MIS Branding

One of my recent projects has been the branding of Marine Information Systems. The company provides web-based data storage and processing systems to members of the oil industry and those involved in its shipment.

The branding was required to sit at ease with the traditional corporate nature of the client base, along with providing a reference to the oil shipping industry.

After exploring a number of initial routes I developed an identity based around the icon of a moving propeller to reference both sea shipment and with subtle connotations to power and a driving force.

The icon and a marine inspired colour palette were also applied as key elements to the companies core business stationery.

Catch Up

Well it's been a manic month for me, probably the busiest of my freelance career so far. I've been working on a variety of projects including a vast array of marketing material for the newly launched Ateronon dietary supplement, in house work again for Global Radio and the branding of a new specialist IT company serving members of the Oil Industry.

Not as welcome this month has been some IT issues with my mac which has had me pulling my hair out on several occasions. Touch wood all is running fine at the moment thanks to Time Machine transporting my Mac back to a couple of weeks ago, before I had any issues. Really is a great feature that I'd not had to put to the test until now and once I'd figured out how to do it was really straight forward.

The problem was with my OS crashing and after hours of tinkering, a couple of visits to the Apple store, and a failed archive & re-install I found this article for restoring using time machine on Duncan Davidson's blog. Really simple when you know how so thanks to Duncan for the step by step guide, really makes you appreciate what the bloggasphere can do when the sh*t hits the fan.

The only issue was having to rescue the two weeks worth of work I'd done since the restore date. Whilst you can use time machine to jump forward and pick them up individually I'd saved the files (and emails) I'd been working on on a separate hard drive and simply dragged them back over when I was done.

Anyway shall be posting some pics of what I've been working on in the next week or so when I get stuff back from the printers, so keep 'em peeled.

Hot Links from June

Bit of a bumper Links post this month as I've come across a fair few quality resource and inspiration sites of late, so here goes;

You can never have access to enough textures, especially if you want to rough up too polished looking vectors, so texture lovers is worth bookmarking

If you're into creating T-Shirt graphics then this round up of free blank Vector and Bitmap Tees from the ever reliable Spoon Graphics will come in handy

Simon Schubert's images made from simply creasing white paper are great, simple idea but I bet they are a nightmare to make

AlexandFelix series of 13 Queens images are remarkable as no computer post production was used, all painstakingly arranged and lit in the studio.

Greek Mouse Graphics have a great portfolio, especially loving their extensive packaging work, clean and often witty

Studio On Fires LetterPress blog will have you stroking the screen hoping to cop a feel

Just-My-Type is a side project of designer Jakob Nylund and he's kind enough to provide free .AI files of some beautiful display typefaces

A lot of television idents have got pretty impressive of late and The Ident Gallary brings together the best in one nifty site with stills and videos from mainly UK favorites

Blogged about this site before but it's finally fully live. HypeforType have some cracking exclusive typefaces from cutting edge designers as affordable prices, nice

Dzine is a very useful blog for inpiration and this selection of Flash 3D environments provides interesting viewing

Another round up from Dzine with packaging design. I do love the new Diesel bottle, it's the sort of idea most companies would veto at the first round for being to costly, un-practical

Lovely Package does exactly what it says on the tin/ carton/ box, a very nice blog giving big pictures of stylish packaging

The Design Inspiration site has a nice round up of some experimental typography

I'm Off On My Jollies

Well I've had a busy couple of weeks trying to put all my outstanding projects to bed before taking 10 days off. Been an interesting mix of work lately including the latest SpeakOut, some work for a couple of Pharmaceutical companies and branding work for a computer information systems company (hopefully have the final branding to show by the end of the month).

Also I've finally completed the two catalogues for Orgasmic Ltd, was held up a little with some supplier changes but is off to the printers as I type. You can take a look at the catalogue layouts below, but be warned, the contents are of an adult nature!

SpeakOut Issue 4

Just sent issue 4 of SpeakOut off to print, the online version is above, click on the image for the full screen version.

Hot Links from April & May

Well I did promise a bumper links post this time to make up for my slacking last month, so here's my top finds from April and May

Great stop motion film, Wolf and a Pig made from over 1,300 photographs

PSDtoWP. Give them your PSD layouts and get a fully functioning wordpress theme in return. Sounds like it would be of dubious quality but it does come highly recommended and may be worth a shot

Ginou Choueiri's potato portraits, I want one!

Very stylish product photographs from French Photography studio Palast

Several artists have collaborated on Art Nouveau inspired T Shirt designs, especially like the photography by Steve Carty

Loads of great fashion branding and packaging work from dyhr.hagen

InPrint, online gallery and store for buying Ltd Edition art prints

Freelance Switch has a good round up of very nice business cards

Some interesting free typefaces from FontFabric

Dzine puts together an impressive collection of digitally manipulated photos

AlternativeTo is a growing site providing links to download free Opensource software alternatives to loads of different software. I actually prefer using the free NeoOffice to Microsofts Office suite

Business Link Press Release

I've had a fair few dealings with Business Link West Midlands of late. They initially got in touch with me after last years Plus+ Design Festival and provided some great info packs for writing a business and marketing plan, both of which I'd advise any freelancer to do. Apart from giving you an overall view of your current activity and 'where your at' business wise it really helped me focus on where my client base is currently coming from and what I can do to target new clients.

I also attended a series of free business seminars about time management, marketing and financial planning. Really useful stuff and 100% free, so I'd recommend signing up for their newsletter to find out about any more upcoming events.

Anyway off the back of this I had a mini interview and photo shoot for a Business Link press release and an article is online at the Birmingham Post website, cheesiest photo out the lot used and slightly embellished text of course but all good publicity.