All posts in Logo

Crowdsourcing. No one likes it. Sometimes though, you just can’t help but do it.

The design team at the Greeley Tribune was recently given the opportunity to help design a logo for Greeley’s Annual Blues Jam. What started off as a small event, has gone pretty big time with this years headliner being Robert Randolph and the Family Band.

Most of us will tell you that the design work we do isn’t glamorous. It doesn’t have to be. If what we do is effective and gets results for the advertiser, then we have done our job.

Every so often though, certain projects will crop up that allow full creativity.

To set the stage, we were given this image:

The goal? To create a logo for the event, using the cows and adding “Greeley Blues Jam.” Due to the nature of the festival and variety of acts represented, we were asked to avoid using instruments. Stick with the cows and the text.

Okay.

Like I do with any logo, I start with the text. I seem to do better when I can get a good handle on the type treatment before playing with any sort of icon or imagery (luckily or unluckily, the imagery was provided in this case).

Here’s a mashup in brief of my invesigations:

As you will see in the final, the text in the middle is what I eventually ended up with. I was looking for something that said “Jam” in a more literal sense, ie. jamming together. That, and the cows were just awkward enough, that it would help in placement with them.

After a little tweaking and adjusting, the finished logo emerged.

What started as an awkward image, worked it’s way into a pretty pleasing finished product. I am excited to have my logo chosen and I look forward to seeing it plastered across Greeley in the coming months.

My wife and I have been discussing the formation of another home based business over the last few months. We are always looking for ways to bring in extra income without losing family time.

The business we are talking about will be a specialized design/print house that caters to churches and Christians who are looking for high quality print and digital media. We are looking to provide inspirational posters, prints, calendars, etc. as well as digital media like PowerPoint slide backgrounds, and the like.

After a little research, I came across the following verse:

³⁵ He has filled them with skill to do all kinds of work as craftsmen, designers, embroiderers in blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen, and weavers—all of them master craftsmen and designers. ~Exodus 35:35

I was going to name the business Exodus 35:35, but it was just too long. My wife suggested something like Exo35:35. I shortened it further to just 35:35 and was pretty happy with that for the name. I even came up with a logo that I thought would work pretty well.

Exodus 35:35 Logo

The process of getting to that solution will be another post in and of itself. I had a name and a logo. I even started building the WordPress site.

During this time, I have also been going through a book study with our church pastor and 6 other guys. We have been working our way through Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshear’s Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe.

In the third chapter, in regards to Creation, they write:

In Genesis 1:1, the word used for created is the Hebrew word bara, which means “creation from nothing.” The other Hebrew word used in a creative sense is asah, translated “make” or “made,” which means “to fashion or shape,” or “to make something suitable,” . . . Bara emphasizes the initiation of an object, whereas asah emphasizes the shaping of an object. -Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe, pg. 82.

Asah. The name for our business. I am using what God created, from nothing, to shape or fashion into something, be it digital or physical.

I present to you the logo for Asah Design:

Asah Design Logo

Now it’s time to create for God.

This is one of many logos I’ve done for Ehrlich Motors. I’m mostly posting this to further test this WP theme. I will work on adding the series of logos I have created for Ehrlich Motors/Subaru in the 6 years I have worked for The Greeley Tribune/Northern Colorado Communications.

Ehrlich's All New Used Car Headquarters.

Logo property of Ehrlich Motors © 2009. Designed at The Greeley Tribune.