Jeremy Bolton | Logo Designer

Grape & Grain Design Receives Spokane ADDY Award

Jeremy — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:23:30 +0000

Last night I attended the 2010 Spokane ADDY awards, which are given out for advertising and creative excellence. I was thrilled to learn my Grape & Grain work had been awarded a Silver ADDY in the Ad Club Promotion category.

I want to thank everyone at the Spokane AdFed for giving me the opportunity to design this year’s Grape & Grain collateral and specifically Mellie Price who thought I was the right man for the job.

Enjoy some (almost sober) pictures taken at the event by the Northwest Photobooth Company. Also be sure to check out the full set of photos from the 2010 Spokane ADDY awards.

JeremyBolton.com Now Optimized For Your Touch Mobile Device

Jeremy — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:31:06 +0000

When I first decided to create my website I had a few choices with regards to publishing platforms. The more I learned the more impressed I became with WordPress. Not only was it simple to use and aesthetically pleasing, but it also had a great set of developers who were continually building templates and plugins. While I know a decent amount of basic HTML it has been the dedicated WordPress developers who have helped make my site user-friendly.

So when it came time to make a mobile-friendly version of my website I knew to look no further than the WordPress plugins page. And my search didn’t take long. I quickly came across WPtouch, a plugin for making my site easily viewable on touch mobile devices such as the iPhone, the iPod Touch, the Blackberry Storm, the Palm Pre and Android devices.

After a quick download I activated the plugin and my site was ready to go. It really was as simple as that. I tested it out on my iPhone and found a simple interface for navigating through the various areas of my website. WPtouch allows for a few changes to background textures, a good set of pre-loaded icons, and the ability to change any text color. You can also create and upload your own icons to personalize it. In the screenshot below you can see that when I saved my website to my iPhone it automatically uses my logo as the launch icon.

Interface 1

Interface 2

Interface 3

Interface 4

Much of my website’s functionality is also kept in the mobile touch version. Visitors can make comments, email or tweet posts and even send a post to social bookmarking sites such as Digg or Del.icio.us.

I couldn’t be happier with WPtouch. With a few simple clicks I had an easy to use mobile touch version of my blog. I recommend this plugin for anyone wanting to get their WordPress website on a variety of touch mobile devices. And if you are one of the owners of those devices I highly encourage you to checkout JeremyBolton.com.

Insyndia Logo Design Process

Jeremy — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:46:24 +0000

Insyndia is a new IT consulting company that asked me to help create a unique identity for their business. I was excited to help a business start fresh from the ground up. After having them fill out an initial logo questionnaire I began building a design brief and sketching out my ideas. Here is a brief excerpt from Insyndia’s website to give you some background about the services they offer:

We tailor services to your realistic needs and budgets. From day-to-day operational support and application development, to strategic reengineering of infrastructure and network architecture – we strive to meet your specific needs in a way that provides your organization with the necessary scalability you need to remain competitive. At Insyndia, there’s no one-size-fits-all methodology, but together we’ll forge a technology management and support relationship that’s best for your organization, both today and well into the future.

Insyndia Logo Design Brief & Sketches

Design Brief
Because Insyndia was a brand new business I started the design process by gathering key words and concepts that the company wanted to portray. Based on their initial emails and questionnaire I narrowed down the key words to the following:

Nurturing
Innovative
Trustworthy
Transparent
Loyal
Unfailing Ethics
Passionate
Service Oriented

I then took these keywords and set out to create a variety of logo options that would represent the ideals of the company. It was very important to Insyndia that they have a logo that was clean, simple, and effective.

Logo Options

The more information I gathered the more I saw a pattern begin to emerge in the form of the letter “i.” The letter “i” was found twice in the word Insyndia as well as in the company’s tagline: imagine. ignite. inspire. I decided to build my logo designs around the idea and form of the letter “i.”

A Few Unused Insyndia Logo Options

After looking over a few of my initial logo options they narrowed it down to one that they wanted to move forward with. The logo they chose was based on two sets of arcing circles which were aligned around a central circle. One arc of circles represented Insyndia, while the other represented the client. Both arcs are shown coming together around a central circle which represented the project at hand. The logo also took the shape of an “eye” which became a play on the letter “i” as well as conveying the attention to detail that Insyndia represents.

Insyndia Logo Mark

Next, I chose a few simple yet unique fonts to work with the logo mark. After the mark and the font were finalized I began setting up the structure of the logo to give it uniformity and balance. Spacing was key to give the logo room to breathe.

