Logo and graphic design

Even though I technically went to school to study illustration and fine art, as part of my education I also took some ad design and graphic design classes. Over the years from time to time I will be asked to create a logo for someone and it's definitely a different type of challenge for me. My approaches will vary for each one depending on the type of business I'm working for and here's some examples. This first one was a sign design for my friend, Mike Guidone's shop Monkey Bones, located in Beavercreek, Ohio. Also here's some of the different stages and variations it went through....

Next up was a new logo / shirt design Stained Skin : Second Skin, located in Newark, Ohio and owned by Jeremiah Hanzey. My inspiration for this was Star Wars / Boba Fett and creating a character who would be a personification of tattoo machine....

In 2008, I was approached by Mike Musto to create a logo for a car culture inspired clothing line called Mr. Angry. Obviously personifying anger was the inspiration so I tried to figure out a good way to get that across but also tie it to hot rods and speed....

In addition to a variety of t-shirt designs, I also worked on some logos for a car race he was working on....

Next up, last year I created a logo / t-shirt design for Zombie Dogz, a local food truck that serves great food and has a really large following - whenever they set up, the lines are long as hell.

The final one I'll show is the design I made for my tax Lady, Elaine Janicki at Bayer Janicki Tax Service. This obviously is not the typical company I would design something for, but I saw it as a challenge to be forced to work in an understated manner and actually is one of my favorite things I've done. I know, weird , huh? Here's the first round of choices I sent her....

The first five were me trying to do what I thought a tax service logo would look like. For the last one though I remembered that Elaine, being from Chicago originally, was a huge Cubs fan. So knowing that about her and wanting to make this very personal for her, I got the idea to take the Wrigley Field sign outline, rotate it and plug her info into it. I was actually surprised how well it worked. When I showed it to her, she instantly gravitated toward that design even though she didn't recognize the sign outline.

Well that's all for now. In the future I'll show some more graphic design work I've done......