the uniform people

I have been lucky enough to work on a couple catalogs for Cintas...you know, the uniform people. The first image below is a Best Seller catalog mailed this spring. It is just what it sounds like, the best selling products from a much larger catalog mailed earlier this year.
[printed full color, finished size 8 3/8"x10"]

The second catalog is for a specific customer, Ice Mountain, who orders uniforms for all their employees from Cintas. This catalog features the specific items and colors Ice Mountain chose from the wide offerings of Cintas. It might not be evident in the photos below, but every shirt pictured needed to have an Ice Mountain logo stripped in. There was a lot of image work involved.
[printed full color, finished size 8 1/2"x11"]

projects for a non-profit

Crescent Project in Indianapolis, IN, is a non-profit ministry reaching out to Muslims in the US and overseas. They hold conferences and the brochure below serves as advertising and registration for their events. Blank spaces on the outside give them the ability to use a laser printer to add in dates, times, locations, and costs for each individual conference.
[printed full color, finished size 3 1/2"x8 1/2", 14"x8 1/2" roll fold with 4 panels]

Similarly, the poster below was used to advertise the conferences with blank space at the bottom to add the specifics.
[printed full color, finished size 11"x17"]

They also attend trade shows and needed a display board as a backdrop for their booth. For this installation, the banner rolls up like a window shade for transportation and has a stand, similar to elementary school movie projector screens, to make it free standing when unrolled.
[printed full color, finished size 90"x90"]

They participated in a conference called Oasis. From an existing brochure, I developed a website that was used for information and registration leading up to the conference in 2003.

capitalizing on today's technology

How many of you are on the mailing list for a catalog or store or other business? It's a very cost-effective way to reach a lot of people. It is also environmentally-friendly, no consumables. The newsletters below could be coming to an in-box near you. On the left is Dingle House Pub & Grub and on the right is Towne Centre Square, the building where the pub is located along with other retail and business tenants.
Other projects for Towne Centre Square included a sales brochure, sent to prospective tenants, and business cards for the building investors, a group called Towne Centre Square Partners.
[printed full color, brochure 8 1/2"x11", card 3 1/2"x2"]

when Irish eyes are smiling...

A Cincinnati area Irish pub called Dingle House Pub & Grub has called upon me for several advertising projects hoping to create a common look to represent them using their existing logo. The first image below shows 3 different flyers distributed to local hotels and businesses. The center flyer is also used at the pub for a lunch menu.
[printed on laser printer, finished size 5 1/2"x8 1/2"]

They also run ads in the local newspaper and in hotel publications.[printed full color, finished sizes 3 1 ⁄ 2"x5", 3 1 ⁄ 4"x3 3 ⁄ 4", and 4 5 ⁄ 8"x2 3 ⁄ 8"]

Their most recent event, still going on now, is for the horse racing triple crown events. The banners below are hanging in the windows of the pub. We know there will not be a triple crown winner this year, the Kentucky Derby winner did not win the Preakness. The Belmont Stakes should still be an exciting race, and hopefully the pub will be full of people watching the race on their flat screens (and eating and drinking).[printed full color, finished sizes 3'x 5', and 6'x4']

churches also need brochures

Low budget does not necessarily equal low quality. For a place like CHPC that needed small quantities of many different brochures for their many different events and activities, it made sense to purchase the equipment (color laser printers, folding machine, and industrial paper cutter) to produce projects in-house. The 3 8 1/2"x11" tri-fold brochures below were printed and folded on-site.

I mentioned I worked at 2 different churches. The second was Vineyard Community Church. One project from my time there was a welcome brochure featuring basic information about the church for new visitors. The Vineyard also produced some projects in-house but this one was professionally printed.

[printed full color, finished size 4 2/3"x8 1/2"]

churches need good design too

For a few years I worked at 2 churches in their communications departments. One fantastic project I was given at College Hill Presbyterian Church was to redesign their logo and identity system (letterhead, envelopes, business cards). After the typical back and forth with several of the pastors we decided upon the logo below, feeling it conveyed life and energy. Realizing the green starburst image would not be practical for all applications, a version without the graphic was also used.
[8 1/2"x11" letterhead and 3 1/2"x2" business card printed 3-color, #10 envelope printed 2-color]

I also developed and maintained a website for CHPC employing the visual language developed for the logo. Since I left my employment, the look of the website has changed so I won't post a link to the current site.

building relationships can lead to more work

The same client from the previous post hired me to create and maintain a website for a time. The first homepage design showcased a piece from her MFA show.


