Brown Photography

This is a logo that I designed about a year ago for a freelance photographer based in the West Yorkshire area. I started off by thinking of what kind of font I was going to use because originally I wanted to do a type based logo. The font that I chose to use is 'FF Meta', probably my favourite font ever (yes I'm a massive typography geek) which was designed by the amazing Erik Spiekermann who is my favourite graphic designer and typographer. I then started to draw different parts of a camera because I wanted to use a symbol on the logo too, I came up with my own version of a shutter that could be used on the logo quite subtle, but it could also be used on his photographs by itself as a sort of copyright symbol. I also played around with different colours and in the end I went with brown and black, firstly because the clients surname is 'brown' and secondly I thought the contrast between the two colours complimented each other perfectly. I was really happy with how this logo turned out and the client was too.

LCN Sweepers

This is a logo that I designed just over a year ago for a brand new road sweeping company. I wanted the logo to look very clean looking because it was been designed for a sweeping company and they want to come across as been clean and efficient. I also wanted it to look clean because it would eventually be used on the side of the sweeper trucks and various items of stationary etc. The idea behind the logo was to come up with a symbol that represented a brush, kind of like what they have on the side of the sweeper trucks. The symbol that I designed has two meanings, the blue parts are meant to represent the brushes and the white negative space inside that is meant to represent a cyclone because this is what happens inside the tank of a sweeper truck, think of it as a massive cyclonic vacuum. This was a really good project to work on and the client seemed really happy with the finished outcome. I will do a post with images of the vehicle graphics and stationary at a later date.

Go

This is a logo that I designed for a track lighting product, I had to come up with a name and an identity. I came up with the name 'Go' because it represents movement and one of the main selling features for the product is that it can be moved around and adjusted to the desired position. The idea behind the logo was to keep it simple but to also be clever, I came up with this symbol that says 'Go' but it also looks like the product that it's designed for so I was killing two birds with one stone. I really enjoyed working on this project and I would like to work on similar projects in the future.

Facebook Fun!

I participated in one of the less stupid and more creative in fact, games on facebook. Basically what you had to do was create an album cover with articles, quotes and images that were selected at random. I really enjoyed doing this and it killed like 15 minutes of what was a really long day.

If you want to give it a go yourself the rules are:

1 - Go to wikipedia. Hit “random”
or click en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to "Random Quotations"
or click www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use Photoshop or similar graphics editing program to put it all together.

5 - Post it to FB with this text in the "caption" and tag the friends you want to join in. (you can untag yourself from this photo)

Have fun!

Phosphenes Design

www.phosphenes.co.uk

This is my dearest friend and graphic designer Tom's brand new website, I think you should check it out because there is some amazing work on it!

Hartley Interior-Exterior

This is a logo that I designed for a property developer a couple of months ago, I was really excited about this when I got asked to do the design work. I started off by sketching lots of ideas down and there wasn't anything that I was really happy with, I then started drawing with one continuous line and I came up with the house and tree symbol. As soon as I drew it I knew it would be the final idea, I played around with different fonts and colours and eventually came up with a final idea. I've shown the logo on a black and a white background because it will be used on both of those colours on things like the website, business cards and stationary etc. This was a really cool project to work on and the client was really happy with the final idea.

It's Me!

This is a illustration that my good friend and illustrator Rob did of me (great likeness!). If you click (here) you can read some of the nice things that he wrote about me. The reason why he did this was because he was trying to raise money for Cancer Research by drawing a cartoon character of you... So basically he would draw you for a small fee and then he would donate some of that money to charity, for a good few weeks he was a very busy man drawing lots of people and raising money for charity. Myself and many other people thought it was absolutely amazing what he was doing because it was for such a great cause.

Frank Photography

This is a logo that I did for a freelance photographer last year. For starters I wanted to keep the logo simple and clean looking because it had to be used on a business card, stationary and other various promotional items. One of the first ideas that came into my head was to do some sort of illustration of a SLR camera, I thought that this idea would work best if it was simple so I designed a vectored drawing of a SLR camera that could be reduced down in size and still look like a camera and not a blue rectangle. The main thing that I wanted to get right with the logo was the typography, I wanted to use a font that would look really nice when it was reduced down to business card size, the font that I chose to use is called 'FF Fago' and I think that it works really well alongside the camera symbol. This was a really nice project to work on because I had full creative freedom and the client was chuffed to bits with the finished result.

The Radio Dept.

This is a logo that I designed last night just as a personal piece of work. The logo is for a Swedish dream pop/ambient band called The Radio Department, I'm actually going to see the band live tonight in Leeds so as you can imagine I'm very excited! Another reason for doing the logo is that I've just recently purchased a Wacom Bamboo graphics tablet so this gave me the perfect excuse to try it out for the first time.

Hovering Art Directors!

http://hoveringartdirectors.tumblr.com/


This made me chuckle.... I may have to upload a photo to it!

Girlguiding UK

This is a logo that I designed with my old friend and graphic designer Lee for Girlguiding UK a couple of years ago. Girlguiding UK is the United Kingdom's largest voluntary organisation for girls and young women, with around half a million members including about 100,000 trained volunteer adult leaders and supporters. The idea behind the logo was to incorporate the official Girlguiding UK symbol and the colours from the four different age sections which are Rainbows, Brownies, Guides and the Senior Section. We decided to come up with a fun looking abstract character that incorporates the Girlguiding UK symbol as the head and the different sections colours for the body parts. This is a piece of work that Lee and myself are very proud of because it was for such a good cause.

Teamwork!

A couple of months ago myself and my good friend and Illustrator Rob (You can check out his blog here) put our heads together and came up with some ideas for his new business card. We thought it was important to make it a bit quirky and not just do your standard corporate business card which sometimes can look a bit boring. Rob basically got all the illustrations ready and I sorted out the layout and I think the finished result looks really good.

The Unicode Movie

For a massive typography geek like myself this is so amazing!

Café-Restaurant Logo Competition

This is a logo that I designed a couple of years ago whilst I was at University. The logo was designed as part of a live brief for Kirklees Council were we had to come up with a name and logo for a new café-restaurant that is opening in Greenhead Park in Huddersfield. We recently found out which logo they have chosen and unfortunately I didn't win but my good friend Leecia did so all is good.

The Client-Designer Relationship

I came across this earlier and I found it so interesting and amazing. This is what Paul Rand said to Steve jobs when he was asked if he could come up with some options for the 'NeXT' computer logo.

"No. I will solve your problem for you. And you will pay me. And you don’t have to use the solution. If you want options, go talk to other people. But I’ll solve your problem for you the best way I know how. And you use it or not. That’s up to you. You’re the client. But you pay me."