Next, I needed to set a mood. For some reason, this didn’t take long to decide. I grabbed the nearest Moleskine-like journal and scanned a blank page to get that subtle texture for the background. By incorporating Sketchetica for headlines and a cut-out style banner here and there, I just began placing information in a hierarchy. This became my approach to all pieces. I began with designing the postcard which was to be handed out to students on college campuses. This same mood and feel translated over nicely to the landing and download pages for the web site.

Designing the look of the web site was a lot of fun. Because I’m not a code guy, I usually get overwhelmed by trying to figure out how to put great ideas into HTML, CSS, PHP, and the like. Not so on this project. The Great Steven Peercy was commissioned to program the back end of this simple site which gave me free reign to exercise my creativity. O the delight to see my designs come alive with rollovers, working forms, and smooth functionality!

Although this was a small and quick project, I was given a lot of room for creativity which makes my job a lot of fun. Special thanks to Brock Starnes for excellent management and business acumen. Visit www.speakuptour.com to see the real thing up and running.

Landing Page for the Speak Up Tour

Downloads Page of Speak Up Tour's Web Site

My friends Matt and Casey got married earlier this year. My wife hosted Casey’s wedding shower and asked me to “design something real quick.” She had planned a shower where all guests would bring a recipe to help the bride jump start her domestic arsenal. Of course, this brought to mind the idealistic housewife from the 1950′s. Also appropriate to that genre was the orange and aqua color combination employed in the design. To top it all off, I tried “baking-in” the imperfections of screen printing into the design. If you look closely, you can see how some of the lettering is a little offset from the background. The final printed product was a 3×5 card to mimic an index card (ya know, for recipes). You may even be able to see the light blue and red rules in the background.

Casey Brewer Wedding Shower Invitation

Casey Brewer Invitation Detail

I’ve already posted about the evolution of the bug-a-roo logo project. Over the last week, that identity grew a little stronger. With a sales event pending, we needed some fresh marketing materials. We’ve always been on a tight budget so instead of spending a lot of money on die-cutting business cards, we’ve just cut a couple of corners off and punched some holes to give the impression of a sales tag. Well, that gets old fast so this was my opportunity to simplify. The solution ended up being implying that tag with shape. However, instead of the drawing the shape of a tag, I just drew the impression of a background. Using a darker shade of the main green pantone color, I added a sliver beneath to imply a shadow. I liked this so much that I carried it over to the brochure.

The brochure was a redesign of something I threw together in about an hour for the last event. Since that was done around midnight, it looked uninteresting. I carried the green color and tag impression over to the brochure to see if I could still use it. It was starting to take shape so I stuck with it.

The previous design had a photograph of my wife holding our son in a baby sling. We didn’t have any more photos on hand so I decided to illustrate the old photo. If you are familiar with Adobe Illustrator, you know that you can click a button and, presto! you have an illustrated image of your photograph. That’s no fun, though. Besides, you get some funky-ness that doesn’t look quite right. If you do it by hand, not only do you get to brag about it, but any funky-ness is your own fault! This took HOURS. I had a blast, though. I worked with a skintone color palette, and created dimensional shapes and patterns to imply depth. It felt like the good ole days of paper and pencil. 

This illustration technique had been on my mind quite a bit. I had wanted to do something similar for bug-a-roo for a long time but didn’t have the opportunity until now. We’ll see if it shows up again. Again, that is the beauty of taking your time to develop a visual identity.

Illustration example

Well, I have to sign off because I have to be Mr. Mom so my wife can go sell these products. We’ll see how it goes. Check her blog out and order stuff from her: slings-and-things.blogspot.com.

This fund was established in partnership with the West Tennessee Healthcare Foundation to benefit the new Casey Jones Railroad Museum. The logo needed to stand alone, apart from the various enterprises under the banner of the Casey Jones Village. Originally, I wanted to try my hand at a horizontal, rectangular wood-cut image of a train. However, after we discussed the project, the client had envisioned a circular design resembling the front of a steam engine. Open sketchbook.

Since late April, I’ve been pouring over train books noting details in train design as well as turn-of-the-century promotional design (I LOVE the public library!). I am still in the process of forcing this obsession on myself; I think this is only the beginning. Any-hoo, one thing I’ve noticed about this period in design is the typefaces. These faces range from the very stout sans-serif to the elegant, scripty style such as I used in this logo. I particularly love the embellished jut from the lower portion of the ‘J.’ I decided to use the initials in this decorative way because I didn’t like the alternatives I kept coming up with. Any image would be a departure from our train-face; a number, as is common in such spots on trains, would confuse the message of the logo. I saw this as an opportunity to develop an identity that is strongly rooted in the period style rather than a literal depiction of what the fund was established to do. 

The sketch you see below was a rough idea of what I wanted to do. In the beginning, I tried tracing this sketch but you can never underestimate the subtleties of a well crafted typeface. I ended up using Harrington as my base and altered the design to achieve the solution you see here. And there’s the key word: solution. Much of design is problem-solving. Sometimes the problem is simple and it doesn’t take much to solve it; sometimes the problem is great and takes a lot of time to solve. Unfortunately, some logo projects, if executed well, will seem like it took ten minutes to accomplish. I’ve grown fond of telling clients that logos are “deceptively simple.” What seems like an obvious and quick solution may have taken hours to accomplish. 

The end result here was completed by our deadline and the client was pleased. I love having a fresh start to an enterprise. Unlike other projects commissioned by Casey Jones Village, I get to be involved in the Historical Fund’s identity from the beginning. Stay tuned to see the development of the Casey Jones Village, the Old Country Store, the Casey Jones Home and Railroad Museum, and the Casey Jones Historical Fund projects. I’ve had a blast working with them and can’t wait to show you more.

Casey Jones Historical Fund Logo