Graphically Speaking as a Visual Artist

This portfolio mixes the boundaries between graphics, illustration, photography, typography, and pattern. Consistently good work has it’s roots, I believe, from designers having wide-ranging interests, being informed and interested in a range of subjects outside the industry of design. The richer the inner life of the person, the better the designer.

SKORE is a logo treatment for a new exercise routine still in development. The concept is simple—fat and thin, skinny and building muscle. The missing spaces within the typography serve to convey movement. A wide range of color combinations are available per application.

Each year a New Year card goes out, usually by email. Given my recent experiments using deep space, this year inserted itself into the process.

“Should a logo be self-explanatory? It is only by association with a product, a service, a business, or a corporation that a logo takes on any real meaning. It derives its meaning and usefulness from the quality of that which it symbolizes. If a company is second rate, the logo will eventually be perceived as second rate. It is foolhardy to believe that a logo will do its job immediately, before an audience has been properly conditioned.” — Paul Rand

A robust logo for a robust dog who stands (and sits), for a small, robust design company.

This logo and the version below are anti-logo. They break the rules of logo design which “demand” simplicity above all. This was great forty, fifty years ago. Today there are too many logos. Distinction is important. Perfect execution is important. But a logo is wrapped in what it stands for. What the company is and how it does what it does. It’s that simple.

This logo designed for Howard Stein Design, before I founded DOON.

A furniture company that specialized in a kit of parts, furniture that was assembled using sections of plastic tubing.

I was developing a rocket logo for personal use. Then 9/11 happened, the US went to war, and the idea was shelved.

Another exploration of the rocket theme. Turned out to be a bad time for missile logos. Probably still is.

I have a fondness for the paper product. I designed promotional material to be stuck on the cubicle wall. All these pieces, not included here were the size of a standard business envelope. They were meant to be provocative and evocative.

Promotional work as above.

Wynnfield Capital had been using a logo designed about twenty years ago. It had been created by an architecture student when the company needed something quickly. The subject matter, the building represented in the logo, held special significance to the company, and they wanted it retained. I redrew the building eliminating all the detail that was not essential to its identity, and paired it with a fresh slab-serif typeface. The logo was provided with versions to cover all collateral material.

Based in Europe, Zara Sophia is a former championship diver, now embarking on a business representing visual artists. I wanted to incorporate her lifelong love of water, as well as the idea of a collection of individuals being brought under her wing. I made a series of logos that work as a family, the continuity and branding being the hexagon(s) and the font which contains water elements (the water-drop in the bowl of the “a”, and wave-like letterforms — the “S” and “Z”). I favor logos that are malleable, that can be broken apart and put back together, or that contain different but stylistically familiar components that can be built into systems and can be adapted to a variety of applications and change without losing identity.

Silverlight Productions was a multimedia company with several divisions. I designed all logos and art directed and designed the branding for the company. The shapes within this logo were repurposed throughout the branding, particularly the grey knife-blade shape which appeared on all printed material and on the business cards as a top and bottom border.

SLPNet was a division of Silverlight formed to serve technical or back-end engineering needs. The logo had to be distinct from the main company, but I tied all the divisions together by using an element that looked like a knife blade. Note how the grey element of the master logo is repeated in the SLPNet logo, so a quiet family resemblance is created. I carried this blade like form through all collateral material of the company and its six divisions.

Here too, the division devoted to film and video uses that same curved shape. I love designing these logos. Despite the fact that we are inundated with the marks of large corporations and tiny businesses, there will always be a need for the well-designed logo.

A sketch for an identity concept for a luxury spa in Cape Town South Africa

The product is a hand cart designed to easily transport five gallon buckets of liquid or other material such as dry pool chemicals found in hardware or garden stores. The Buggy has applications in the home and warehouse, any time a heavy bucket needs to be moved. Product not yet available in stores. The client in this case insisted on the inclusion of a bucket shape, and thus the red “bucket”. I would have preferred that left out, but every logo designer has a story to tell. The trick is to make the client happy without doing too much damage to a pure idea.

Guitarfile is a company founded by Lisa Johnson, the eminent photographer of rockstar’s guitars. The logo also has a black and white version. The “bars” on the guitar body evoke the audio levels on a sound engineers mixing board.

EVE, a range of lingerie in South Africa. Three black verticals are the pubic hair of the logo.

I am a strong believer in hybrid work, more so with the advent of mobile applications. I’m currently developing a range of design patterns and bits of language suited to mobile, looking for simple interfaces and fast download. Some of these images were not created with that purpose in mind.

Below are samples of business cards designed specifically as interpretations of a client’s personality, which I gleaned through conversation as well as answers to a brief online questionnaire. Despite the immediacy of our online lives, we meet new people and still ask if they have a card. This will change, but in the interim I wanted to explore the idea of offering artwork so personal it would never be seen anywhere else.