* credit: original hand drawn art by the tattoo artist @RedWizzle

The clients alias is Cheffany and her company is "Late Nite Chop Shop." This is a comfort food catering service that specifically caters to night time food orders and delivery. This is one of my favorite type of projects because the clients said, "come up with something creative..."

When I thought of the term "Late Nite" I imagined a traditional image of moon slightly over mountains with a few clouds covering the view of the moon. I substituted the mountain ridges on each side of the moon for the shape of two chef knives. The clouds and the stars were added so that the shapes of the moon and the knives would makes sense with the "nite" theme.

The typography was san-serif and very basic, the client specifically asked for the typography to be very regular and legible. We went with one that put more focus on the graphics than the typography.

If you pay close attention to the full logo you can see the layers that graphics fall onto (from top to bottom): 

- typography

- two chef knives

- clouds and stars

- moon

* credit: original hand drawn art by Mike Smith

This company is a hair salon in  the Bay Area that offers any and all hair styles, hence the name "The Total Package Salon." I was given a few instructions and ideas and allowed to be creative, I immediately knew I wanted to play on the letters "T" and "P" because they have the ability to intertwine with one another, they have some of the same characteristics.

Originally i went with a block letter design that connected the "T" and the "P" but it had a more masculine look to it but the client wanted something "softer" so I went back to the beginning with the same train of thought. I tried the same idea with cursive typography and it worked perfectly, the lettering is very curvy and feminine. In addition to the design, the way the color gradient moves from the bottom of the loop of the "P" gives the design motion, If I were to physically write the graphic with a pencil I'd writhe the "T" from top to bottom and then I'd start the loop of the "P" from it's lower point going up.

*excuse my design nerd explanation, lol*

The "The Total Package Salon" typography needed to be formal in my opinion, I wanted the contrast between the graphic and the text to stand out. The text also needed to be stacked because of how long the string of text is when displayed horizontally.

My client was starting an online clothing boutique for women and wanted a logo that was plain but edgy. One thing that quickly sparked my creativity when designing this logo was the fact that I knew the client personally and her personality pushed me in a good direction as I was brainstorming. She's a sweetheart but can be very feisty at times and I felt the horns and halo theme would work great to represent her as well as the business.

We played on the naughty and nice theme for a while and with different ideas and then the client and I agreed to just keep it very basic to engage the curiosity of the viewer. The idea was for a person to see the logo and be intrigued as to what it was representing and possibly click and find out.

One of my biggest and most consistent clients is the owner of "Mama's Munchies" who I have worked with on several different projects. This project was for a medicated sweet potato pie company. She approached me with the idea of the logo, "I want a 70's looking woman... with an afro... with vintage words." I wanted the logo in a circle with the typography flowing around the inside of the circle. The hardest part was getting the face to have specific features that the client was satisfied with, once I had that and added the afro to it. I was done!

This client is a 13 year old, African-American, young woman with a lipgloss line, lip gloss the SHE manufactures herself! (credit to her mom also) In so many words she stated that she wanted a logo that was up to date, sassy, with “glossy lips… in unicorn colors.“ lol.

When I started creating I knew I wanted the lips to be somewhat full for cultural representation but not too over the top to avoid it being provocative. I also wanted typography that was exciting and young, the “Sha’Poppin“ text is very teenage to early twenties in my opinion. We discussed a few variations of the word “gloss“ and I felt it should be very normal and strait forward so it would leave room for future products and endeavors without changing much of the logo from a branding stand point. For example, if in the future she wanted to release a Sha’Poppin nail polish line, she could keep the “Sha’Poppin“ graphic and change the lips and “gloss“ to finger nails and “polish“ and it’s still recognizable to people who are already familiar with the brand.

When it came to colors I went with the colors that you would find in the iridescent color scale. I felt that best represented “unicorn“ like colors, the gradient on the typography and the lips graphic really bring the overall logo to life as well as giving off the idea of youth.

was really getting into DJ'ing and he started getting booked at a few places. When those places had flyers he no brand statement to advertise himself other than his name. He came to me with a sketch/drawing of what he would like his logo to look like if he ever decided to have one. The idea was simple... It was a direct illustration of what he looked like, let me explain, at the time he had a high top fade haircut with a medium brown streak in the front, small cuts in the side, and you would usually see him with shades on. This was great because this was his form of branding, he was unique and he stood out because of these features.

He drew a character of himself with the word "Wrecck" under it, that was his moniker at the time. This may sound crazy but when he showed me the drawing one aspect of made me say, "Give it to me, I want to vectorize it"... that one aspect is the shape of the upward curve in the hair, something about that shape interested me enough to want to design this logo.

The vectorizing phase was pretty basic because the shapes were easy to make but there were subtle differences I decided to make. I wanted the high top fade to be a little higher to emphasize how tall it was in real life and the shape of the glasses, I felt they should be more of a rounded square shape rather than the circular shape because I wanted to keep the consistency of the shape we started with in the hair. The typography was a simple font with slight changes and stretches to make it closely mimic the original text in the drawing.

When I showed him the black and white logo design he immediately loved it, so I just added the colors which was easy because it was just based on the actual color of his skin and the part in his hair. This logo is little over two years old I think and I still love how basic the shapes are but they reflect a person in such detail.

* credit: original hand drawn art by DJ Wrecck

A client contacted me and said they wanted a logo for a modeling agency BUT they also wanted the design to look good on a shirt. The client wanted the logo to incorporate a feather pen and an inkwell with the name "Soft Touch." 

As I worked on the feather the client came up with the idea of the inkwell being a honeypot and the ink being gold honey and I loved the idea and ran with it, taking it a step further and giving the honeypot a honeycomb feel to it. I felt that would wrap the ideas together as a whole.

This Logo is for a Bay Area catering company owned by two women. The immediate design focus was to visually incorporate the words "Kiss" and "Bay" into the logo. The most obvious image that represents the Bay Area is the Golden Gate Bridge or what I am more familiar with, The Bay Bridge which connects Oakland and San Francisco. I wanted a very simple graphic for the bridge, a few curved lines and a few strait lines, the metal pillars of the actual bridge needed to be the thicker lines on the graphic. The lips were added to give the feminine aspect of the design, representing the women who own the business.

The typography at the top of the design is very curvy and it keeps the consistency of the bold lines that make create the bridge. The typography at the bottom of the graphic is perfect because of how structured each letter is contained inside of each box. The fact that the text is below the bridge, it's kinda like a foundation of what the company is built on... Catering.

After all those aspects were added the idea of the fork and spoon came to me and it was a no-brainer and it had to stay. The utensils break up the symmetry and give the viewer the urge to view the logo from left to right, which is interesting seeing as though red color for the lips was added that's where the eyes goes first.

"Black Diamond" promotional group was a group of young tenacious event/party promoters in the Sacramento, California area. If you wanted to be part of the in-crowd in that area you had to know who these promoters were.

The main ideas I had for this design was; black, strong, bold, urban, and diamond. I knew this was going to be a typography style design because they stressed the importance of the name being spelled out and legible while in a small size on a flier. I went with the urban grunge look and feel on the typography. The letters have the stencil and paint look also and the holes in the vowels have actual black diamonds which worked great with the white on black colorway that was requested.

The "promotional group"  test at the bottom needed to be bold but almost the opposite of the top graphic. The top graphic is very blocky and grungy while the the bottom text has curve and motion to it. The lines on each side of the bottom text hold up the main graphic and keeps the eyes traveling strait down the logo.

Originally this client contacted me to design an online boutique and during the assessment I realized she didn't have a logo have a logo. The business is called "Lovett All Closet" which is a play on words because her last name is actually "Lovett." *so clever, right*

The client already had an idea an idea for the design she wanted, which was, "...arrows that make a heart" I illustrated that idea and came up with a design that followed her idea but had a little extra edge to make the arrows look more exciting and like they were moving fast to create the heart shape. For the online boutique the heart shaped arrow graphic was to the left and the name, "Lovett All Closet" started in the middle of the heart and spelled the letters out to the right and it worked great for that specific boutique project... BUT... as I spoke with the client about some of her business ideas and thoughts about expansion and scaling we agreed she needed a logo that was all encompassing to represent the clothing boutique as well as the entire brand and future endeavors.

The client and I took a step back and decided that the heart graphic with her last name, "Lovett" (Love It) was more than perfect and could work as the top tier of everything she was working on. The typography is sassy and sharp and shares the same characteristics as the tails of the arrows that create the heart graphic. This process is why I love what i do, we started on a basic idea and created something that was so much bigger than just a simple logo.

"Monarch Painters" is a family owned, residential and commercial painting company based on the peninsula in the Bay Area., The client wanted to update the look of the company for marketing and branding purposes. The client was very specific in wanting a monarch butterfly to be the main part of the logo design because, "...it has sentimental value" in their family.

We chose to keep the original colors of an actual monarch butterfly, so early on in the process I knew what the color scheme was going to be. The components that make logo are:

- A monarch butterfly

- An actual paintbrush stroke

- Typography

The idea is that the actual monarch butterfly is the paintbrush, the path that it flies in leaves a paint streak as a paintbrush would, and the typography is bold with soft rounded curves to make the butterfly graphic stand out. The butterfly wings are very detailed and busy but the text is strait forward with a lot of space for each letter.

This was created for a company/team called Sk8TheTown. The company is for an extreme sport called Freeline skating that originated right here in the Bay Area.

The original logo served it's purpose well for the early stages of the company but recently the owner has been trying to come up with a new logo that is a bit more descriptive in it's look. SK8 The Town considers themselves more of the urban branch of Freeline skating when compared to the other groups around the world and he wanted to depict that in the logo design.

One of the team members (Mike Smith) created a simple hand drawn silhouette of what looks like one of the Freeline skaters and the idea stuck…

* credit: original hand drawn art by Mike Smith

This client is a respected attorney in San Diego, Ca. The idea I was given was a logo that was based on old english lettering but a little more modern. The point was to keep the familiar professional look but represent the fact that the attorney was young.

I went with a standard old english letter “L“ and stripped it down to the most common parts. I made sure each “L“ was slightly different so it wouldn’t get confusing to the eye when overlapping. The first “L“ (the higher one) has the serif connected to the top and against the body on the left side to come off as the more prominent letter because it represents the last name “Laoye.“ The second “L“ (the lower one) doesn’t have that because it would cause visual conflict with the first “L“ and should be less prominent because it only represents the word “legal.“

The letters have sharp curved lines along the curviest parts of the design to give it a more modern look while the actual letters themselves have very blunt edges, this creates contrast and allowed me to intertwine the two “L’s“ in a way that isn’t too aggressive, it’s subtle and it plays nice with the visual.

The boldest part of the “L’s“ were the vertical curved areas and it was too heavy and masculine for the idea I had so I created depth the the lettering by breaking it up into a caged look to remove the boldness. The final touch was requested by the client at the end and it pulled her idea and vision together, she wanted to “add a scale in the background” of the graphic to pull in the lawyer/attorney identification.

The client wanted a "simple logo" for their real estate and property management business in Las Vegas. These were the exact specifics given; "professional, conservative, not to fancy, and simple." Fair enough, and so I started...

I started out with a few quick  brainstorm sketches when I got the idea to somehow incorporate the shape of a house. At that point it hit me the left side of the number four is pretty much the basic shape of a house.

I wanted the left side to be bold to emphasize the number four within the house shape because that causes the eye to go there first register the "4C" element before you get to the "The Future."

I wanted the right side of the house to be very light in weight compared to the bold left side. I feel that right side gives the logo a sense of "future building" like an element of a house that is still being built. I intentionally made sure the words "The Future" pushed through the opening of the "still being" built side of the house.