Comedy Central Re-Branding

This is a pretty cool video that shows Comedy Central's new logo and look for 2011. They have had this logo for a long time:

but they have completely revamped their branding and are going for a much more modern look.  It is very simple and I think it's a pretty cool move on their part.  Watch the video below.

Comedy Central Press
Comedy Central: Refreshed and Rededicated
www.comedycentral.com
Funny Jokes Ugly Americans The Benson Interruption

The Cleveland Sound

Been a while since I posted, huh! Well, I've been busy with the holidays, as I'm sure you have too. Snow is coming down hard outside - a good(?) way to kick off December!

I just was hired to help out with a website that someone is working on called The Cleveland Sound. They had a designer but he backed out or couldn't do what needed to be done, so I was brought in to help. I made some edits to a Wordpress theme, moved some things around, added some stuff behind the scenes to make it run a little faster and created a very quick logo to replace the default type. The site has no content right now - just lorem ipsum and some random photos from Google, but it's where the owner wants it, and I'll let you know when it is up and running at full steam.

Until then, you can check it out at http://www.theclevelandsound.com/ or click on the screenshot above.

Creative Hands Ad Campaign

I've been pretty busy recently, and I just started working for Ohio Web Technologies this week so I don't have much of my own stuff to post right now, but I received the following ad campaign in an email the other day.  While I had seen one or two of the ads in the campaign before, seeing them all one after the other really blew me away.  From what I can tell, they seem like they were most certainly done in photoshop, using lots photos of hands.

Click the photo below to see all the ads.

 

Walk the Moon, please

Over the past few weeks I worked on the CD artwork for the band Walk the Moon.  I posted the flyer for the album release a few weeks ago.    W/M is having their CD release party in Cincinnati, Ohio this Saturday night, and I thought I would post up the art.

Left: Front cover  Right: Back cover/track listing

Inside:  Artwork is a mix of 3 artists' work - I can't take all the credit!

Disc

Happy Halloween / Phun with Photoshop

Here are some festive Halloween pics that I Photoshopped for fun:

This was an image I used for my friend's Halloween party invitation.  I took a photo from his facebook profile, used Live Trace in Illustrator to get a simple image of it, altered some colors, then blended it in with a real photo of a pumpkin using Photoshop.  I could have spent more time making the light coming inside look real, but it was just a quick image for fun.  (Side note: the way the live trace worked accidentally made his chin look like a ghost - awesome!) 

This is me (in the center) and my friends dressed as the Incredibles for Halloween.  I used Photoshop to edit out the background, add a new cartoony background and Incredibles logo, add feet (our legs were cut off at the knees in the photo), and tweak a few other minor details.  

This photo and the two below are essentially unedited with the exception of the background being removed (and filling in body parts that were cut off in the original photos).

This is my friend Chris in costume as Frozone. I Photoshopped him on to Frozone's ski board from the movie.  This picture is actually a composite of about 5 different images - the photo of Chris, The Incredibles logo, the ski board, the ice, and the red city background.

We entered a Halloween costume contest for the tights/spandex website we used.  Please go here and click "Like" below to help us win!

Evolution of a Logo: Creative Filmmakers - Part 3

After a little back and forth, my client ended up choosing the paint splotch/eyelash version of the first logo, and wanted the main logo display to have the text underneath.  Here is the final logo:

I then added the logo in grey to her existing website at www.creativefilmmakers.org

More to come!

Evolution of a Logo: Creative Filmmakers - Part 2

Once my client received the logos I sent from Part 1, she said that she liked the first one (the eye) but that someone she showed it too said it looked remarkably similar to the CBS logo.  Oops!

Too similar to use?  Not sure.  I doubt it is copyright infringement, but I tried altering it to make it a little more unique.  I also wanted to do more with the creative part of the name Creative Filmmakers.  The logo above shows an eye looking through a camera lens, or something along those lines, but it didn't seem quite funky enough for me.  So, I tried these: 

I simply added some eyelashes or something that resembled paint splotches (or the other way around). 

