Logo Design: Photography studio

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

I recently had the pleasure of working with a great photographer who needed a new branded look for her business.

Stacey Steinberg specializes in photography for children and families in the Florida area. She writes on her website, “I love photographing children and families in their natural state. …My photographs are rarely (if ever) posed and I never ask a child to “sit still”. I love watching your kids be themselves.”

That philosophy was the driving force behind my designs for her. I wanted her new logo to feel organic and in its natural state, like her photographs. That meant designing it by hand, which I love to do, instead of relying on a digital font.

First I created a signature watermark that she could use on all of her photographs. It’s important to do that when sharing your professional work on Facebook. It helps drive traffic back to your own site, establishes your brand, and prevents people from stealing your work. However, it’s imperative that it not take away or distract from the photograph. Yes, that’s a lot of pressure for one single graphic.

Photograph by Stacey Steinberg

The design I made for her was a hand-written “signature” of her name. It stretches across each of her photos as a simple statement. I filled in the holes of the letters to give it a little extra style. I also gave Stacey the option of changing the color of the signature line to match the photograph it would be overlaying.

In addition, Stacey needed a different logo for her business card. She requested a camera and a bird to match her family-friendly business. I presented a few sketches to her, and we settled on a little baby bird peering into her camera, also hand-drawn. Sometimes I feel a vector illustration looses a bit of soul when it’s “perfectly Illustrator-ized”. Plus I felt this lended itself well to Stacey’s style.

I set up a template for her using MOO business cards. On the front it establishes her branding and contact information. On the back of the card, thanks to MOO’s double-sided printing service, she can feature a collection of photographs from her portfolio, also using the signature line.

I love the font I used for her contact info on the front of the card. Even though it’s digital, it still carries through the hand-drawn look we were establishing for her brand. I found it at dafont.com, which is my go-to source for terrific typography by aspiring artists.

 

Category: Design: Logos & Promos, Illustration
 
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Puppies and Pixels

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

I recently visited Liberty Humane Society in Jersey City, NJ to learn about volunteering in their animal shelter. When I walked out a few hours later I was their new Design Ambassador. It’s been such a rewarding experience working with them. It’s a wonderful shelter filled with the biggest hearts (animal and human!).

The first order of business was to create a marketing campaign that would feature the animals in need of adoption most. I set to work developing a concept and design that would be eye-catching, fun, and heavily branded with LHS. Since the posters were to be distributed all over the city, at big events, and online, I wanted them to be memorable. I wanted them to be more than just, “Adopt this cute dog”.

This concept below was born. My hope was one day someone would walk into LHS and ask to meet “the dog who can bake cupcakes”.  And I just found out that happened!

See some examples below.

 

I also designed Facebook timelines, promotional posters and web banners to match the brand.

Category: Design: Logos & Promos
 
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Web Design: Montessori School

Saturday, September 29, 2012

For many years I’ve been passionate about designing positive media for schools and educators. Eventually I became a teacher too, but that was after I had already immersed myself in the world of educational media design. I studied the genre in graduate school and wrote my thesis about it  (“Sharing, caring … and staring: The power of children’s television“). I worked as a Producer at Scholastic, Inc. developing web sites and content for popular children’s books. And to this day, many of my favorite design projects are for educators.

This website above was a great project to be a part of. It was produced by 4th Jump Web Design, a terrific company in Rochester, NY and I served as the Designer. The client was a Montessori school in upstate NY. Montessori education was a philosophy I studied in graduate school so I was thrilled to create a visual representation of the culture of the school.

For this design I was driven by three words: Organic, Natural and Nurturing.

The design and navigation matched the look of a hand-held, wood based toy that is commonly used in a Montessori environment. I wanted it to seem as if the website itself was a physical material you could play with. Natural elements such as leaves and vines were spread out through out the site to represent growth. I also used abacus elements as colorful design enhancements.

You can view the full site at: www.webstermontessori.org

 

Category: Design: Web
 
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Logos on Etsy

Friday, September 21, 2012

I love Etsy, and one day soon, I’ll open my own store on Etsy.

But in the meantime, I’ve had fun designing logos for other Etsy artists.

A great mother and daughter duo opened a store that featured hand-made jewelery created with found buttons. They wanted their logo to reflect their materials and creative flair. I sketched out a few ideas for them and we settled on this fun design.

Here’s a screenshot of the logo doing it’s job:

And here were a few other ideas I came up with in the sketching process. You can see how it evolved into the final choice.

 

Ceramic artist, Marguerite Brennan came to me when she was launching her new Etsy store, featuring original clay art. Her pieces are beautiful and often feature animals. She needed an Etsy banner that would show off her work and reflect her brand: Whimsical and established. You can view her store here.

 

And lastly, the Etsy store, “Birdie’s Eye View” needed a logo for their new greeting card line, featuring photographs of nature. They wanted something sweet and styled. Here were our final picks. One served as a logo banner on Etsy and the other was placed on the back of each card:

 

You can view Birdie’s Eye View on Etsy here.

 

Category: Design: Logos & Promos
 
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Home Decor: What’s for dinner?

Saturday, September 1, 2012

I’m always thinking of new things I can draw on. Why limit yourself to paper?

We needed new salad plates, so instead of doing the typical trek to Bed Bath & Beyond, I thought it would be a lot more fun to design them myself. Yes, it’s more expensive than just using a 20% coupon for BB&B. But they feel like heirlooms to us now. We love using them everyday and these plates tell stories!

I discovered a great store on the upper west side called, Little Shop of Crafts. The people working there couldn’t have been nicer. It took a few months to finish these 5 plates. I used glaze paints, underglaze pencils, and very tiny brushes. Most of the time I worked off an illustration sketch I had done earlier, which I would then transfer onto the ceramic plate using carbon paper. Other days I just went for it and free drew onto the plate. Regular pencil lines and pens disappear as soon as the plates get put into the kiln, so you only have to paint over the lines you want to commit to.

Each of these plates represent an important event in our lives. So now every time we eat salad, it’s a trip down memory lane.

Category: Illustration
 
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