Briefing:

Create a logo for Pixel Heist
Create a business card for Pixel Heist

For me as a designer it is always a challenge to create something for myself. I personally do not like designing for myself and usually pass on projects for myself to fellow designers. The reason is simple. The self criticism and try to create the perfect design for myself is at best impossible. Over the years I recognized the following symptoms when designing something for myself:

Very rarely am I 100% happy with the result.
Just when I though I was finished with a design I keep changing things around.
I spend way too much time on any given design.

This time I tried to come up with a logo and a business card for myself. I was close to passing it on to a fellow designer but I decided to just give it a shot.
An effective logo is a simple logo. That is my experience and that is how I approached the process. I tried to not spend too much time and avoid continuously changing things around. I fixed up a few sketches:



The idea was to integrate a pixel into the logo. Also some interaction of that pixel with the font itself. I am not a friend of taking the easy way of putting the object, in this case the pixel, as the dot of an i. In my eyes this is a valid practice but quite overused in logos. Even though I tried it within the sketching process, I actually took it a bit further and replaced the i completely with an object. I tried to add the scientific background I posses and been drilled with before entering the world of design. So a little lab gadget with a pixel coming out of it. I tried many variations and wanted to integrate something like an eye within the pixel. Building a relation between pixel and the eye. Sketching for quite some time I was happy with the lettering and the object hovering above the X.

I went into Adobe Illustrator and started to transfer my ideas into the digital vector world.

I played around with fonts and I was NOT happy with any of them. As a designer I accumulation/acquired a virtually infinite amount of fonts over the years.
So the decision was clear, I am going to create my own font. This is a very time consuming process but well worth the time investment if I can reach the desired vision I had for the logo.
I tried to integrate an eye within the pixel but it turned out to be not as effective as I thought. Still keeping the idea in mind I came up with the following result:



As shown above I decided to go with black and red as the primary colors, which I personally find quite powerful.

At this point I finished the design/creation of the logo. Now it is time for the business card part. For the text information on the business card (other than the logo) I used a standard font. To loosen it up a bit I used round background elements following the black and red color scheme. Following the final result I sent off to the printer:



UPDATE: 03/10/2009

I picked up the business card from the printer today I am surprisingly pleased with the design for myself :) ..



If you would like me to design your logo, business card, etc. feel free to fill out a contact form and let's talk.

Briefing:

- Create a scalable version of our Logo as close to the original as possible. Referenz image:

- Keep the same look as current logo but change it to give it that web 2.0 effect.
-The Logo is trademarked and also used as a brand at partner sites so it is important that the over look stays the same.

This was a simple job and it didn't take much time to accomplish the requested work. The only time consuming process was to recreate the logo since the client had no other art work frm it than the referenced website screenshot.
Following the result I created. The work has been done in Adobe Photoshop CS3 and the logo is sizable just like a vector without loss of quality.



The client was happy, all I care about.

The client's briefing:

Brief Summary:
Redoing my branding, need a logo that is simple, clean, modern, cutting-edge, fresh. Looking for something to communicate an artistic, upscale identity.

Wants:
My color scheme is black, white, green (hex #4c6429), and I sometimes use copper in my marketing materials. Colors should be used as accent colors only, not be overpowering
Much of the time the logo will be in black and white, without color... needs to function with both (could I get the same design in BW as well?
Simple line art graphical element that I can incorporate by itself
Should be a vector graphic

Don't Wants:
3D effects
Camera or film-strip graphics
Anything that even remotely resembles clip art
Strictly wedding-oriented logo (I'm trying to appeal to family/child/senior portrait clients too)
Sappy sentimentality
Anything too corporate

Following the result I delivered to the client:



The client was happy with the results, all I care about.

The briefing from the client:

We require a strong logo for our Dedicated / Colocation business which will appeal to business critical hosting clients. Data Integrity, security, strength, reliability are all qualities which should be reflected in the brand. Our data centers run at above 99.99% uptime and our clients will expect a high quality service.

We want to project a strong, reliable and trustworthy image. Much like a bank. Which is basically the service we are providing. But in this case money is replaced with data. We are based in Melbourne, Australia and our core business is providing business critical dedicated server and colocation services. We also offer face to face consultancy and operate a server hardware shop in Melbourne''s Eastern Suburbs.

We do not want Australian flags and kangaroos.

I sketched quite a while. I tried to incorporate something that reflects data coming in and out, basically a cycle. I used the main letters to form this very effect. The u and h are connected. They have arrows that show data flow. I added small little lines to add something dynamic. The logo font has been customized just a bit from the original font. This way the logo text can be used by itself and still have somewhat of a different and not regular appearance.

Following the result of my work:







All work has been done within illustrator.