Thinking for Tuesday (part 1)

Are a bad from Portsmouth and a generally nice bunch of people. When they needed a logo and a website, they came to me! Which is always nice.

There is a site, which you can see in the links at the end, but I want to go into more detail about in another post, so this is part one, just the logo. This is one of those jobs that I look at and think to myself, "Did I make that?" It is different enough for me to feel really positive about it, whilst still being very interesting.



There is a version without the background detail, but this is how they want to try and use it in this form as much as possible, don't worry there is a version without the detail too.

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Thinking for Tuesday

Personal projects rock!

And they do! It's a great way to exercise that corner of your creative mind that doesn't get the work out it needs very often.

This project was started by a bizarre conversation about bad celebrity endorsements (John Lydon and butter!) and the idea that some celeb's should have signature products! The only downside of this conversation was, the funny ideas were/are a little politically incorrect. I decided that it would be interesting to try brand a few of these ridiculous products.

The first one:



I can see it for sale in coffee shops everywhere...I can even visualise the brand mugs....



This shouldn't exist as a product and never will, but it would be funny if it did. The thing that worries me the most...I've got more!

Please don't be offended.
Michael

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An interesting website and a little more!

I was asked to create a website for a photographer, after some conversations (involving some comedically bad English and Italian) I had figured out that he was a bit of a technophobe and wanted to be able to update it 'easily' himself if possible.

I love this approach to the web. I love the challenge of making something that is easily updatable without having to understand what HTML is, or how you log in to a profile...you understand. There are countless platforms out there with some really interesting CMS, but I still wanted to try and integrate the platforms he already used to make the whole thing straightforward.

He had a flickr, and after some googling about flickr slideshows, I found a javascript frame that would pool his flickr feed into a 100% background! Great find, after some noodling with the code, there was a fair amount of unnecessary info in there and a menu that didn't suit what I wanted, I had an animating slideshow background pooled by flickr! Which meant he didn't need to touch the site in terms of photos, it did the work for him!

I had to design the logo and think about a menu next. I decided to keep the menu really simple, but decided to incorporate some web fonts to try and add some SEO value to a very minimal site. The logo was a fairly straightforward excercise as he suggested I do something with a view finder.



The menu had to be very non-invasive, so it didn't interfere with the main content. I had been playing with drop down menus on another project and I decided to do the same on this site. After trying it, I realised it didn't work and my brain made the logical conclusion, "No down....UP!" So a flyout menu instead.











All very straight forward, but very effective.

After another chat, business cards were mentioned, I suggested Moo, as they can print multiple images on the front of their cards, which suits a photographer perfectly! So mini moo business cards!



No sense showing you the front, as they are all different! AND on the site!

Big project, well happy.
Michael

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Franco Fontani - Street Photography

CD artwork...

As part of getting back in touch with the boys from They Walk Among Us to do their site, they asked me to get involved with the artwork for their new EP.

The title is "Outside the Campfire Circle", without going into too much detail about what the title is about, Richard explained to me that the idea was one of not feeling connected with masses and accepting it. I liked the idea a lot! We hammered around some ideas and this is where we ended up.





I won't bother you with the onbody as it was just text details in one colour due to production costs.

I am really happy with this, mostly because it doesn't quite feel like my usual work, which is always a good thing.

Happy with that!
Michael

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They Walk Among Us' homepage

There was a time...

...in my life when if I was asked, "Can you make us a website?" Part of me would have shriveled up and died! BUT not anymore! Now I actually seem to enjoy it! What happened to me? I think I caught a strange disease...

After my success with the anti-myspace web site for Mike Borgia, I put the word out that I was on the hunt for anyone else who was interested, Richard from They Walk Among Us got back to me first!



This site was a little simpler as it was mostly reverbnation plug-ins, but still very effective me thinks! I really like the side menu and logo header.

More to come...
Michael

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See it in action

Myspace is dead...

and it has been for a long time. Yet somehow no site has really managed to fill the void it left, there are a few that are coming close, but not quite managing to do the whole nine yards. So when I got into a conversation about what the solution to the lacking of a myspace was, I got my thinking cap on.

After some thinking I found the answer, cross platform integration. Bands in this day and age have several online presences, twitter, facebook, blogs, bandcamp, reverbnation.....the list is endless! So the plan was to make a site that had next to no content stored on servers and was auto updated via some/all of these external sources!

As always I ended up doing something for Mike Borgia. He likes my screwy ideas.