I also tried one more design that was more playful, which I really liked, seen below:

More to come next week!

Evolution of a Logo: Creative Filmmakers - Part 1

A few months ago I wrote a series of posts showing my process from beginning to completion of Urban Chick Boutique's logo. You can view that series of posts here. I received a lot of comments on those posts, so I decided to do it again.

This time my client is a Cleveland-based independent film company, Creative Filmmakers. I have been hired to create a new logo for them, as well as do some work on their website, which can be viewed here.

I like to design logos first in black and white so that they look good if they ever have to be printed without color. Once the core logo is completed, I try adding color and see where it takes me/us.  The client requested something fairly "corporate-looking," but with a bit of "arty"ness to it as well. Below are some of my first attempts at the logo:

For this initial design, I started with a large black circle, drew an eye shape and then subtracted it from the circle.  Next, to make the pupil, I added a smaller black circle inside and subtracted an even smaller white circle from that to finish off the eye.   

This was a second idea I had that plays with an abstract image of a film reel.  It consists of mostly black and white circles as well, and I also used a paintbrush tool for the incomplete circles in the center and on the outside of the reel.

  

This was an example I gave to the client of how the logo would appear next to the name of the company horizontally.  I added a white circle to the A to make a visual connection with the eye logo, as well as to emphasize the word creative.  

This was an example I gave to my client of what the title would look like if we placed it underneath one of the circular logos.  

Finally, just to provide another option for the client, I tried this logo which was simply the name of the company and a mock-up of a film strip, which is made solely of black and white rectangles.  

Please check back later this week for more logo work for Creative Filmmakers.  And please take a look at their work at www.creativefilmmakers.org!

Neighborhood Leadership for Environmental Health!

The past couple weeks I have been working on a website for a non-profit community organization in Cleveland called the Neighborhood Leadership for Environmental Health, or NLEH.  You can view the website at http://www.nleh.org/.

i want! i want!

As you may or may not know, I was a longtime member of a band based in Cincinnati called Walk the Moon.  I am no longer in the band, but they are going strong, and the band is getting ready to throw a big bash to release a long-time-coming album, called i want! i want!, as well as a really sweet music video for the first single, "Anna Sun".  I am doing some of the promo materials for the show and for the band, the first of which is shown below.

Front of flyer

Back of flyer

For more information on the rockin show/video release/cd release, check the band's blog at walkthemoon1.blogspot.com.  You can also listen to their music at www.myspace.com/walkthemoonband.  If you are in the Cincinnati area, you should DEFINITELY plan to go to this party on November 13th.    

Casa De Kraftmaid - Auction on October 30

This past week I was brought in to work with a few other designers on a site to advertise a large estate auction in Moreland Hills, Ohio (a suburb of Cleveland).  The house is being sold by the founder of Kraftmaid Cabinetry, Richard Moodie, and the home is quite astounding.  It is estimated to have cost around 8 million dollars and it includes a swimming pool, guest house, movie theater (with a lobby), gym, and so on!

Here is the site:

http://www.casadekraftmaid.com/

Invitation shminvitation

Here is an invitation I made to a private art showing Gretchen Reifsnyder is having in the fall.  Her paintings can be seen at watercolors1.blogspot.com.

This is the front, which uses a painting of hers that she selected. The information has been blocked out.

Here is the back, leaving plenty of room for addresses and stamps.  I used Photoshop to isolate the frog from a more detailed painting and to extend the branch to about twice its original length.   

Who knew the tilde could do so much?

So I just found out a trick using the tilde key in Adobe Illustrator.  If you hold it down while you make a shape, it continuously makes the shape everywhere the mouse goes, so you get interesting wire-frame drawings.  I decided to revert back to when I was 7 and would draw space stations and floating cities all the time.  An example drawn only with the Rounded Rectangle Tool and the 'tilde' key is above.

If floating futuristic cloud cities aren't your thing, you can just make sweet shapes.  Checkit:

It'll Tickle Your Innards!

