My clients were happy with their cards today. Which is always a good thing…happy clients with good business cards are like tiny little advertisements for me! Yippee.

I had fun with this one. We printed them with this nice high-quality silk cardstock and I’m not sure you can tell from this shabby photo, but there’s a gloss ink treatment on part of the logo as well. My first chance trying out this printer and I must say the experience was pretty good the whole way through.

Finished a new logo brand this week.

BackOffice Solutions Hawaii is a business designed to help support other new businesses and non-profit organizations. Say you need help with alternate financing, accounting, payroll, taxes, marketing, branding, etc, they’ll act as the backbone for you. I kind of wish I had access to support like this 5 years ago when I started Lowe Studio Inc! The stress of getting it all started was painful.

Anyway, about the logo…we went through a series of pretty unusual ideas. When I have the chance I’ll put up the other concept drafts in the portfolio section. Ultimately we ended up with this concept. The idea where part of the logo text falling “behind” or “in back” of the other part of the text.

I particularly liked using this fontface because of the sharp quality of the letter “K” allowed me to split that letter up, leaving me with this “<” shape that might further suggest looking back.

I kind of liked having the shadow effect on just that one part of the logo. It feels to me like there’s a depth to the form, and yet the rest of it remains flat. So I like leaving a little bit of that eye-trickery thing.

In the end, I’m happy with it. As usual, I’m left wondering if I can do more to this, but a part of me likes the fact it’s a simple concept.

I sat in front of an Origins store yesterday as I was waiting on a meeting nearby. Origins sells those skin care products that smell funny. My wife once wanted their ginger smelling cream.

I couldn’t help but notice their logo…

Is it just me or does anyone else see a white skull peeking out between the trees?

I can only assume this is unintentional. Or maybe it IS intentional to tie into the “origins” like it’s some life and death thing? OR the logo designer thought it to be some sick inside joke like the way there have been Disney artists who have drawn hidden penises in children’s cartoons.

Otherwise, a skull isn’t something you’d want people to picture after they’ve applied a thick layer of “Gloomaway” to their face.

I finished the logo above a few weeks back, I don’t think I mentioned it yet?  A friend of mine started this company to help individuals become financially independent — freedom from having to worry about being able to pay off your bills (i.e., mortgage, credit cards, tuition, etc.)

I think his education program is really exciting. I understand there are ways to use everyday corporate strategies in our own personal finances so that we can easily handle our daily expenses. You can pay off a standard 30-year mortgage in like 7 years. Only problem my wife and I have with doing this education is that the Chinese tight-wad side of us just can’t justify paying for the education just yet.

I digress. Anyway, the main characteristic of this logo design is the triangle. The triangle is one of the key symbols of the financial strategies that they teach. I confess I had a hard time working with the triangle form…my style is more organic and curvy. The stars and stripes suggest the obvious connotations…I just wanted some negative space to break up the hard lines.

I still think there’s JUST a little bit missing I can do here to make it better. I guess I always think I could do better after-the-fact. Maybe it’ll come to me one day…

Athough not particularly new, I’ve always admired Hawaiian Air’s logo for quite some time now. I can’t seem to find information on who designed it though.  Anybody out there know?

It’s got a good balance – while it uses very common symbology I see all the time with Hawaiian logos, this one with the profile of the woman feels very friendly and positive to me. The colors is nice too…especially set against the tail of their planes.

The type feels a little retro to me. Although I do like the weight of it next to the mark.

Nice work whomever did this!

Anybody notice that Jack in the Box has been using a new logo as well lately? I really like it as well.  The old one has this 80′s-ish balloony font that needed to go, while the new one has a more contemporary 3D box feel to it mixed in with some nice font that reminds me of House Industries fonts.

I even like the fact it’s off kilter a bit…that’s probably intentional to leave enough space for the smiling tail of the “K”.  Not everyone likes it.  More discussion about the Jack logo can be found on Brand New

Kinda crazy-busy for me lately.  On top of work, being a new father has been challenging.  I liken parts of fatherhood a bit like getting a new gift surprise every 3 or 4 hours — wrapped up in a nice warm steamy bundle of diapers. You never know what you’re going to get.

Anyway, here’s just a couple of samples of recent projects I’ve been working on.

I’ve been working with this organization CARH for the past few months helping them get some new logo and branding. It’s been challenging…a new website should be up within the next week or two.

Consumer Service Analysis is a “mystery shopping” company where they send anonymous people into a retail or service business so that they can help the management review the their level of service.  This logo is one of the few type-oriented logo designs I’ve done.

I love looking at other artist’s doodles.  You get to see how they accomplished their designs…you either feel redeemed because they do things exactly the same way you do it, or you feel like you’re just totally unworthy.  In most cases it’s usually the former.  Thank God.

For me, it usually begins with sketches just like the ones above. Sometimes some of the things I sketch are laughably silly…but it’s funny how eventually SOMEthing just triggers and a great idea comes along.

Here’s a great article about a designer and her commentary on how she came up with some of her logo designs.  (via: Logolog)

I haven’t been back to “Brand New” for a while, but I’m glad I did.  Looks like they have a new list the “Best & Worst Branding of 2008″.  (via: BrandNew)

I generally agree with some of the picks.  The Pepsi one above I didn’t really notice until they commented about it here. The other week I was having lunch with my wife and I remember saying, “Hey, look the Pepsi can looks different…”.  I didn’t even spot the logo change.

While the new symbol doesn’t thrill me to death. I still think it’s a marginal improvement over the original flaccid wave that just doesn’t really say much at all.

A really interesting article about the original designer of the Major League Baseball logo. I never knew that it was 40 years old! I think it’s a great logo actually…one that still looks good using today’s design trends. Well, maybe today designers would add the Apple-esk shiny reflections on it.

Here’s a concept I quickly whipped up for my band “Miss Buddha”.

I’m not sure.  I was pretty excited about it at first.  I liked the spirit of it…it’s very Sex Pistol-esk.  I intentionally did it very fast and furious to try to get the energy of the music we played. And I noticed a lot of the iconic punk groups always have very chaotic, almost cheap looking logos.  With the exception of the Dead Milkmen who have a dead cow.  I wanted this cheesy 80′s vibe to it too so I did the halftone color thing to spruce it up. (Funny how the cheesy 80′s have kinda slipped back into fashion lately…I lived through that era and there’s nothing fashionable about the checkerboard shoes and the pink blazers, trust me)

And then I showed this to a couple band-members and they didn’t come across looking very enthused about it.  “It’ll look good on a shirt”.  I think I can loosely translate that to, “That looks like crap Raph, we’ll put it on a shirt so you don’t feel like you wasted your time”.

Bastards. (Funny how I make up their responses and complain about it huh?) I think that about explains why I don’t do work that’s too involved with my own personal life.

OH, we got a couple of shows up this Friday and Saturday if anybody wants to come check us out.

October 10 9:00pm – Sand Island Club w/ SheCanDevour
October 11 8:30pm – Higher Ground Cafe & Music Club w/Make the Change & Pimpbot

This is my own first time playing at those venues so your guess is as good as mine how it’ll turn out. Come out and say hello!