One of the things I love about web design is the dynamic nature of the media. Designs can easily be changed, pages can be easily be altered or added to the site. Below is the second generation of the homepage


The additional pages of the site worked with both generations of the homepage design.


Someone else has been maintaining the site since I left Cincinnati in 2007 and the current design has changed significantly, so I will not post a link to the current site.

The artist started a side venture creating and selling glass beads and small objects, the kind of items you'd find at a local craft fair. She asked me to create a logo for the new business and produce a business card as well as 2 sizes of price/hang cards for use in craft fair booths.

[printed full color, finished sizes 3 1/2"x2" (business card), 3"x3" (earring hang/price card), 3"x1 1/2" (small price card)]

postcards for a Cincinnati artist

While living in Cincinnati, I was able to work on a few projects for a local artist, a sculptor whose medium was glass. One postcard was created to showcase 2 sculptures that won awards.

[printed black, paper coated front and uncoated back, finished size 5 1/2"x4 1/4"]

Another series of postcards showed images from the client's MFA show.

[printed full color on the fronts and black on the common back, finished size 8 1/2"x6"]

A third set of postcards was used to publicize her acceptance into a gallery show.

[printed full color on the fronts and black on the common back, finished size 6 1/8"x4 3/8"]

more manatees

Every store needs a gift card, right? For the Blue Manatee gift card the manatee is holding a gift card with an image of the manatee holding a gift card.

[printed 2-color on the front, and black on the back, finished size 3 3/8"x2 1/8"]

Every store also needs rewards cards too, right? We went for a low-cost option for these. After all, they get beat up in the customer's wallet for a while, get holes punched in them, and then are disposed. The bookstore and coffee shop each got a unique front and a common back. The client received a pdf with 12 copies of the artwork per page that could be printed on cardstock on their home laser printer and then trimmed with a paper cutter or scissors or a ruler and x-acto knife.
[finished size 3 1/2"x2"]

What else does every store need? A website, of course. The client had an existing website but it lacked the imagination you'd expect for a children's bookstore. Below are the homepage and one additional page as they looked when I was maintaining the site for them. The client has since found someone local (I am now across the country from this store) to maintain the site and enough has changed that I won't provide a link to the current website.

manatee fun

Sometimes work that is less serious can be a lot of fun. I enjoyed doing work for an independently-owned children's book store. I did not create this logo but the client did not have appropriate artwork. My first task was to redraw the manatee and figure out the fonts and colors from a small jpeg and the original cut paper art of the manatee.


Once the vector art (the kind of art that can be made as large as you want and still look good, see banner and awnings below) was finished, my next task was to spin off a logo for their new companion business, a coffee shop called the decafé, and a logo representing the bookstore and coffee shop together.


To announce the new coffee shop and introduce the logo, a large banner was hung in front of the coffee shop location.


Once the coffee shop opened, an existing awning over the bookstore (the client was not happy with the artwork) was replaced using the vector art and a companion piece was made for the door to the cafe.


More variations of the manatee were developed to suit other needs, some print and some web (that will come in a future post).

life outside design

Lately I have been obsessed with 2 things, the garden and the camera. Makes for a pretty good combo I think. I guess you can be the judge of that. Here are some of my favorites. Aside from the hyacinth (middle right), all of these lovelies are from the fantastic garden we inherited when we purchased our house last summer. We never saw the yard in the late winter or spring so most of this has been a surprise. I also received a new camera as a birthday gift and I've been quite pleased with the results I've gotten from a basic little point-and-shoot.

You might see these images again in the form of some illustrations I have been playing around with.

Trophy Awards

I had the pleasure of working with Trophy Awards, Mfg. on a few projects. The first was a product catalog they hand out to prospective customers.
[printed 4-color + a spot metallic and coating on the cover, finished size 8 1/2"x11"]

Based on the information in the catalog, I created a website for them as well. They are maintaining the site themselves but the design has not changed much.

pulling from the archives

I'll be posting some older work for a few posts. Below are 2 projects I worked on for Fabulous Furs.

The first is an invitation and envelope for the grand opening of their showroom.
[printed 4-color (invitation) and 2-color (envelope), invitation finished size 7"x5"]

This project was a tri-fold flyer featuring sale items that went into all the packages they sent out, hopefully enticing new sales from existing customers.
[printed 4-color, finished size 6"x10 7/8"]

designing for yourself is hard

I have been working on an identity for my new company. After deciding on what I wanted to call myself, brown bag creative, the design process went on...and on...and on.

I'm down to 2 options for now, unless I come up with something else.