current campaign for FrontDoor, LLC – targeted to (and featuring actual) Saint Louis University Students who are tenants.
Logo development for a hunting and fishing enthusiast website.
Neither myself or my assistant Mike had any background in hunting or fishing… About the closest I could claim was my great grandfather being one of the folks responsible for The Missouri Conservation Board… and that’s about it.
We knew the client wanted to impart “fish” and “hunting” in the logo so that’s where we started. (See inset for the evolution of concepts).
Our first directions felt more like Front 242 album covers and Bass Pro Shop clothing line brands… until one particularly productive review when Lou, (client), said he was looking for something more… “gnarly”.
“As in like surfer… dude?” – I asked.
What followed was that process that designers do with their clients which includes grunting, hand gestures and verbal interpretive dance as we get the intangible feelings and ideas in their head out into the open.
We went back with the new input and revisited our concepts with the new perspective… Less fly fishing – more extreme sports.
The results surprised us as much as it pleased the client.
I have no intention of running out and nabbing my own venison steaks anytime soon and I don’t have the attention span for casting a line in the water and waiting for a bite – but I’d still stick a vinyl of this mark on the back of my car. Tell tale signs of a successful mark: when it transcends its’ base purpose and folks would consider wearing it or displaying it simply because they think it’s “cool”.
I do love shopping at Cabela’s…. Maybe I should ask Lou to show me how to fish. 🙂
At some point in recent history it occurred to me that I should make throwing work into this stuff bucket a more habitual thing… There’s a lot of projects that come across my desk that are “quickies”. Though these types of assignments wouldn’t traditionally be considered portfolio pieces – I really paused when considering the sheer volume of these that I’ve moved through my desktop over the years.
There’s a discussion topic launch point right there… how this kind of technology has really changed the nature of “portfolio”… Decades ago portfolio pieces *had* to be precious… My perfectly printed samples encased in plastic and slid into that trusty leather binder… the one I’d gripped white-knucked so many times and schlepped into first-time meetings with a potential client or employer.
I just found that old portfolio in this last move. It’s a perfect time capsule from back to about 2003 which was the last time I made an analog presentation.
I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away… that ole piece of cow hide and I went a lot of places together. I can count the fingernail marks on the spine like rings of a tree… “There’s the ones from the Flieshman Hillard portfolio review…. and there’s the one from that one bank…  and there…”
Oh yeah – about the image. ↑
My old colleague Erin (O’Brien) Wright rang me up from her new job and asked if I could massage a ragged bitmap image their company had cannibalized using CAD to show their company locations. The end destination for the graphic is a large conference room window in their office. The solution (which was actually a little more tedious than you’d think to get to) will install on the glass as three layers of vinyl: 2 on the inside of the glass, 1 on the outside.
Identity and website for Toronto-based Susan Macintosh, a professional in the growing field of ADHD coaching.
Susan’s wanted to convey a calm “zen” feel to her materials… Symbolically / Visually? = Gravy…. But this simplicity and calm also needed to extend to the structure, organization and presentation of her content and support materials for clients. Of course, clarity and simplicity are always a good idea – a mandatory one when your audience suffers from chronic short attention spans.
A WordPress theme and interactive PDF client forms and worksheets were all developed to sync with Susan’s new identity.