Logo Process: Filter Brothers

My long time buddy is on his way back to Austin for one of his entrepruneur ventures here in a few weeks and came to me to create a logo for him for his company, Filter Brothers, a pool filter service that cleans and restores filters in personal in-ground pools.  I had one of my business cards around and he thought something like what I had done for my fictitious company "Wagon Design" would be kind of cool.  Less talking and more showing.  Long story short he digs the logo and will be heading down to Austin with a stack of business cards and a pricing sheet to get him started.

Inspiration laying on my desk from my fictitious company "Wagon Design Studio"

The Process to creating the Filter Bros. Logo/Brand

Fake Mailer for Fun

So we headed to Arkansas earlier this week for a photoshoot with some sponsored riders for Progressive Bike Ramps and got some great shots.  One of the shots I was setting up required my good ol buddy and VP of Progressive bike ramps to stand on the ramp to make sure the flash was correctly placed...what really happened was a great photo op for him.  Got back to the office had a few laughs and put this together to test out Jason's ego ;) lotta fun have a look

Colors

So most of my designs contain some sort of variation between these colors.  I don't know if it a personal thing or if they are "trendy" but I need to branch out and try new colors.  They all seem to go together to me.  I'm personally not a big fan of green and it's complimentary color is red.  I love to use complimentary colors together but when thinking of usability I have to some what feel sorry for color blind people who view it, since they probably can't tell what in the world is going on. Ha I bet it's not that bad but figured I would put this up to see in reference as to what the colors of Fall 2012 and 2013 will be.  Ever since I started designing these colors have attracted my eye, and so I believe that it is time to let it go and move on and richen my color pallet.  Any suggestions?

Busy workin'

So this year I have been fortunate to join a company that has broadened my horizon and pushed me to create new things for new products.  This year 2 major companies have been rolled out and I have been lucky enough to be part of it all.  First off this year I was asked to create a website for a safe room/storm shelter idea that would blossom very soon.  It's name is Atlas and a logo and branding would be needed as well.  I have watched this brand come to be and have had the opportunity to make all the marketing material from brochures, websites, instruction manuals to a new store front in the Joplin Mall.

The other brand that was created when I arrived full time was Progressive Bike Ramps.  A new way of building bike parks in recreational areas, allowed me to brand and come up with all the marketing materials for this brand as well.  New website, photo shoots with pro sponsored riders, catalogs, logos, and an abundant of meetings I can say I'm a happy camper.  Today was one of the photo shoots and thought I would present a sneek peek of what is to come.

Content is King

Just one of those days. Sat down and created some flyers.  Sometimes frustration causes the weirdest flow of creativity. 

In the zone..

Creating your own theme in Wordpress

All of this can be found at the wordpress codex but if looking through that seems to intimidate you, then here is the "spark notes" version of the things you need to get your Child theme started.  But first... you may ask, "What is a child theme?" its basically building a theme that is piggy backed on another so that it may be easier to code, since you aren't coding from scratch.  If you find a theme that is almost perfect but you only need to rearrange some things then this allows for a good foundation so that you don't get half way through it all and realize the site is failing left and right.  With that said here are the 2 thing you need to create a theme.

a Folder that you will upload to the server under your THEMES folder within your wordpress install.
a CSS file with this information at the top.

/*

Theme Name:     Twenty Eleven Child  <--this can be what ever you want to call it.
Theme URI:      http://example.com/  <-- your website preferably
Description:    Child theme for the Twenty Eleven theme <--again what ever you want
Author:         Your name here  <--Give yourself some credit!
Author URI:     http://example.com/about/  <-- credit credit credit


Template:       twentyeleven <--REALLY IMPORTANT spell this right it has to be the exact       name of the theme you are piggy backing
Version:        0.1.0  <--if you are making the theme for others to use it allows them to see how many updates you have given the theme.
*/

After that the theme will show up when you go to the wordpress  admin.  If you want you can upload a screenshot of the theme but if you don't have a design layout yet then you can leave it blank.  The screenshot is located in the theme folder you created as screenshot.png.  It will pull this image and place it into the box where you can see your theme before you activate it.

You can either place this piece of code to help keep what you want of the styling from the mother theme or not include it to start from scratch (as far as CSS)

@import url("../twentyeleven/style.css");

if you are not using twentyeleven as a parent theme just replace with the correct spelling of the theme you are using and all will be good.

This piece of code pulls in all the css from the parent theme and allows you to write over the css you want.

Other files can also be added to help customize your theme even more.

header.php
footer.php
index.php

These are all modules that can be customized once and spread through your site without having to write out the code a million times.  Change something in the header and it gets applied to any page with
<?php get_header?> attached to it.  Pretty nice.

Like I said everything you need to know about wordpress is at codex.wordpress.org but thought this might help for a quick reference as well.

Ping Pong Championship

So I have this idea of buying a ping pong table setting it up at work and competing against co-workers. I've never really gotten into Fantasy Football and I'm sure that is way cooler than this, but I think this would keep my mind busy during the winter.  Anyways here is what I came up with to start things off.  Now off to find a Ping Pong table...

Ping Pong Banner