Before I began designing, it was determined that she needed a logo. On her previous blogspot site her primary colors were pink and black.  I wanted to stick with that, but soften it up a bit. I opted to tone it down, and work with a gray and magenta color scheme. Jess’ photography has a feminine feel, so I knew I would have to branch out from my regular design style.

The “S” in the logo came fairly quickly.  After a few little sketches, I was off and running. I showed the photographer a few different options, and after one round of edits, the logo was approved. I was initially thinking of using some sort of camera imagery, but I’ve seen it a thousand times. The goal was that this logo should look different than the rest of the pack. No cameras, no lenses, no film.  But the circles that run up the left of the “S” were inspired by the sprocket holes that are on film.  

Since we were able to secure the entire name as the domain name (SialiaPhotography.com) I wanted to make sure that the entire name would be included in the logo, not just the commonly used name. “Sialia” uses a font called Harrington. The curves worked well with the “S”. For the “Photography” line, I wanted a clean font that would also work as a button or headline font on the website (Gill Sans, in case you’re wondering).

This logo breaks my general rule that a logo needs to work in solid black and white. I figured that this logo would be used in places that would allow for a four color process, or tints of the logo.

Something else that I had to consider with this logo was that it would be used as a watermark on her photos. After watching a few hours of TV (where every network has a watermark) I had some ideas of how I could effectively use different opacities. For the watermark, the text has a higher opacity level than the “S”. But the “S” is the most noticeable part.

This logo works well with the website because they were designed as parts of a whole. Since I wanted to have a logo centered website, I needed to make sure that the logo would be centered. Plus, it allows Jess the opportunity to use the logo anywhere on her photos without being a distraction.

After spending 2 1/2 years working at Twins Enterprise (now Twins ’47) as a sports headwear designer, I had the great advantage of spending a lot of time working with sports logos, especially those of Major League Baseball teams. 

The Lowell Spinners is a little different than the MLB teams, in that their primary target are families and young children. Our task was to replace the current cap logo (seen here) with something that would appeal to everyone and tie in a little closer to their wordmark seen here). 

Myself and another designer were let loose to see what we could come up with.  I initially went in a direction that I thought would increase merchandise sales.  Years ago I realized that the best selling baseball caps feature logos that not only represent a team, but they also represent the city in which the team plays.  The Boston “B”, the Yankees “NY”, the Cubs “C”, the Cardinals “StL”, the Dodgers “LA”, etc, etc. You don’t necessarily have to be a Dodgers fan to wear the familiar royal blue cap with the white interlocking “LA”, you might just like Los Angeles the city.  So, I started working with a logo that featured the letter “L” for Lowell.  

The team stated that they were commonly known as “The Spinners.”  Hardly anyone actually referred to them as the Lowell Spinners.  So, I was to focus on using an “S” if I was looking to incorporate a letter into the logo.

The other goal I had for my designs were that I wanted something cool enough for a Red Sox fan to trade in his “B” cap and pick up a Spinners cap.  I’m sure most of you are aware that in New England, everyone is a die-hard Red Sox fan.  And since Lowell is not that far from Boston, a lot of the people go to Spinners games simply due to the fact that they’re seeing future Red Sox players (that, plus Spinners tickets are A LOT cheaper than Red Sox tickets.)  

My attempts at a “cool” logo weren’t well received, so I went about simplifying the current spindle and trying to incorporate the letter “S”.  The spindle, as well as the team name originates from the fact that Lowell was best known as a textile mill town.

At the top of the page, you can see the logo that they chose for the cap. I opted to use a really strong shadow along the right side of the spindle and bat to give the illusion of depth. Shadows under the areas where the “S” crosses the spindle, as well as the little twist lines also help to re-enforce the depth.

Their secondary goal of the Spinners was to have a new patch that would go on the sleeve of the players’ uniforms. This logo to the left is based on a logo that my coworker came up with.  I just cleaned up and reworked the design. 

One design that was rejected for the cap logo was the smiley-face logo (or, as I called it, the “Spinney the Spinning Spinner” logo.) This wouldn’t have worked on the caps of professional baseball players.  But, it is something that kids could potentially gravitate towards.  It was decided that not only could this be used in other merchandise, but it would eventually be made into a new mascot.  Hopefully they come up with a better name.

The last part of the process was to update the jersey script.  Since most baseball teams follow the pattern of home jersey has the team name, and the road jersey has the city name, I ended up creating two different scripts.  For the home jersey, I kept the existing letters and updated the “I” using the spindle. Also, since the team is commonly known as the Spinners, we were able to remove the “Lowell” from the script. 

