Skull Appreciation Day!

I have been following the blog over at skulladay.blogspot.com and love the work they are doing and have been considering doing my on 365 day project. (more info on that here). SkullADay has declared June 4th 'Skull Appreciation Day'. Click the image above to get some more info and also to see the work happening on that site. Great creative stuff that is also inspiring!

-Jake

Could have waited but didn't

So I know I've done a large number of posts in a short amount of time but I just had to share this piece.

This is the newest and what I could consider almost totally finished version of the new The Luckless logo.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

-Jake

"Branding Ninja" - my new title

My father took on a new job a year or so ago. The job was with a startup called Raw Data and involved some pretty amazing goals that required equally amazing levels of development skills and talent, both of which my dad has plenty of! Well the company made some awesome progress over the last year and, unlike Matchplay in a previous post, they have continued to grow and flourish. I was approched by the CEO about coming on in a branding capacity. This isn't a regular job and I only earn equity in the company for my efforts but the opportunity is one that is pretty incredible for any designer this early in his/her career so I accepted. With the new side job I also got a new title... but its one I got to CHOOSE! So I am the 'Branding Ninja' for Raw Data in Salt Lake City, Utah.

My first move was to sneak up on and judo chop the logo. The logo was designed early on and while solid had some fundamental problems. Here is a comparison of the original and my modified version:

Original:

My first edit (top) and my second edit (bottom):

It was important to me to add some visual weight to the mark and also to tighten up kerning of the lettering. There is still some work that can be done on the kerning but this is pretty close. I also wanted to flip the divider/underline bar so that instead of dropping down and then to the left it dropped down and then swiped to the right. In the west we read left to right and have a sense that moving forward means to move to the right from the left. Having the line the way it was suggested, even subconsciously, that RawData was moving backwards and they are doing anything but that!

The website is also under construction. We started with a registered user section since the major reason for the site is to facilitate the dissemination of info to and to assist the registered users. After that it is to inform potential user. Here is the page that I've title 'Panelist'er' (since our registered users are actually members of a user panel):

The column on the left is a blog format panel that allows Raw Data to post information to and for the general population of the panel.

The column on the right is specific to the panelist and allows the user to see and manage their account, settings, see usage stats, and provides direct links to the panelist to communicate with Raw Data.











The second page, as mentioned, is an informational page designed to inform and inspire prospective panelists, a page I've titled 'Prospect'er':

Similar to the panelist page, I have use a three column layout with the column on the far left being a quick reference column and the two on the right being combined into one and used to provide the more detailed break down of what is required to be a panelist.













The project is based on a concept of washing away the old archaic way of doing things with a digital, streamlined, and more fluid solution. To visualize this I used a white wash idea of Raw Data and its process flowing down and over the old way of doing things, which is represented by the orange color filled with blurred and cluttered spread sheets, the current standard in the industry. The fluidity of RawData is conveyed to the viewer by the flowing liquid but the rigid three column and very geometric shapes of the body of each page shows the predictability of the data format that you can expect from RawData.


This in an ongoing project and changes will happen and more pages will be added, I hope to provide samples here as I complete pages.

-Jake

MatchPlay Identity & Site Design

A good friend passed my name along to a guy he knew that was interested in building a website that provided stats tracking for rec. or comp. teams for youth sports. The site was based off a system that his grandfather had developed through years of involvement in youth sports but was totally paper based. My task was to update the brand and design the initial website, front end, design.

Here is the mark in its updated form:

(I always display my mark designs the way I did in college, with a full sized version in color followed by the same mark in reduction and in black and white.)



Here is the site design. Keep in mind that this is the first iteration of the site and ultimately the company failed to take off and the project was killed so this is as far as it went. I put it here because it shows an early step in my process and hopefully you can see the direction I was taking it. The developer and the owner of the idea were both thrilled with the design and concept.

Like I said the company ran into some logistical and financial issues so this project, unfortunately, didn't come to total fruition.


-Jake

Americana Redux and Redesign

Awhile back I was contacted by a woman and her husband who were interested in developing a patriotic line of shirts, hats, hoodies, bumper stickers, etc. The concept was based around the name of the line "Got Freedom" but they wanted to avoid the traditional patriotic themes or at least present them in a less obtrusive way. A lot of the time patriotic gear is only worn on holidays like the 4th of July or Veteren's Day, my client wanted their clothing to be designed in a way that the customer might wear it any day of the year and wear it proudly.

Initially I started with the shirts and hoodies. Here are some mockups of the designs on a sample shirt or hoodie.

After the shirts were done I moved onto some hat designs, here are a few:

Following the hats I moved on to the other products in the catalog like bumper stickers and some view through truck/SUV window decals. Those designs are very similar to the ones show here so I won't add of them.

This has been a fun project to work on because of the illustrative nature of the project. Allows a bit more creative freedom I think where a layout doesn't provide quite the same level of freedom, to create a working and appropriate layout anyway!

-Jake

Nazis and a Redesign

When my friends and I chose the name 'hard luck' for our moto club we did some searching around the net looking to see if the name had been used. It had but it was just a band so we figured we were ok to use it. After nearly finishing the ambigram logo I happened on a Flickr photostream for another moto group that had used the name. Maybe we could still use it right? Well it turns out they have swastika's on their cuts, I'm not down with that. So we had to come up with a new name.

This time we arrived at 'The Luckless", obviously we want to make a point we work for and fight for what we have! This time I decided to try something else for inspiration and I also wanted to be a bit more light hearted with the concept. That is when Wile E. Coyote came to mind and how he always seems to get mashed in the head by a falling ACME anvil. So taking that inspiration I created the following logo:

This is just round one for the design but I liked the idea so much I busted out my Waccom board and did up a digital version. Looking over it now I'd like to simplify this and also clean up and scale down the volume of impact spikes and maybe shift the anvil to a steeper angle but I love the concept! It would also be cool to break the square in half's and have the kick up at each end to emphasize the 'crash' and make it more dynamic. I can just see this as a wide patch on my jacket/shirt across the top back of my shoulders!

In addition to the logo above I drew up a design that I liked but was less impactful and was a bit harder to understand. It is a conglomeration of good luck symbols, some common and others not so common. Here is a pic of my first version of this:

This logo is made up of a scarab beetle, a sign of luck in ancient Egypt, and a horse shoe, which is obvious. The problem with this logo is that since we are luckless... why do we have symbols of luck? The obvious answer would be that we are trying to get as much luck as we can, but it is still kind of a stretch plus, its kind of boring! This logo idea does have other versions but I think they will stay 'in development' indefinitely!

With the demise of the 'Hard Luck' name I still intend to do up a digital version of the ambigram and keeping it for my own entertainment, and don't worry as I intend to do more ambigrams now that I under took and rocked my first one!

-Jake