalog in B&W. They were also going to use the logo on donor forms, a website, and all the publicity for the auction.

The school committee giving alot of direction before the project started. The seemed to think they knew what they wanted. But, they eventually went with what I proposed. The final is shown in B&W below.

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PhoneSpell is a website that calculates what your phone number spells. So, when picking a phone number, a business can think of a clever spelling for their number before requesting a phone number. The site has been around since 1995 but was looking for a new identity to attract more advertisers and traffic. This is their original logo.

The owner thought the original logo was fun and playful. He wanted an upgrade that maintained as much of the site’s brand equity as possible. I showed him several comps without a rotary dial, but he insisted on keeping a rotary dial in the design. So, I made the rotary dial a prominent feature of the design and stylized it in a fun way that matched the super bold, friendly font I used.

I also wasn’t going to be involved in their web design, so it was important for me to show the client that the design could work well without a drop shadow on a white background. It took awhile, but I was able to convince him that there was enough contrast when using the heaviest Gill Sans variation in a web safe yellow/gold.

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The personal growth and development niche is booming. Especially out here in SoCal. A friend referred Inner Confidence to me and I met with them and some of their clients.

Inner Confidence’s clients were referring to the company as “IC” in our discussions, so I thought it might be a good idea to explore an initial cap symbol as part of their identity. Partners Brian Begin and Robbie Kramer were anxious to get started with the identity so they could develop their marketing materials and liked the idea of a symbol, so I started with a symbol exploration.

Brian and Robbie immediately responded well to the top left and quickly had an informal focus group among their colleagues in the personal development area. They were afraid that it came across as feminine and, since Inner Confidence is starting with a focus on the men’s market, asked if I would consider simply taking off the “flower”. I told them I would explore it along with other ideas, but because time was an issue, they asked me to just focus on this design because they liked it quite a bit.

So, I explored shapes, colors and a supportive type at the same time. Inner Confidence had a marketing initiative – IC Circle – that was underway. They also were calling their office the “IC Lounge”. My solution was to create a custom font/typeface that would support the symbol in different contexts. I went with two poles of the color blue in a circular gradient to suggest transformation. A dark blue representing the depth of the subconscious and a light blue suggesting communication. The implication being that you must go deep within yourself until the message of transformation is communicated to you.

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I met Brandt Smith and his wife one night when I was out at the Bar at Chateau Marmont. They were visiting from Texas. After we exchanged business cards, I told him that I hated his company’s logo. Emerge Technologies make retractable electronic devices. I don’t have a copy of the original logo, but the symbol just had too many details that were distracting.

horizontal logo

I removed all the filters and stripped it down to it’s essence. I also gave them a stronger, more appropriate supportive font. I kept their corporate colors. I just picked a better purple. I, also, gave them both a horizontal and a vertical version.

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It’s always fun to work with Emily Greene and Viva Creative. They’re event planners out of the Washington DC area who like to inject a little humor into their work. I had worked on a few titles with Viva before. This project was a little different.

Emily wanted me to stay on the project beyond the event identity. They needed to brand the Tech Ed Trade Show in Orlando for Raxco Software and PerfectDisk. I thought Emily’s Defrag Me! concept was perfect for a trade show filled with mostly male computer techs.

Originally, we tried a graffiti style type treatment, but eventually settled on this hand designed treatment. Here is the horizontal version.

And here it is applied to the 10 ft. poster art I created for the trade show booths.

Here is the full booth including booth signage featuring the iPod Touch.

The vertical, stacked version below was used for one of the posters as well as the t-shirts. The T-shirts were a huge success. Five hundred were gone in less than two days. When they were gone many people asked how they could buy them.

Here is Donna Savarese, Senior Communication Strategist for VIVA, in front of the Raxco booth.

Finally, here’s Bob Nolan, Raxco Software president and CEO, proudly displaying his Defrag Me! t-shirt.

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