For anyone out there that has an iPhone or an iPod Touch and wants to keep a close eye on this website, you can now add a custom icon to your iPhone home page.  

This is made possible because I have added a WebClip Icon.  It looks professional, and it’s really easy to do for your own websites. Simply create a 57×57 px png file, name it ‘apple-touch-icon.png’ and upload it to your root folder.  You don’t have to worry about rounding the corners or creating the reflection look, the iPhone or iPod Touch does that for you.

Here you can see what my original image looked like.  I tried scanning my iPhone so that I could show you what it looked like while the icon was on the home page, but the scanner kept activating different buttons.  

The Fund to Prevent Homelessness is a non-profit organization that helps families along Massachusetts’ north shore. This group looked to Single Source to develop a logo and website to help promote their organization.  They were looking for a simple static website.  Single Source donated all of the creative work, along with two years of hosting.

I wasn’t involved in the creation of the logo, but I did help suggest the colors to be used. I suggested the brick color because this group helps people in financial distress hold onto their homes.  The sand color is representative of the beaches that are found in these communities.

My main contribution was the creation of the website.  I wanted to take elements from the logo and have that carry through the site.  The jagged edge along the “roof” of the logo is seen on many of the edges and buttons on the pages. I found the different photos on a stock photo site.

There have been some rumors of upcoming logo changes.  Hopefully this change won’t be too severe.  But one way or the other, there will probably be some changes to the website.  

What you see here is the logo that I designed for a promotion that never happened. I can’t get into the details, but the idea had something to do with Dunkin’ Donuts and The Simpsons.

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? Read the rest of this entry »

I was touching up some photos recently, and it got me thinking that I’ve learned a few basics of photo editing over the years that I try to teach to younger designers:

Nothing is actually white

Nothing is actually in focus

By sticking to these two rules, half of the battle is already done. Read the rest of this entry »

This blog originally started as a way for me to learn about blogging while not screwing up anybody’s professional website.  I built the blog, hid it on a side page, posted a couple of things and walked away from it.  But it kept nagging at me … I wanted to do more.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve found myself giving advice to younger designers that are either in college or just out of college.  That knowledge, combined with my desire to update my website lead to the creation of this blog. I used to think that blogs were online diaries that nobody other than the writer cared about.  In doing more research, I found that they can be a great tool for spreading knowledge and opinions. Plus, it helps with search engine optimization.

With this blog, I hope to pass along the knowledge that I’ve gained through Read the rest of this entry »

This is a logo that I came up with for a new initiative that The Lowell Five Cent Savings Bank was looking to institute. Every now and then, Lowell Five has a special offer for it’s customers. If they use their Lowell Five debit card at selected Lowell Five merchants (restaurants, stores, etc.) the customer will receive 5% back on their purchase. Lowell is a community where everybody knows and helps each other. The main idea that they wanted to convey is that it’s good to keep the money local, thus creating the Rewards program.

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.)

Boomerfest is an annual event where a group of people get together and go see a Red Sox game. Each year a big block of tickets are bought and then sold through this website. 2008 marked the fifth year of Boomerfest.

This year, there were far fewer tickets than in years past. Because of this, there was a pre-sale to the early buyers from last year. I set up a Constant Contact email newsletter account and emailed those who had bought tickets early last year. I set up the Constant Contact, as well as the Boomerfest website so that each recipient had an individual username and password for the pre-sale.

This didn’t have to be a complex website, it just needed an area for people to buy tickets. The other draw to the site is the photos from past games. Each year I spend a couple of hours re-configuring the PayPal settings (Red Sox ticket prices are constantly going up) and uploading the new photos that people send in. It’s not meant to look like a professional website due to the nature of the event. A bunch of friends getting together for a few beers and a Red Sox game.The Boomerfest logo is based on the Red Sox font, and the site overall uses the Red Sox colors of red and navy.