I found out from a recent episode of Mad Men that Mountain Dew used to be advertised as hillbilly joy juice.  It was promoted as “zero proof hillbilly moonshine” when it first came out in the 1940's.  They even had a picture of a hillbilly trying to shoot another hillbilly (next to what looks like an outhouse) on the bottles until the 1970's:

 
















Here is a very early commercial from 1966 featuring hillbillies, turkey-shootin' and a hot cartoon lady for your enjoyment:



I don't have that much to say on the topic, other than I find it interesting how the way you market something can have such an effect on how it is perceived by the public.  These early ads are a far cry from the EXTREME marketing of the 90's and later, but apparently it still tastes the same.  It also makes me wonder if that early marketing actually worked.  Were there that many hillbillies/hillbilly wannabes in the U.S. in the 1960's?  Seems kind of odd to me.

"It'll Tickle Your Innards" vs. "Do the Dew"
Hillbillies vs. Snowboarders
Which one is better?

Facts about Famous Brands - from GraphicDesignBlog.org

Interesting article about how 10 famous brands got their names. Click the picture or the link below for the jump.

http://www.graphicdesignblog.org/facts-about-famous-brands/

Baby with the Bathwater

Here are some poster designs I just completed for Surfside Players' production of Baby with the Bathwater, by Christopher Durang.  And earlier version of the poster and a brief description of the design is available here.

Since putting it on the postcard, though, a few changes have been made.  The play is a farce about a boy named Daisy and, in true Christopher Durang fashion, a lot of strange, sometimes darkly funny things happen.  I originally made the design to look like a children's book, but the director wanted to make it more clear that there is something...off about the whole thing.  He gave me some suggestions from the play of items to scatter around the floor of the baby.  So, I added a toy made of an old pipe from a hospital, a vodka bottle with a rubber nipple on it, a teddy bear with it's head ripped off, etc.

Below are the finished designs:

11 x 17 poster (I cut off the advertisement boilerplate for the purpose of posting it here)

8.5 x 11 paper flyer (w/ boilerplate)

Black and white small newspaper advertisement.

What is a "Brand"?

Branding is a big part of what I do, or at least what I try to do, with every design I create. Here is a good article I found on Gomediazine.com that breaks the concept of a brand down to simple terms.

Enjoy/learn:

http://www.gomediazine.com/design-articles/design-industry-insight/what-is-a-brand/

Mad Men font fail, or was it?

Yesterday, while catching up on Mad Men episodes I missed from this season, I came across this super-awesome and super-nerdy article which questioned whether or not the new Sterling Cooper Draper Price logo was written in Arial font (which was a font created by Microsoft much later than the 1960s), which would be an anachronism.

Anywho, if you like Mad Men and nerds and discussing typography, then the article below is for you!

Mad Men font fail - or was it?

Follow-up to Hidden Message Logos

Please check out this post  before reading below.

Ahhh, Baskin Robbins.  As a child, I had gone to the 31-flavored ice cream parlor and had become accustomed to this logo:

In the past few years, though, the logo has been redesigned and the branding for BR has completely changed.  Upon first glance, I just thought they kept the colors but made it look more whimsical and/or more kid-like.  I hadn't really paid much attention before but yesterday as I drove by a BR store in the Cleve I finally noticed the hidden message in the logo.

Pretty clever, B-Robs.  Pretty clever indeed.  Way to hide "31" in your own initials.

No other word to describe it but...Masterpiece

So many Glens, so much lightning

I have already posted a description of this Glengarry Glen Ross poster and a small version of it on a postcard on a previous post, but below are larger, updated versions of the design.  The color version is for flyers and the black and white version is a newspaper ad (although a color version may run instead).  The original design had the text centered and nothing along the side, but this new version needed a different layout to fit all the required text into these smaller formats.

I am currently working on a few small web design projects and I'm looking for more.  Do you know anyone who needs a website?  Tell 'em 'bout me!

FutureHeights!

