JFlah's Blunders

Final Logo Design Screenshot of the logo in use [vinyl applied to laminate] Children's minister wanted to update the ministry logo and stick it on the wall behind where he does his weekly videos. We used the kingpin lowerized font and colors that echoed some of the church and some of the community for the final. Process Image: Second round of proofs with layout and color options

Here are some progression images for the upcoming summer worship series. The lineup for this year is stellar! Last guest will be Bradley Knight - my boss's friend and prolific Christian choral music orchestra-tor/arranger.   First one is from a sketch but I didn't like it as much as the disintegration idea so I'm working in that direction now.  The guys didn't like the butterflies (although thematically they work great), so I'm working with diamonds for the disintegration mark for the series theme.

Ok - so we just finalized the logo for the rebranded student ministry here. We nixed the old  name (so no more "Crossover" Student Ministries) and are opting for the simplicity of what people already call it: "The Student Ministry" - I know, not particularly clever but it works and I think it's fine. Didn't sketch much for the design of this one. It's a spin on the main church Z-mark we created at the beginning of this year. Below is the progression and the finalized versions. Took a little while to choose a font then we were off to the races. The colors are going to be in flux as the plan is to simply adapt it to its surroundings each time it's used. Also, when we do shirts we're going to try to focus on keeping the high school's colors in the design so the kids can wear them on spirit day. Final one is circled. Started off with the round versions and ended up going with out the circle. And here's the first layout using the n...

So, yeah - new student minister means new student ministry logo. It is way past time for an update. This is the first page of sketches for this project... donno if I'm running in the right direction with any of this mess just yet - I'm sure this is a page of flops, but I sure enjoyed working on it today. Hopefully one of the concepts will be right down his alley so I can start digitizing next week. Wish we could rebrand the Crossing building - that mark could have used some serious art direction. As much as I sometimes struggle with constructive criticism, I have to beat my pride down because I know that it is necessary for my work to be the best that it can be. When I don't have someone who can push me towards what's best, my work isn't nearly as polished.

Just wrapped up a fun freelance job with a client. Here are the two finals along with some behind-the-curtain sketches and preliminary work ups so you can see how long this process turned out to be - I ran through a great number of bad versions before I hit upon something that was even remotely close to what he wanted. What can I say? He said to "throw some darts" and I threw lots of them and floundered around for a long while before hitting upon something that worked. There was a great deal of research involved in this project since I had never done anything that was supposed to target a Native American audience. My main inspiration for the finals were beautiful Hopi designs, especially their beautiful jewelry.  The bear paw represents strength and wisdom , two adjectives that I know should be held closely when dealing with financial decisions. One of the key guidelines given when I began this design project was that the design be "strong, powerful, masculine, ...

Am about to launch off into designing yet another logo at work. The women's ministry has gone through a few changes and they're looking for another mark. The group's lead has asked for a heart and a cross. We can go that route, but those images have been done so many times over that they're hard to do with any originality. I hope she will be more interested in the other ideas. I'd prefer to have their new logo be a spin off of the new church mark. Anyhow, here are a few preliminary super rough sketches. Here are some more...

Sketching is always fun when it comes to figuring out logos. I've been picking up as much freelance as possible lately so when a former co-worker dropped by with a request or two I was ready. He wanted a publisher template that his secretary could use each week and he needed a logo. I've been working on the logo for a few days - thinking about it, sketching, doing rough layouts. Here are some of the results. These are the first set of logo roughs This is something they can put on the front of their bulletin each week. Layout is adapted from a GracewayMedia template .

Thank God for great friends. This freelance job came into being for me because a friend of mine talked me up to someone she met at work and that someone actually went online to check out my portfolio . I hope to soon develop a strong working relationship with Rachael and her great web design company, Dream Catchers Web Design . The below design is for one of Rachael's clients who teaches music lessons. The deal was for a simple "turn this sketch into something digital" project. Here's their original sketch with the progression of my rendered designs. The vector designs were created in illustrator CS6. Not much special stuff in there, but I think it's a pretty good rendering from the solid directions Rachael passed along from her client and from the sketch. But I can't leave well enough alone. Below is a super rough sketch I haven't shown to the client yet. We made a deal for a simple (cheap) rendering of their sketch, but while I was watching TV...

So, yeah, they made a decision. I'm glad we're pretty much done with this project. Sure, I've still got to update everything with the new "modern" look, but at least they've settled on a logo. Lots of other things happening around there - exciting stuffs. No time to chat - too much work to do. Merry Christmas all!

So, yeah - we're re-branding now that the new boss is here. It's past time for this and I'm excited to freshen up the look we've got now. I created the last logo about four/five years ago. They said they wanted something traditional but more corporate looking than the last logo. Here's what I gave them last time:  This time the boss wants something uber modern but he doesn't quite know what he means by that. Every time he sees something else that he likes he wants to scrap the direction we were working in and run in that new direction. It's a challenge - a good challenge - and although I'm not sure I'm up to the task and am unsure if I will be able to provide the kind of logo he wants, I'm enjoying working on it - especially since the media director is handling the new web site stuffs right now.  The plan is to launch everything for the first of the new year - the new logo, the new website, the new slogan/mission statement and focu...

This is the logo I put together for them - sketches are HERE .   Lots on my creative plate right now - just got done face painting at the fall festival (that was a joy) and now one of the next things I'm working on is something for our preschool ministry. I designed a logo a while back (see above or go here ) and now they're putting the characters that are in the logo onto the fence they have in the preschool worship area. I don't know how long it will take for everything to be completed, but I can't wait to see it done. The preschool coordinator dropped off some primed wooden pieces and some paint, so I'll be working on that off and on for a little while. It will be a challenge to adapt the logo to the wooden pieces because the outline shape isn't quite the same - but that won't matter when they're done - they'll still be super cute. Gettin' started...

A former co-worker called earlier this month wanting to know if I'd do a logo for them. They home school their kids and having a "school name" helps them in the state they've moved to. I'm such a slow designer. I didn't sketch anything for this one - mostly because I thought I could work faster if I just edited some open source stock art I had. But the process was still slower than I'd have liked. I spent a good long while on research and looking for inspiration, more time gathering useful bits and pieces, and then at several hours fiddling with things to see what direction I should go in before I had anything worth looking at. So yeah, this project has a lot of time invested in it - which for a simple design like what they wanted, is pretty normal. I'm glad I didn't need to sketch and then digitize because I'm even slower when it comes to that now that I don't have access to a graphics tablet (boo-hoo - I really miss that tool - ma...