Invitations and all things associated

The design work has been slow the last couple of months, thus the slow blog postings. Which is fine, because I have had more than enough to do with things for the family.

First, was designing invitations for Drew's first birthday coming up in a little over a week. He is big on Yo Gabba Gabba, so I "borrowed" some ideas from some designs from etsy.com and created the little guy his own custom birthday invites. In a related side not, there is big business in designing custom invites and thank you cards and etc. Thinking of jumping into some of that...

I also did up some decorations for the party as well. Nothing major, just a huge banner, balloon faces, and party hat faces, oh and address labels that went on the back of the envelopes. Might as well put this degree to some use...

Now I am getting into wedding invites for my wife's brother and his future wife. Had some hurdles, but finally settled on a cool design and getting them printed at FedEx Office at a pretty nice price.

Once this blitz is over I can get back to helping out Spirit of Athens and rounding up the couple of new clients for some paying design work. I also have a project of my own (self promotion piece) that I have to get going and printed up by December.

Oh, and maybe find time to play some golf and enjoy the cooling down we are having lately.

New jobs on the horizon?

Hello, its been awhile. I feel like I am talking to myself here since I have single digit readers, but anyhoo.

Good news. Three potential jobs looming on the horizon. Two websites and a print job. It looks like I got some decent exposure from the Athens Homecoming Celebration and Spirit of Athens!

Hopefully an update to come that details these jobs. I can tell you they are fine organizations/businesses in the Athens area and I look forward to working with them.

Logos: More than meets the eye

I love logos that have something hidden that you have to look for. Whether letters are stylized into an image or the image is created so that the negative space contains a symbol or picture, they are just fun to look at. Many of them you have probably seen before but never saw the hidden goodies.

I ran across this post today on one of my favorite sites, Webdesigner Depot, and it got me to thinking about how cool some of these really are. You may not think so, but you are not a design nerd like me.

Give it a look and the next time you see the FedEx logo you can ask someone if they can find the hidden arrow...

Business Cards getting exposure again!

The Design Inspiration has featured my business card on their site. They feature many other business cards, most from the Card Observer's site, along with many tutorials, freebies, and design tips.

Thanks to those guys for showing the love...

Check it out here.

One year of service to the community

Recently I celebrated one year of volunteering with a local non-profit group called Spirit of Athens. They are an organization devoted to the revitalization of downtown Athens, Alabama. They sponsor and host many events throughout the year and do a lot to help bring attention to Athens and show people how awesome it is.

I started out helping with their myspace page and the website. That soon turned into doing anything and everything graphic design for them. I have logged countless hours working on many different things and it has been very rewarding. Knowing that I am giving back to the community that I was raised in gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling.

Seriously, I appreciate all the things they let me do and I'm sure they appreciate my talents too!

Tasty card design

I have been working with Lynn's Cakes here locally to set up a logo and website, and now business cards.

Lynn is a cake baker who specializes in wedding, grooms, birthday, and anniversary cakes. She wanted a cool website to showcase her cake creations and didn't really have a logo. So insert me, and a few months later she now has a really cool website (partially thanks to BluDomain) and nice logo (thanks to me) and now the business cards.

She is getting a really good price on them from UPrinting.com. I highly suggest them if you are in the market for some yourself.

Hope to have a photo of the cards when they are printed, for now here is the Illustrator layout version.

Business Card Love

The fine folks over at Card Observer featured my business card design on their site today!

The site is a really cool place to see some creative cards. Some of them are amazing and I am thankful to them that they picked mine to showcase today.

Here is the link to check it out: http://cardobserver.com/gallery/modern-business-card

First website launched

http://berryanimalhospital.com is officially launched.

Put most of the finishing touches on it in the past two days. It turned out pretty nice. It is a very simple site that provides the main info about the business, the services they provide, and a little about Dr. Berry and Dr. Moody. I think it is pretty cool that I embedded the Google map on the contact page. Even made a Site Map page, so when submitting it to Google and Yahoo, it will help it get linked to easier.

I took the pictures of the building and of the sign. The other animal photos are from a royalty free stock photo site.

Overall, I think I am pleased with the results. Hopefully Dr. Berry and his staff will be too!

Free stuff!

http://colorburned.com/2010/05/giveaway-announcement-10-colorburned-readers-win-500-free-business-cards-from-uprinting.html

I have mentioned before the many design sites and blogs that I hit up to score free tutorials and sometimes images, etc, but how about scoring some free business cards!

Just learned that I won 500 business cards from uprinting.com and colorburned.com.

Uprinting is the best place online to get stuff printed, they have the best prices and the quality is top notch!

Colorburned is a great site to get knowledge and hit up the awesome tutorials.

Thanks to both of these sites for the free swag...

David Airey, you are my design hero

I spend a good bit of time checking out other designers online. It usually ends up with me seeing a design that blows my mind and I end up thinking one of two things.

1. I wonder why I didnt think of something like that.
2. I end up thinking that I am just a design boy trying to be a design man.

One of the most impressive and talented designers I have ever encountered online is David Airey.

He designs in the style that appeals to me. Modern, clean, lots of white space, and cleaver and creative.

He updates his site several times a week and registers millions of hits in a given week.

I read one post today about convincing a client that they need a brand, not just a logo. Interesting read, probably just to me, but at least check out his portfoilio.

I want to be him when i grow up.

Free cool stuff

Over the past couple of years I have really dove into graphic design blogs and resource websites headfirst. The good ones are regularly updated and have some really good tutorials, advice, or free vector images.

I found one really cool thing today. I always loved old polaroid photos, you know the instant kind! The pictures (most were from the 1970's) were really washed out with lots of yellows and reds, made even faded a little. I found a free download of a Photoshop action that converts photos to "Polaroid" style.

Check it: http://rawimage.deviantart.com/art/Polaroid-GENERATOR-V2-118854065


Browsing some of the design blog sites you will find that there are plenty of talented artists out there who are willing to just give away their hard work to help out other designers.

Who said that nothing is free?

Plugged in

http://www.brenthobbsdesign.com

Finally launched the site today, after a few small changes. I am pretty happy with it and hope it gets some traffic and some interest from potential clients. (HINT HINT)

Also took some time today to stink up a round of golf. I went to Southern Gayles just down the road. Should have tried to sell them on a website in exchange for many free rounds. File that one away, that was a good idea.

Anyway, recharged the batteries a little and moving on to the next project, which is a website for a vet locally here in Ardmore. Have a few concepts worked out, but need to tighten them a little before I present them to him.

Check the homepage out and let me know your comments and email me!

About to throw the switch

Like the mad scientist tilting his creation upright to unleash him on the world, I am very close to going live with brenthobbsdesign.com.

It has been a few weeks of off and on work, but it is almost ready to go. I wanted to keep it very simple at first. Minimalist design, lots of white space, clean and orderly. I plan on giving it a reboot every year or so and hopefully that progression will lead it to become more streamlined with a really slick design to it.

I have been working on other projects as well, so maybe business will get off the ground and get moving.

Back to the lab...(insert evil laugh)