So what you see there is a one page site that incorporates (from top to bottom) video from youtube, mailing list from reverbnation, photos from flickr, music from bandcamp, shows listings from reverbnation, blog rss feed via blogger and a javascript twitter feed!

It's a lot of elements but it does come together nicely.

I also made them a nifty little logo as an added extra to go with the site!



I'm still proud of how well this all came together.
Michael

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See it in action

Website

When I arrived at my new job in Italy I was given the task of rebranding the company. I made a policy decision, within about 30 minutes of realizing how massive an undertaking that was within confines of language barriers and several other major factors, that the best thing to do was to take the branding they had, not do much with it and make a clean and effective website inside a few days to get a presence online.

This idea gave me the chance to go back to basics and work with the branding and site layout from the ground up and really get down to the nitty gritty of the browsing in 2 languages.

This was a fairly straight forward site layout, a few little bits of Javascript (slideshow of work and date/time), but nothing majorly complicated.

The interesting thing is that I had to build a mirror site in Italian and English, which created a few translation issues as good English and good Italian do not translate well. There may be a boring blog of this somewhere somewhen...

The site:













A random bunch of screen caps, nothing to complicated.

I would love to link you to the actual site, but it is down now and has been replaced with the real site!

More to come.
Michael

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Competition

Whilst I was away I did a few random little things outside of work to help keep my brain in its usual state and one afternoon on twitter I saw the words space exhibition floating around. No idea what it was about, so I clicked around and discovered a competition to create a poster based on the word "SPACE".

I went away and came back to this a day or so later, whilst I was clearing out some of the fonts on my computer, I had over a thousand, I remember thinking to myself, "I doubt I have used even half of these fonts! All they do is take up space..." flash of inspiration... "how can I use all these fonts in some way connected to the word space? Wait a minute, I could make something using all the fonts and negative space!"

So that is what I did! I chose a few of the most used fonts on my computer and put a letter in each space (sorry for the pun-ish nature of this), added a star for the last square (you know, stars, outer space) and then proceeded to build a negative space letter.



2 things:

1. I promise I haven't used the same font twice inside one square.

2. If you are thinking, "That must have taken hours!" yes it did! The star alone took nearly two!

But I do love it! I keep thinking I should get one printed for my wall! Quick thanks to Neil Asher from Black Sheep for giving me the kick up the arse to do this.

I think its time I went to bed...
Michael

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Space Exhibition

A positive relationship...

...with clients can be an incredible thing! It really can.

Once again Mike Borgia came to me to get a few things ready for their summer tour. He wanted a tour poster, that wasn't all about the details, more something they could sell for a few bucks/give away happily.

I did my best to accommodate them by making this:



This was meant to be a 2 colour screen print on off white/creamy brown stock, don't know if thats how it got printed.

There are 3 members in the band, they are off on tour...so scouts and jamboree's. It makes perfect sense to me!

Maybe one more...
Michael

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Mike Borgia

Artistic Poster

I was given an amazingly ambiguous brief, which was, "You know those gig posters that have next to no detail on them and look awesome? Do that!"

What a brief!

Given that amount of freedom, what do you even attempt to do?



Do some type that is halfway between custom and a font and a man hanging from a hot air balloon, whilst he he eats his lunch. Trust me that is what is happening! It was/is meant to be an A2 print, the detail would be clearer at that size.

More to come...
Michael

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It's been far too long!

Hello everyone! Sorry I haven't updated this little corner of the internet recently! I have been away, come home, had to catch up on a few things and now I am getting back in the saddle with this place!

First thing I will post is a bunch of logos that I designed for a medical company! It's not all rock and roll...

This is a little annoying as I really liked the way these were going, but it was then decided that the companies the branding was for were going to be absorbed into the parent company. Or something like that. Regardless, I made some stuff I like, I want to post it.

First:



This companies name was in swedish and they were focusing on something to do with a degenerative eye condition. The initials were MMO, so the logo is simple and effective me thinks!

Second:



This example was something to do with heart attacks, so I decided to try and incorporate a wave form in there, I wanted to go with something a little more like an EKG, but it looked rubbish, so settled with a cleaner looking wave.

Third:



This was the potential branding for the parent company, but then they decided to not have a parent company. I wish I understood this side of things better, but I am just a designer, not their business manager!



I made a short hand version of it aswell, which I really like. The idea was to try and show an overlapping of several 'things' to create the logo.

I am still very happy with the results, even if they didn't get used.

It's good to be back...
Michael

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