illustrated below are some of the jobs where i've been asked, either by myself or as a c.d. of a team of designers, to develop a brand. while the science of the brand is not shown, the results are. i've selected certain collateral pieces from the jobs to show how the logo, typography, color scheme and messaging come together to create a cohesive look and feel all the way across.

now, i'd like to give you my take on branding. i'm really opposed to the dogma of what most people consider brand. it's not curing cancer, it's communication. it's not zen, it's physics. i feel that most branding is not flexible, cannot grow easily and is either way too specific and/or too arbitrary. the bottom line for me is if there's a strong framework, simple guidelines and the idea and ideals of the company are clearly communicated, then it's a successful campaign.

having said that, i would place culture in a seperate category. how things are done and felt and achieved within a company certainly bleeds out into the physical world, but is not something that has to be revisited every time a piece new collateral is created.

just my opinion.
Bosco Public Relations

after i created the logo for this group of fun people that love what they do, the owner wanted it everywhere and on everything. Luckily enough, that dovetailed nicely with the branding. There was little fear of over exposure in this case, but i was still a little put off by having these orange hands everywhere.

how we finally came to an agreement is by creating threed logos and mixing them up. the primary logo is the hand, the secondaries are just the blue and white wordart and the wordart with the primary logo in the "o."

by mixing them up, it creates a strong presence without being obnoxious.
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Denver Fire Food Festival

yeah...it's garish, obnoxious, loud and ovderdone. not my usual design m.o.

for some reason, though, it's one of my favorite sets. i think one reason is the logo which is probably my favorite of all my designs. i think it even looks pretty drun good in black and white.

i experimented with levels of business and sensory overload according to the target. i turned it down a little for b2b and way the hell up for hard-core enthusiasts for a dm from a mailing list.
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DiGiacomo Men's Clothier

back in my school days, i drew so many faces in so many art classes for so many years, its no wonder i developed my often asked-for and used "nonmen," as i call them.

the project above was the first time i got to roll them out comerdially, so i look back on this job with a certain amount of fondness.

the original design used only one tie color until the client and i happened upon the idea of assigning each of the major designers he carries with a different color. my suggestion was to use more of a neutral color palate as i thought it would be more flexible and definitely more sophisticated, but the client ended up liking the straight-up brights.

it's a compromise i suppose i can handle.
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Habibi Moroccan Restaurant

the concept of the restaurant, to put it simply was moroccan food turned inside-out.

that's exactly how the branding job was executed. the star is straight from the moroccan flag, but the colors are inside-out. typically, any moroccan artform is very old world and hasn't changd for thoushands of years, so we kept the look and the color, but gave all the elements a twist.

below the star in the log is what looks like arabic writing but is really just habibi in script turned upside down. we also added s cool lighting scheme to add texture and show the sensual side of morocco instead of the sun-baked desert side.
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Jack's Restaurant

the best part of this job are the postcards. the client gave me the opportunity to be just a little suggestive to juxtapose the straightforward additude of their food and decor

i also thought that the vintage representations were a perfect match to the logo and restaurant image.

everything was produced in one color in order to keep costs down, which really was a part of the bigger brand.
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Jeti Interactive Services

code is black and white. what you put into computers is what you get out of them. that's how the idea of a zebra came about. we looked over a lot of black and white objects and ideas including things like a checkerboard or yin and yang symbol to penguins and tuxedoes. yeah, it went that far..

so the first iteration was something very stark and clean with the only color being used in the type treatments. they were color coded to coincide with different facets of the business. we were all very happy with it till we did a print test. it was good, but really lacked a certain life that the company was trying to convey.

what you see to the left is the second and final iteration. we flipped the scheming so that the text is always black or white, depending on the background, and the zebra image was colorized. what this ended up achieving is an almost digital abstract design element that can work well with the jeti logo and can be used equally effective in small areas or large fields.

to keept the brand liquid, as i like to do and often get stoned by peers for doing, i moved the elements around to where ever i felt they looked best on whatever the application might have been.
Klatch Café

everything is very simple here, as you can see. this is one of those jobs that required a lot of research and not as much design time to get to what seems to be a simple conclusion.

the research mostly consisted of what everyone else was doing. let me tell you if i see one more coffee shop with some tired script or fake brushstrokes, i might just lose it, man!

in any case, i ended up using the the photos i took for my own benefit in the branding effort to set up a clean grid pattern that runs throughout all of the collateral. i put some perspective to the tiled wall image just to add a little more interest.
KR Skateboards

whereas most companies have to update at some point and time, this was a rare instance where a company had to "downdate" due to the aging and growing sophistication of its core demographic.

this consisted of skate culturists that now have families and mortgages but didn't lose all of their inherant edge.

by moving from a grafitti look to a tight color palate and a modular block look, we achieved a higher level of refinement. to keep it young, i developed a series of photo-based illustrations of skaters and creating an abstract expression of a wheel that is sometimes used with the logo and sometimes as a background element.
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Lux! Auto Detailing

this newly revamped company wanted to set themselves apart by emphasizing their great service. i designed the look to invoke the 50's service station or malt shop (authentic, not retro-cheesy) look. to tie in another element, i decided to use the black stripes that are a slight reference to racing.

the primary logo was suplemented by three more of similar type and became so popular they were given names and put on t-shirts that were sold on site. one was sent only to vip customers in order to increase collectibility.
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NLS: New Leadership Seminars

a stuffy image began to erode profits as this seminar company's demographic kept getting younger and younger. This is part of a larger seminar company that wanted to keep all if its branding but launch this as more of a stand-alone sub brand.

from the inside, the company almost took on a new-age bent and staged a turnaround in attendance and profits.

most of the increase was due to word of mouth, so mu job was to match the outside with the inside. i designed a logo that is a little cheeky, but it instantly expresses the mantra of the company: don't follow.

the work on the secondary logo was as easy as choosing a new font and doing some quick repositioning.
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RAH Sportsbar

opened by three guys in baltimore (from three different cities) that weren't happy with the acess to their hometown teams in the area, this place set out to put a new face on the usual fare. woman friendy, clean and serious about sports on a national level.

the cheerleader id was my idea and a hard sell. i think i won them over when i stated that everyone who likes sports likes cheerleaders and they are a much more accessible and interesting image than a football or something. besides that, women that don't necessarily love sports aren't intimidated before they even come in the door.

since this branding, they have hired three actresses that portray the three cheerleaders in the logo.
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