Buried treasure

Deep in "the closet" of my hard drive, I found this gem. It's a web banner that is still used at the top of a coworker's blog about movies (recent and not, mainstream and less-than), and even some "Battlestar Gallactica" postings.

Granted, there's a few things I would have done a little differently with the banner, and I definitely wish I could have redone it or helped with the color swatching when they widened the format, but given that I made this banner when my knowledge of Photoshop was still a bit on the beginners' side of the fence, I'm pretty happy that I still like it.

The coworker must have liked it all right as well; she and another coworker later sought me out to do illustrations for their e-zine, "The Dead Protagonists Society."

Already retro

I'm not sure why I never posted this logo on my blog before, but it's already outdated. We recently abandoned it as we took the first steps towards our pending redesign. Still, I liked it, back in "the day," like... a whole year and a half ago.

I remember being particularly proud of figuring out how to create the stamp-like look to the 24-7. It was also my first experience with a "commissioned" logo. Sort of. Being for work, I didn't really make any extra money on the deal, but I did have to please "the customer." I had to use a specific color palette and it was requested that the "24/7" part "look like a stamp."

In other words, I let the web guy boss me around until he was satisfied... which was just par for the course with him anyway. Good times.

A healthy start

We recently launched a weekly health-focus page called HealthBeat, which required a couple logos to get started. These weren't created totally on the fly, but close enough. I think I might have had two whole days to work on them, which is fine. They're fairly simplistic and get the point across, and the typography establishes a theme we can easily build on as we add new features.

Shiny buttons

Lighting and shadows are tricky, but I think I did pretty well getting these buttons to show both in way that is subtle but cool.

Incidentally, I'm not a pothead. In fact, that crap makes me physically ill. These were used as logos for a series of stories stemming from a cluster of marijuana grow-house busts in our coverage area. Just wanted to be clear.

Sketch Logos

I helped with the concept of these lists, so I volunteered to do the illustrations to help them pop.

The pictures were pretty simple — doodles really. Nevertheless, I was pretty proud of my first published drawings (look, Mom!), especially given that most of them came together a few hours before publication.

More fun with type

This was a web logo I threw together for one of our reviewer blogs. I came across the treble clef that was the color you see now, and while I was trying to figure out what color I might change it to, it occurred to me that the shape kinda looked like an "S," which is conveniently found in the word "music." Add some color splash, and voila. Logo.

p.s. - I'm not sure why the orange is blowing out here... it's been fine everywhere else I've seen it. Blah.

Typographical logos

I developed this shadow/mixed-typography/striping style for some new features at the paper as they came up. They didn't go over too well at my SND portfolio review, but you know what? I like them. And so do my editors.

Not shown here is a logo for The Bizz. It was kinda like The Buzz... only with an "i," of course. Oh, and it was green, like money, since it was a Business feature. Get it? Good.

Allrightythen.