The road jersey used the previously established elements from the new home jersey. On both of these scripts, I put little triangles along the tail to give it a little more depth. Also, you’ll notice that as the thread comes out towards the viewer, the line on the bottom gets thicker. Another element used to create the illusion of depth.

Overall, this was a really fun project.  It allowed me to play in my old backyard of baseball logos.  I don’t think I’ll trade in my Red Sox cap, but it will be cool to see the future members of the Boston Red Sox wearing a design that I crafted.

Edit: Here’s the link to the story on MiLB.com

The minute that this project was mentioned, this logo popped into my head. I was fortunate enough to find a picture of Homer. Anybody that knows The Simpsons (AKA everyone) knows that this is Homer’s expression when he’s enjoying (or thinking about enjoying) some delicious food. The angle of his head almost perfectly matches the angle of the coffee cup in the Dunkin’ logo. On the bottom of the logo, I bumped the text around to show the bumbling nature of Homer.

This logo presented an interesting debate: Should designers show work that didn’t go forward? Since it would be practically impossible to use this logo for another project, it was determined that there would be no harm in showing this logo. I’ve decided to file pieces like this under “Scrap Heap.” Every designer knows that many of the “best” ideas never make it to be seen by the outside world. These pieces will either be projects that a client rejected or proposals for potential clients that didn’t move forward.

Most of the time, I don’t recycle ideas, so I don’t have to worry about showing something on here that I would use for someone else down the line.

The top of this logo is the actual Lowell Five logo. They have other established brands that all reflect back to the main logo, either in typeface or the use of the L5 colors, green and purple. I tried to keep this logo in line with the previous brand logos.

This logo is a manipulated version of the font Bernhardt. Avenir was used for the “Keep It Local” part. The tricky part of the Lowell Five logo is that it doesn’t actually say that it’s a bank. By adding in the “$” at the end of Rewards, it helps to reinforce that this is some sort of money earning program. This logo works well because it not only establishes the basics of the program (that the customer get rewarded by keeping their money local) but it also tells you who is organizing the promotion (Lowell Five, of course.)

With the first logo, I was looking to incorpoate a couple elements that are commonly associated with motorcycles: flames and exhaust pipes. I also wanted to try to create the illusion of chrome shine. This is a modified Benguiat font. It’s not a “blocky” as motorcycle fonts usually tend to be, but I was looking for a font that has curves, but also has sharp edges.

With the second logo, I was looking for a more iconic, “T” logo.  This is a great example of how sometimes a design doesn’t work with one project, but then it can help inspire a project for a different client.  Parts of this logo were originally conceived for a different company’s new identity.  It was never presented because the logo was too “sharp” and didn’t embody what that company was trying to convey. But, when it came to Twisted Cycles, I took that failed concept, added and subtracted elements, and presented this new logo.   

Our main objective was to design caps that would be purchased in addition to Twins’ flagship line, The Franchise. Almost everyone wears a Franchise cap, and we needed to create caps that would make the customer buy additional caps.

Being a fan of “simple” cap design, I was looking for a cap that would appeal to me. The Incognito was the most successful cap that I developed. The embroidered logo on the visor was something that I came up with while trying to modify a previously established cap. Once I figured out that the stitching on the visor was leftover from the old days of making caps, I started to manipulate it. It seems like a simple idea, but I was the first one to do it. Since then, you can see this style of embroidery all over the place, including Reebok’s NBA Championship cap from last year. There is a great deal of pride in knowing that I developed something so successful that other companies were ripping it off.

The Hyde is another example of a simple cap. This was one of three versions of this cap that I developed. Sometimes it had a canvas patch, and sometimes it was a leather patch. Both had silkscreen printing on it. One leather version was in color, while the other had all-black printing (to simulate branding.) The frayed edges on the cap are there to give the cap a “broken in” feel. The leather strap in the back helped to tie the whole cap together. While this version doesn’t show it, the Hyde was one of Twins’ first caps that had an etched logo on the back strap buckle.

The Bubba is an example of a cap that I would never wear. It is a loud, in your face cap. Lots of team colors, lots of logos, lots of everything. There’s no doubt which team you support. I’ve found that this appeals to southern college football. This cap was designed when I was experimenting a lot with mesh. The mesh on this cap is the team’s secondary color (black) and it lies over the team’s primary color (orange). Unlike the other two caps, this is a structured cap with a velcro strap. It’s not a bad style, but it just isn’t for me.

It’s still fun seeing people walking around wearing caps that I designed. And it was a great opportunity to design caps that I would (and do) actually wear.