All posts by dann

Design Process, Image Editing

Quick Wedding Photo Editing

December 9, 2011 dann Leave a comment

My friend Travis over at Travis Williams Photography [nice logo, btw] recently contacted me about a wedding he had just shot. The bride and groom had a 15″ height difference, which seemed normal to me as my wife and I have a 14″ difference. The problem was that in shuffling the family around for their wedding photos, he had the bride and the groom on the top step which would be completely normal except the height difference with the rest of the family came out looking unbalanced. Could I fix it? Sure, that would be easy. I wasn’t going to have to do anything difficult in Photoshop other than make a hole where the groom once existed and slide a copy of groom down a bit and clean it up a bit. You could do the same thing with a photograph in the magazine, but this was a wedding photo. No do-overs on taking these photos.

Here is the couple by themselves, which will be normal because that is their normal difference in height.

wedding photo edited in Photoshop

And then as a family. Just by looking at the lengths of their arms, I wouldn’t think anyone is over 5’7″, and being a step down doesn’t help. Sort of makes the groom look like an NBA center.

wedding photo edited in Photoshop

With a few minutes of editing, I masked out the image, removing the groom and leaving the family.

wedding photo edited in Photoshop

I dropped the groom down a bit on and cleaned up the area where he used to be and it worked out fine.

wedding photo edited in Photoshop

Even though the mother’s shadow had dropped down a bit, it still looked believable as there aren’t any other shadows to make hers look poorly offset. To fix the shadow, that would have taken a lot more work, and it wouldn’t have been noticeable unless there was a smart CSI checking out the photo. The groom does look a little out of place – his body proportions don’t match up, making his torso seem short and his legs too long. Time to crop the photo to remove the legs on everyone.

wedding photo edited in Photoshop

And with that, there is now a great wedding photo made better with a little image editing in Photoshop. I’ll post some difficult photo editing projects another time.

Business Cards, Logo/Identity

Bee’s Best Honey Labels Design

December 1, 2011 dann Leave a comment

This was a very quick design for client looking to get a couple hundred circle labels for his honey jar lids. With our large format printer, printing and die-cutting was not an issue, though it can cut any shape and round really isn’t a challenge. Pulling from our stock images I put together a decent background and then it was the type. Type is frequently underrated, often times getting thrown into a design like someone writes a list of things to do – they just put it on there. That isn’t my style, and careful typography is a bit of a craft. The result was a great design that should help these jars of honey fly off the shelf – okay, not literrally, but you know what I mean. There was also a business card that needed creating, and with very little information to put on it, a honeycomb background was a perfect fit.

Sopapillas, anyone?

Calendar, Freebies & Fun Stuff, portfolio

Our Free 2012 Wall Calendars are here [almost]!

November 28, 2011 dann Leave a comment

This is our 14th wall calendar in a row, with some of the prior years being much funnier than others. Last year was all about the 50th anniversary of man in space [go Yuri!], and this year it is about the Olympic games. It also has a bit of the sailing theme as we happen to be sponsors of the U.S. Sailing Team. Go, er, floaty-boats! Okay then, first up: get the sailing team a mascot so that cheering is more than just “Go U.S.A.!”

Let us know if you want a calendar [and are local] or we can let you know when we are done with printing them and you can swing by and pick a few up.

Click here for a pdf version that is easier to read, but sorry, you can’t print it out. We aren’t scrooges, we just know that the final calendar is going to be much better than what can be printed out on an office printer.

Freebies & Fun Stuff

Good at Color[ing hair]

November 2, 2011 dann Leave a comment

I forget that not all of my life is in front of a computer or with a sketch pad [really] and that there are other designery type things I do. Other than paint choices for home interiors [I really enjoy those], I was also coloring hair for my wife and friends for a bit. I did receive the best complement back from a friend that had just gotten her hair styled before a wedding at a high end shop — the stylist asked where she had her color done as it was fantastic and must have cost quite a bit. Nope, just me in the backyard underneath my huge grapefruit tree under a speckly rain.

Hair Coloring

Hair Coloring

Hair Coloring

Hair Coloring

Design Process, Favorites, Illustration, Logo/Identity, sketches

Destination Southern Africa Logo Redesign [Okay, a bit more of a touch-up]

October 25, 2011 dann Leave a comment

Destination Southern Africa [DSA] was started 10 years ago, offering tailored vacations to Africa. They have plenty of travel packages, and unfortunately we all missed out on going to see the FIFA World Cup in 2010 through them. Next time…

As most companies do, DSA started small and created their own logo. It makes sense – with any new business, cash is tight and spending money a logo is not usually one of the top 10 things clamoring for the business’ money [phones, maybe chairs – those things are important]. Of course, I would say seeing a logo is often the customer’s first interaction with a business, along with the human side of things, but I won’t go that route, at least not today. After 10 years, logos can get a little stale as well as not showing the same level of professionalism that the company now holds. This is where DSA found themselves, needing to sharpen their logo a bit, and I set to work on redesigning it. Below is the original logo, which had a few modifications of type and color over the years. It could be an awkward logo to put into use in material, and the name didn’t stand out as much as it should..

The initial conversation had me going with something similar, trying to keep with the sunset and the silhouette, both the most recognizable parts of the logo. A new Land Rover D110 was also in the mix as that is the safari vehicle most frequently used. Other animals were brought up, and though the focus is to be southern Africa, it is not the most recognizable shape – at least compared to Italy or Japan. Below are some of the quick notes and doodles that came of that first conversation.

After some mulling over of the concepts in my head [there is always mulling] I ran out several dozen ideas [not all of them are shown]. I stuck with the circle from the original logo and added the bottom as a place to anchor the logo and the text. A few different sunsets, a potentially rough hand-hewn logo, and a double ring to bring the logo into focus seemed to help keep the look while giving the text a prominent place. The 3 logos with check marks were chosen by the customer as ones to develop further. I did have in mind an old stamp or sticker that would have been found on travel trunks in the 1800s, but the push was for something clean and new and easy to use.

Another large part of logo design is the typeface and potential modification of the letterforms. I pulled a few dozen from our 10,000+ typeface library, ranging from the very clean to the playful. Three of them stood out to the customer, and they all happened to be part of the same family.

More logos were created, this time with a square bottom to give the text more room, and a giraffe was added in as they are highly recognizable. A few trees were created, but what I really wanted to do [and did] was create a far more dynamic sky and sunset. It really helped make the logo alive while retaining the same general look as the original logo.

Two logos were chosen from that group, and people were added into the Land Rover as well as baby giraffe.

I took both of these and dropped them into an image just to see how the logo would fit, and the transparent edges seemed to work rather well, though I was a bit more fond of the first pair with the darker background.

At this stage in the game, the design is getting pretty tight with only slight modifications, and with that in mind, the client pointed out that the word “Destination”, though equally important in the name, had lesser prominence than “Southern Africa”. The round sun was called into question, and that was squared off as well with a few versions of how the sunset would work. I moved the background over to a rich earthy burgundy to add more warmth to the logo.

I had forgotten that the silhouette had just been a quick doodle and it was pointed out that the last person in the vehicle looked like a babboon. That might make the safari a bit more exciting, but the vehicle needed an overhaul.

That was it – a little sliding around of the text and DSA has a logo to last at least another 10 years, all created as vector are in Adobe Illustrator [100% Photoshop free!]

Posters and Banners

Double Dial Locking Plier Banner

October 18, 2011 dann Leave a comment

This scenario is played out daily: client has a product but is unsure what the design to promote it should look like [don’t be surprised – that is my what I do]. For the design here, the client has a locking plier with an additional thumb wheel, which is a great idea. I spend most of my time pulling the pliers back out, adjusting, and then trying again. It’ll be sold in a booth at a few car shows this autumn, so not only does in need to appeal to all the car aficionados, but to the wives as well with the push as a gift for Christmas. It doesn’t cost that much, so that is a great idea. Oh yes, and don’t break the bank on the design and production of the banner.

The solution, as you can see, was to take a high-res photo of the pliers, mask out the background and put it on a metal surface. Large red text pretty much seals the deal, but the ribbon in the corner is there to hopefully catch the eye of the Christmas shoppers. Is it a success? We’ll all have to wait until after the car shows have concluded. A Christmas tree in the booth might be a good attention getter as well. Check them out at www.ddlockingplier.com.

Double Dial Locking Plier

Design Process, Illustration, Logo/Identity

BARRacuda Swimworks Logo Creation

October 11, 2011 dann 3 Comments

A friend asked me to create a logo for her swim instruction, but her swim credentials are a bit higher: 4 time US National Champion [18 time US Nationals finalist], Olympic Silver Medalist, 3 time NCAA Champ and 4 time All-American. She won her first national championship at 13 [or was it 12?] and she has a wikipedia entry. Any thoughts of her ability to instruct should have long since evaporated. If you are in Pensacola and want to work on your swimming [and fall somewhere from beginner to competitive swimmer/triathlete] I’d suggest giving her a call. She is a great person to be around – I believe I have started to swim faster just by talking with her. Visit her Swim Works site on Facebook.

She provided an apt name for her by playing with her last name [Barr] and adding a little “acuda” to spell out one of the fastest and most tough looking fish int the ocean, the BARRacuda [go check out some photos if you don’t know what one looks like]. I set to work on some sketches and what follows is the step by step process I use for most of the logos I create. Lots of sketches, then plenty more versions cleaned up in Adobe Illustrator.

This is not how they swim, but it should.

They always seem to be smiling, with a mouth full of nasty teeth.

Swim goggles? Maybe.

A little more doable, with the dynamic swirls [somehow it needs to scream SPEED].

Head on? Maybe a pack?

Maybe from living and training in Florida helped conjure up some NASA rocket imagery. Rockets are fast, too.

One version was narrowed down, and after several more renditions, one particular logo was chosen, but it needed a bit more energy. For those wondering why it was done in black and white vs. beautiful color, it is that color makes it too easy. A color logo or image contains more information, but it needs to be a good logo to survive as black and white. Black and white always comes first.

Once one was chosen, the text was introduced.

And the final black and white logo was produced.

Next came the color version, and both color and texture could be added.

That last purple barracuda with the glowing yellow eyes was the one.

It easily lends itself to banners, postcards, business cards, etc. Here it is as an 8 foot long poster. Don’t worry about the website – that should be coming soon.

The Little ESPN Tattoo that Never Was

September 16, 2011 dann Leave a comment

ESPN Magazine contacted one of our sister companies, a printer of temporary tattoos, and asked if we could design a tattoo for one of their articles. They asked for an 8″x10″ white tattoo made up of all sorts of NFL plays to put on a players arm for an article about them. Which player? I’d love to know, and an 8″x10″ tattoo would pretty much wrap my bicep. I suppose that means it could have been any player in the NFL [wah wah wah]. In the end, they must have gone with another idea, though it would have made a great photo. I went through a half dozen versions to end up with this one that was approved, but never was used.

Invitations, Packaging, Posters and Banners

Event of the Century

August 31, 2011 dann Leave a comment

How about some fun for your wedding? Time for the “Event of the Century” posters and cds. Michael and Jessica came up with that great idea to give to their wedding guests. I suppose Liz Taylor would have had to settle for “The Event of About Every 7 Years or So” — that doesn’t have the same ring to it. The first go around I mistakenly thought that their wanting to make the cd look like an old record album meant I was making it look like one, but who would have known there were blank cds out there that have the black vinyl grooves already created.

In the end, their event of the century was a success, which is what all of us really want.

Here is their movie poster…

…and cd cover…

…and the cd label that looks like a vinyl record that wasn’t needed…

…and the final cd label.

Credentials/Passes, Events, Personalization

’10 Credentials for University of Arizona Football

August 26, 2011 dann Leave a comment

These credentials led off my design style for the 2010-11 school year with the white outline and shadow and nearly white background [I’ll be posting the rest of 2010 soon enough]. The design carried the red and blue colors well, while highlighting the players. With the thin white outline [like a paper cut out] the players were both frozen in a moment in time as well jumping out of the noise and chaos of the game and stadium. Add in a bit of a reverse glow darkening the inner edge of the player and the effect was complete. Why make attractive credentials? One was help bring the look of the program up a notch [every little bit helps] as well as making keepsakes. There was just one hangup — these sports credentials were beginning to get rather complex, both in amount of unique credentials as well as their ability to be easily identified by security personnel. For each game, there were 11 different credentials to keep track of [a total of 84 unique credentials for the season] and though they are attractive, a bit of functionality was lost.

I’ll spare you the numbers, but 4 All Season passes for All Access, Photo and Media, and then 11 game specific credentials with 7 games played made for 84 unique credentials with each set getting a unique set of numbers [per game]. It is a good thing to have some personalization software to add into our page layout application.

All this to say the credentials were produced without a hitch, and another exciting football was had.

Graphic Design and Illustration Portfolio