I have been working on some advertisements for an online benefit auction for an organization called FutureHeights, which is a community-based non-profit that supports Cleveland Heights, and University Heights, Ohio.  The former is the area of town I live in.

Here is a vertical half-page ad I designed for the event, which will appear in the Heights Observer (local paper/news mag).  I ended up using the same color scheme of this blog page because I like it so much and I thought it fit the subject matter.

 

Website is GO for Launch.

After a series of set-backs and creative slumps, my website portfolio is up an running at www.adrdesignonline.com

I will probably continue to tweak it in the coming days, as I hope to add some music to "what i've done" page, but please visit the site and look around.

And, while we're on the topic of creative slumps, here's an article that helped me out a bit:
Beat (even the Worst) Creative Blocks
Maybe it can help you too!

Not for the easily offended...

WARNING: This post contains some bad language.  Turn away now if you can't handle it, and then go cry the rest of the day because you'll seriously be missing out.

I recently saw the video for Cee-Lo Green's song "F*** You," which I have determined is not only an ingenious song (with excellent musical production), but is also clever video which can be appreciated from a graphic design perspective.  Here's the video - with more commentary after the jump.



Every second of this three minute and forty-six second video shows lyrics to the song in white sans-serif font various solid-color backgrounds, and it manages to sustain its appeal the whole time without really introducing any new design elements or video footage.

The backup singers are represented with lyrics written in parentheses, which literally made me laugh out loud a number of times, seen below.  

The song itself is a wonderfully crafted combination of new and old.  It took me a couple watchings to realize just how well the video fit with that concept.

First, the video contains clever use of panning and zoom to show you which word to look at as it is being sung - a modern take on the follow-the-bouncing-ball videos we've seen in the past.

Second, while the style of the white type on solid background is very much a relatively-recent "in" design element (due mostly to the Mac and iPod ads we've all seen over the past few years), there is faux film reel grain and crackle added to the whole video to make it appear as we are watching the video at an old movie theater.

And finally, the Motown sound mixed with modern production techniques and the sailor-like mouth of Cee-Lo Green combines to form something new and old at the same time, and also something unlike anything else I've ever heard.

Cee-Lo Green is the Soul Machine.

It's Fall already?

This is a quick commission for an invitation to a dinner party.  The painting at the top was provided for me and the leaves at the bottom were cut out samples from the top image.  Nothing too fancy, but gets the job done.  (Note: All the information has been changed so that they don't get random people showing up.)  

Two Glens and a Baby

Here is a postcard I did for the Surfside Players in Florida.  It advertises the next two shows Surfside will be presenting, Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet, which is a play about cut-throat business men in 1980's Chicago, and the other is Baby with the Bathwater by Christopher Durang, a farce about a boy named Daisy.

Glengarry Glen Ross' poster idea was suggested to me by someone at Surfside, and it depicts a man in a suit atop the Willis (then Sears) Tower with an axe, ready to cut the ropes of his climbing co-workers as they near the apex.  I combined a photo of a purple, lightning-filled sky with a photo of Willis Tower, and drew the people in later by hand, purposely leaving them faceless and sort of abstract (albeit hard to tell because of their small size).  The text is a typewriter style font, and the color scheme and whole look of the poster is meant to evoke a Tom Clancy-like book cover or, probably more accurately, a movie poster based on one of his books.

Baby with the Bathwater's idea was suggested to me by the director of Surfside's production.  He wanted a cartoon-y, bright depiction of a baby and an overturned tub.  I took this idea and set out to make the poster look like a children's book.  The baby has a small tuft of hair and a quizzical look on its face, and the font is  a simple serif font called Century Schoolbook.  More versions of these show flyers will be posted as I finish them.

Hidden Logo Tricks = Supercool

This is a post from a while back on graphicdesignblog.org, a site which I check frequently.  I think this post is particularly interesting, as it shows how some logos contain hidden images, meanings, etc.  Enjoy!

http://www.graphicdesignblog.org/hidden-logos-in-graphic-designing/ 

My favorites are Mosleep:

and Horror Films: