Personal Project: Beer Bottle Relabeling

My brother just turned 40 so I made him some over-the-hill OLD-inspired labels to replace the real ones on a few fairly nice brews I picked up for him. I didn’t feel like wasting money on a gag gift, but wanted to get him at least a little something to remind him how old he is getting. I started with a Google search and found plenty of source material. A few minutes in Photoshop on each one replacing and adding text where appropriate and the final result turned out fantastic. I removed the original beer labels by soaking them in water for about 10-15 minutes and then peeling them off. To attach the new beer labels I used some double-sided tape which worked perfectly to keep them nice and smooth on the bottle. This was a real easy way to add a personal touch to gift. I’m thinking about doing this for more people as the holiday season approaches.

Check them all out here.

And the final result:

Siousca Photography Branding Sketches

I’ve been working on some branding for an awesome photographer and good friend of mine Dave Waddell of Siousca Photography. I thought I’d share a quick sneak peek of the research and progress so far from my trusty Moleskine. You can see some inspiration on the left, the original logo on the top of the right hand page and a bunch of concepts following that. Siousca is the Native American term for the land around the Brandywine river which is where Dave grew up. So there is definitely a bend towards that.

Hopefully, I’ll be wrapping this up soon, as I know Dave is patiently waiting. I’ll be sure to post some more on this one as it has been a blast to work on. In the meantime, if you need a photographer for weddings, engagements or family photos, check Dave out.

A good friend of mine remodels homes and runs his own company, Wilkinson Remodeling. As the company was growing he realized he needed an updated look. Nothing was wrong with his old logo (see below), but it was time to step up his identity to match the success of his business. He does great work, by the way, so if you are in the South East Pennsylvania area and are planning a project – hit him up.

Original Logo

1. Concept

I had a few ideas from the beginning about how he could set himself apart from the competition. But what I really wanted to do for him was create something that said ‘Hey, I built this with my hands. And it’s better than anything you could buy from a big box store or get shopping in a catalog.’ Cause that’s the kind of work he does. So I went for this quality, handcrafted look – and I needed it to be about homes and construction. A Continuous Lean was a big inspiration, both the branding itself and the images, products and stories featured on the blog. So… here is my first round of sketches.

2. Sketches

3. Early Concepts

Of course, as all good clients do – he had a few ideas of his own. I made some suggestions, provided some ideas and here is the first round of slightly refined logo concepts. The bottom middle happened to be my favorite. Perhaps it was a bit too rugged for the high-end homes he was working on. But man, it sure is true to what he does.

 4. Final

We decided on a combination of my favorite and a much less jagged version and landed on what you see below. We added in the shield to show some of the craftsman feel and make a nod to the founding date. Being around for more than 5 years in the home biz during a down market is quite impressive. I should also mention the logo makes use of the Bebas font which you can find over at Font Squirrel.

Final Wilkinson Remodeling logo.

5. Bonus Content

I made some mock-ups of what the logo could look like in a series of small ads. I really like the whole look behind ‘Quality Craftsmanship Guaranteed’ that you can see in some of my sketches.

All in all, a great project and a great client. A strong identity that could have easily been just another construction company.

New TV Commercial Sells Anticipation of Baseball, Music and Sex

I’m not much of a Budweiser guy, not at all actually. But their new commercial has really caught my attention. In the 60 second version of the spot they show glimpses, or vignettes, of people getting ready for something. The scenes range from a guy barbecuing in his yard, people getting ready for a baseball game, a band gearing up for a concert and my favorite, a woman getting ready to go to work. The art direction here is spectacular. The music (You! Me! Dancing! by Los Campesinos) has that driving baseline and building anticipation of preparing. And that is what Budweiser is really selling here, the promise of, or  the hope of, an awesome time. Whether you’re getting ready for the party, the game, the concert , the date or all of the above – what you’re excited most about is what could happen. And Bud captures that here perfectly:

Budweiser – Grab Some Buds

I guess the tie that binds everything together here is the beer. Budweiser would like you to believe that it is responsible for making all the magic happen. That’s advertising for ya!

Ultimate Designer’s Quiz

Fast Company is a great magazine. I’ve had a subscription for the last few years and I can say that it is a great resource for anyone who is in business for themselves; whether it’s for design or not. Accordingly, Fast Company is a magazine that has “a unique focus on the most creative individuals sparking change in the marketplace”. (Fast Company – About) I highly recommend it as a “must-have” magazine subscription.

In the April 2010 issue, Tina Dupuy authored a great little quiz Ad Agency or Indie Band? She says advertising creatives fancy themselves rock stars and although I don’t disagree with her I have to admit, I didn’t do very well when put to the test. Both creatives and bands, she says, use similar techniques when naming themselves.The challenge here is to distinguish top creative agencies with up and coming indie bands.

Take the Quiz

Ad Agency or Indie Band Quiz Resource Guide

After taking the quiz myself, I wound up Googling (yes, it’s a word) every agency and band to see what their sites were like, check out their work and tune into some new music.  Aside from naming, there is one thing the two groups have in common and that’s an appreciation of a well designed website. Here are my results:

*** Spoiler Alert: If you didn’t take the quiz yet, you’re about to find out the answers. ***

Bands

White Rabbits
Black Lips
Ra Ra Riot
Big Business
Apostle of Hustle
Black Math Horsemen
Six Finger Satellite
The Mars Volta
7 Worlds Collide
Spiral Stairs
The Crayon Fields
Sleepy Sun
Amadou & Mariam
Florence and the Machine
Noah and the Whale
Zero 7
City Center
Volcano Suns
Red Red Meat
Client
Gift of Gab

Agencies

Juniper Park
Rockfish
Big Spaceship
Unknownlab
Victors and Spoils
Ground Zero
Toy

A Man’s Home is His Castle…

And truer words were never spoken when that home is the hands of this father & son team. The newest LEGO commercial (and possibly new campaign) aimed squarely at adult men speaks this proverbial expression loud and clear. Using a voice reminiscent of the late John Facenda (of NFL films greatness) LEGO manages to capture the ear of the casual viewer during ESPN commercial breaks and the like.  I first saw this during SportsCenter and have seen it multiple times on the guy-centric sports channel. It does the job effectively as everyone who has seen it  immediately wants to get out the bricks and build something.

The best part about this commercial is that the LEGO set they’re building isn’t a set at all. It comes purely from their imagination. How fun is that? A father and son building the wildest thing they can think of, complete with “windmill thingies” just because they can. I don’t know if LEGO is going to release any more in the “Build Together” series but I hope they do. This is the first time I can remember LEGO doing targeted television commercial ads aimed at the adults who are actually buying the product.  Brilliant, it works.

LEGO Build Together

I think this commercial is hitting the airwaves just in time for the holiday season.  And I for one am going to go out and buy some LEGO sets to build with my son. You should too!

Wow. This is awesome.

An Oakland Raiders mascot with an extremely crowd- friendly moustache. I found this logo (circa 1970-something-awesome) when looking for old NFL logos and I just knew I had to do something with this picture. The guy above is a perfect embodiment of what the Raiders stand for; I really don’t need to say anything else. I just remember growing up with friends whose dad was a big Raiders fan. I’m not really sure how Oakland got to claim the color black as their own, there’s plenty of teams who have black as their main or alternate uniform color. In any case, no Starter jackets or beanies here, just plain old Raiders fun. Check out the current logo below. Not much has  changed except for the nice little shaving o’ the stache.  See for yourself:

If you are all as sad as I am that they decided to forgo the ‘stache in order to clean up their misery, go over here to do some Moustache Reminiscing.

***DISCLAIMER – I am not an Oakland Raiders fan.  I belong to the Philadelphia Eagles. Fly Eagles, Fly!

D&D Vending, LLC is a brand new, full-service vending machine company based in Coatesville, PA. They not only sell and distribute any and all vending machines (soda, snack, video) they also service them for you. Which is great, because the last thing you want to do is try and repair your snack machine yourself.

1. Concept

After speaking with D&D, it was clear they wanted one thing – something unique. They didn’t care so much if it was fancy and fresh or simple and straightforward. But one thing was for sure, they wanted it to be their own. And that is a great thing for a designer to hear because that means we are free to experiment a little bit.

2. Sketches

Back to the trusty Moleskine Plain Soft Notebook – Pocket size (buy):

3. Mock Up

The circle logo was decided on for it’s similarity to a coin, the retro feel of the type, the simplicity of the initials and it’s flexibility.  Below are a few versions of the D&D in a circle.

4. Final

It wasn’t hard to decide on the retro font Deftone Stylus. You can find it over here at Font Squirrel, a great site. I adjusted the white space around the initials and fit everything into the circle a little cleaner.

Here’s a detailed version on a red background:

5. BONUS CONTENT!!!

Here’s a concept I was REALLY keen on. It’s based on a stylized version of a vending machine and transforms a logo into a character that really takes on the personality of the company. It developed after I was trying to draw a 3D perspective of a vending machine in Illustrator and I ended up with a wonderful mistake. It’s so unique it’s hard not to fall in love with it. I still think it has a lot of potential but for now he’ll just live on in my mind.

In any case, developing a visual identity for D&D has been fun and I am already working on converting this into a complete identity including print and web.

All You Need is Love

So here is another one of BlackBerry’s ‘Love What You Do’ commercials. This one is even more confusing than the last. If you remember the Rock Band version, the band practices real hard and becomes great. In this one, two wannabe fashion designers put a show together. I guess if your first show goes well, you can continue to do what you love.  But what if it’s absolutely horrible? I guess you go out and yourself get a BlackBerry.

Become a Fashionista in Five Easy Steps:

• 1. Work on stuff with friend
• 2. Fight about it
• 3. Work on it some more
• 4. Put on show
• 5. Rave Reviews to shock the fashion world.

Enter the BlackBerry ‘Love What You Do’ logo again and… scene! So, there is even less connection with technology, smartphones, BlackBerry’s, etc. than I’d like to see.  I think step 3.5 in this version is – Up and coming fashion designers run out of rare and expensive fabric they need to complete new line, use Blackberry to track down new vendor, purchase and ship in time to save the show. I still think if they didn’t have the Beatles cover song, they wouldn’t have a commercial at all.

Take a look:

More Love

The ‘Love What You Do’ campaign has several commercials, check out these others:

Rockband Love

Google Interface Changes

If you’ve been to Google lately, and I’m sure you have, you might notice the slight fade in effect of the home page. On loading the page, the web page is missing quite a few of the usual links, titles, buttons and other options. You can type your search terms and keywords in the search field and press enter to search or if your mouse enters the page the other fields will show.  Everything “fades” in and gives you a nice visual instead of abruptly pooping onto the page.

I have read that it is causing a bit of confusion among users. I have to admit, when I first notice the effect I thought that my system was hung up or the page stopped loading. I thought was odd being that it’s Google, and I don’t recall a time that they were ever down. Also, some users may not be seeing this because it is based off of browser and system. I don’t know whether Google is rolling this out or just testing it. It may be a Google Labs project but I’m assuming that it will make it’s way past that and be part of the regular page.  They don’t make too many changes to the interface and if it’s made it this far to the public, you can be certain that Google is behind this 100% and only a major backlash from the web community would kill the new feature.

See The Google Fade In Live

Here’s a video of the effect if you aren’t seeing it on your computer:

I am getting used to this visual effect and actually like it. But that may be because I like to keep things simple.  One thing I was thinking would be to keep it empty until you type your search terms and then provide butttons to search based on your needs. So instead of pressing the “Google Search” button, you would press the “Web Search”, “Image Search” “Video Search”, “Blog Search”, etc. buttons. That would limit the need to switch search engines and thus eliminate one more unncessary click.