Insyndia Logo Mark Structure

Color Options

Before moving on to color I showed how the logo worked in simple black and white. While the logo may not appear in black and white that often it still must be able to hold up as an effective design without the need for color.

Insyndia Logo Black & White Options

We were finally ready to start exploring color. This can sometimes be the toughest part due to the countless number of color options available. I sent over a few dozen color options as a jumping off point. The client felt the first round of colors were too bright and not professional enough.

They knew a lot of their business would be contracted through the government and they wanted to make sure their logo appealed to that demographic. I began creating darker color palettes that felt more appropriate for Insyndia. A blue and a gray were ultimately chosen as Insyndia’s color palette.

A Few Insyndia Logo Color Options

Insyndia Logo Final Color Palette

While the blue and gray were chosen for the logo, the client also liked how the logo looked in white on a colored background. We made sure the logo could easily be seen when it appeared in white against the new color palette.

Insyndia Logo Color Options

The Final Logo Design

The final Insyndia logo design is clean and inviting. The structure gives the logo balance while the color palette offers a professional look and feel.

Insyndia Logo Final

Make It Bigger By Paula Scher

Jeremy — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:00:00 +0000

Veteran designer Paula Scher has been influencing the design community with her brilliance for nearly four decades. Her autobiography, Make It Bigger, is a first-hand account of her journey from budding beginner to practiced principal at the New York design firm Pentagram. While the graphic design profession has continually changed over the course of Scher’s career, Scher herself has continued to refine personal design techniques without feeling the need to cave to current design trends. As a designer, a historian, and a trailblazer much can be learned from Paula Scher’s long line of professional pursuits which are all a part of her book Make It Bigger.

Make It Bigger, Paula Scher

In the early days of her career Paula Scher designed album covers for CBS records. Being part of such a corporate environment led to a variety of power struggles between Scher and her executives. Like anything else that was seen as a moneymaker, executives at CBS records wanted to create albums that would sell music first and foremost and were less concerned with artistic or conceptual design. Fortunately, because of time constraints that were sometimes involved in the process, Scher was able to squeak through highly conceptual designs she later said would have never been approved for the marketplace today. Of course there were a few album covers she probably wishes she could forget, “A friend at CBS records in the seventies predicted that when I die, my epitaph will read, ‘Art director of the original Boston album.’ The thought has always horrified me” (Scher 26). It is this use of dry wit sprinkled throughout the book, which makes for a few good chuckles along the way.

A great deal is also shared in Make It Bigger about the client-designer relationship and the politics that many times accompany them. For example, Scher points out that, a good portion of the time, her first design proves to be the most successful, but clients believe more is better (instead of more just being more.) Scher explains that she often times presents design options that are simply fillers, because the client wanted to see as many examples as possible. This somehow made the clients feel that a satisfactory amount of time had been spent on the design problem, regardless of how easily the solution may have initially come to Scher (the Citi logo is a great example of this). It was these types of professional experiences, and how Scher reacted to them, that I related to and learned most from the book.

Scher’s love of New York City also shines through page after page. The city seems to inspire her work and, in turn, her work inspires countless others combing the streets of Manhattan. Her passionate work with typography takes center stage all over New York City. From giving The Public Theater it’s identity to her design of the exterior signage at 770 Broadway you can see that Scher has a great eye for laying out type. She likens New York City streets to magazine layouts saying, “A well designed city allows the user to navigate both terrains and encourages their peaceful coexistence” (Scher 236). When the final designed came to fruition for 770 Broadway she explained, “the building is the story, but the awning is the headline” (Scher 236).

Make It Bigger by Paula Scher is an excellent read for any designer who wants an inside look into the world of graphic design from someone who has been in the profession for 40 years. Scher’s exceptional amount of experience in a variety graphic design areas becomes inspirational. Her use of dry humor combined with lessons on tackling design and client related issues makes this book an enjoyable read with nuggets of knowledge tucked into every page. It also paints an accurate reality of what a designer will face throughout their career. Case in point, “being ‘over’ is inevitable and something a designer should plan for. The great thing about being over—after one finished the self flagellation—is that one can start right up again” (Scher 261).

Below you will find part one and two of a great interview with Paula Scher.

Why A Logo Costs More Than $100

Jeremy — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 03:14:19 +0000

When asked what I charge for my logo designs I usually get a kind response saying we will be in touch, never to hear from the person again. I think many times people don’t realize what goes into the logo design process. The above video by Brian White of TriLion Studios is a great example of what it takes to create a logo. Keep in mind he is only working on one logo concept and isn’t even showing the time it takes to generate and sketch initial ideas, meet with clients, or build a design brief. A great logo designer will not only make something that is visually eye-catching, but also conceptually sound.

Logo Trends: Motion Graphics

Jeremy — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 16:46:13 +0000

Every year I love to look back and see the trends that took place within the logo design industry. While many people try to have their designs stand out from the crowd it is amazing to see how much we still influence one another with our designs. LogoLounge does a great job of showcasing logo trends each year with plenty of examples to look over.

Since I am always on the lookout for inspiration and researching what is going on in the logo design industry I thought I would start documenting some of those trends here.

The first trend I have started to notice a lot this last couple of years are companies that are extending their brand by using a lot of motion graphics when presenting their logos. Currently many of these companies are movie studios or television stations, but as software becomes more easily available I think more and more businesses will want to have an animated version of their logo as part of their branding arsenal.

While I still think a brand has a to have a logomark that is effective even when seen in black and white, I think we will starting seeing businesses and designers pushing logos that also use motion graphics.

Take a look at a few groups that have expanded their brand by using motion graphics and animation to showcase their logos.

Yay:Nay:Stay: Expedia’s New Logo

Jeremy — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:00:55 +0000

Expedia Logo Gets Streamlined

Once again I am drawn to the new typeface more so than the new mark. I am also noticing a trend with new logo typefaces that shear off the ascenders and descenders of each letter. The old logo gave the feel of zooming off to some fun location. The new logo feels a little stuffy, bland, and corporate. (Not exactly the image I think this type of company is wanting to portray.) What do you think?

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

The Power of Branding

Jeremy — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:00:37 +0000

A few weeks ago I was reading the Logo Design Love blog and came across a poster designed by Jason Dean called the ABC’s of Branding. The poster uses no ink and is instead created through a stamp and emboss treatment. It is being sold in a limited edition run with each poster numbered and signed by Jason. Being an aspiring logo designer I couldn’t help but buy the poster for inspiration. I was very excited to see that my poster had arrived today.

ABC's of Branding Poster

As you can see the poster depicts the English alphabet using nothing but logos to represent the various letters. What is truly amazing about the poster (other than it’s beautiful design) is that only certain letters from famous (or infamous) logos are used to create the alphabet. Though you are seeing each letter out of context, you will be amazed at how many logos you will recognize based on only one letter. This just goes to show how powerful a brand or logo can truly be.

Jason was kind enough to send an answer key along with the poster to show the logos that each of the letters was pulled from. Thankfully I was only stumped by two of them. How many of the logos can you recognize based on just one letter? (Also, if you are as impressed with Jason’s design as I was please go purchase one of the limited edition posters from his website.)

A New Year, A New Work Space

Jeremy — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 02:21:43 +0000

If you are anything like me you need the right environment in order to work effectively. Whether it is good lighting, quick access to resources, or a coffee in hand we all have an ideal work environment that helps our productivity.

I am fortunate to finally have my dream work space. With a new desk and matching filing cabinet, my LED Cinema Display, the Magic Mouse, my ColorMunki, and a good set of design books for reference I couldn’t be more happy with how my home office turned out.

It also got me thinking: What are the three items I almost always have while designing? It wasn’t a hard question to answer. My three would be a good variety of music playing, a cup of coffee, and my pen and sketchpad. What do you all like to have while you work?

Home Office Desk Setup

Files & Growing Library

Design Resources

Comfy Chair for Sketching

Now That’s Clever – Truce Logo

Jeremy — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 18:25:53 +0000

Truce Logo by Turner Duckworth

Truce Packaging by Turner Duckworth

I have found my new logo design hero: Turner Duckworth. Duckworth is a logo, brand, and package designer. You may have seen some of his work: the Amazon.com logo, the Palm logo, Dolby logo refresh, packaging for Coca-Cola and PopChips, as well as many others. The above logo was created to brand a new vodka and cognac liqueur mix. As you can see the word truce is cleverly flipped and able to fit perfectly inside itself. This is an example of a great conceptual design using carefully crafted type treatment. I think it is just brilliant. Be sure to check out the rest of his amazing portfolio.

Jeremy Bolton | Logo Designer

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