JBLM Recycling Program Logo

I had a great opportunity recently to design a logo for a new recycling program at JBLM. The customer had some ideas about the look, but was also very open to other concepts, so it was an exciting and fun challenge. I had a strong feeling for the leaf shape, from an environmental perspective, and to make it stand out from a standard and expected round or elliptical logo shape. Interestingly, the captain who had the final say did not appreciate the leaf logo at first, but ultimately returned to it after the next round of ideas. He also did not initially want the recycle logo combined with the sun image, but I felt it was the most effective way of incorporating it and persisted in including it as an option, and, as you see above, it was the winner! The top version will be used as a sticker; it was originally an alternate logo option, and they liked it enough to include it for other uses in their program.

New Job Projects!

Yes, folks, I have found gainful employment! I've been working as a graphic artist for a military contractor (!) since August. Much of the work is routine signage, but these two are examples of having to re-create logos for a brigade or division. Often, all they have is a low-res jpg and they want to output a 2-foot logo to be mounted on foamcore and cut out so they can put it up for a wall display. That was the case for these, so I had to completely redraw both, and in Corel, no less! Challenging, but it definitely honed my drawing skills. Corel is actually very similar to Illustrator, at least in how the drawing tools work, and it does have a few nifty features. I was very glad for the Help feature, though! I had to "translate" several functions that Corel just processes differently.

Magazine Cover Mockup

My final assignment for Illustrator class--a mock magazine cover. I enjoyed doing this, because I like creating layouts and working with text; designing the logo was fun as well. Oftentimes it seems I do a lot of the work in my head, because I don't usually sketch out a lot of different ideas. I did use an image for the earth, and found some fantastic Photoshop brushes for the constellations (I wasn't really looking forward to drawing all of those by hand!) I drew the zodiac symbols and the center circles, then added a stroke of my star scatter brush at the bottom.

Depth and Blur

I rather like this little outer space scene, it was fun to put together the various layers and then add blurs and drop shadows where appropriate. I'm really liking the inner glow effect on the star and planet; I used that in the last assignment and decided to repeat it here. I also created a "moonboots" brush to add the footprints from the spaceship. I tried using the Width tool to widen them as they got closer, but I don't think it was working the way I imagined it. The astronauts took some time to create--it reminded me of building the puppet animation in Flash, piecing them together with shapes. I did the same thing with the alien. To me, it's a lot easier than drawing it all out!

Depth and Dynamics

So the object of this assignment was...depth and dynamics! I tried to create depth by using the Perspective tool and drawing primitive buildings along the planes, adding the road and sun/sky. Then I created some dynamics by drawing curved lines for the road dashes, using the Width tool to widen them out a bit at the bottom, and adding drop shadows so they kind of "snake" along the road. I don't really like the ovals; I guess they're supposed to be some kind of vehicle? Whatever..it's abstract, right? Not one of my favorites!

Menu Board Assignment

I like doing menus and this was a fun concept: One Buck Cluck! This was really the first idea that popped into my mind and I decided it would work nicely. I found some chicken images (since I can't draw well without some kind of template for guidance) and used the parts I needed: head and wings. The chick was super easy; I just used shapes for the body and feet, then Unite in Pathfinder, drawing in the wing, eye and beak. I knew I wanted the chicken holding a frame, but it wasn't until I had the frame in place that I decided to make it a chalkboard, using, appropriately enough, Chalkduster font for the header. I decided to use regular Chalkboard for the menu items, as it is a bit more readable. Added my tagline on the bottom, and there you go!

Illustrator Smoke Brush

So this is my take on creating a "smoke" brush in Illustrator, spelling out (what else?) SMOKE! The process was fairly simple, although for some reason I had to redraw my original "plume", because when I tried to apply the Envelope Distort, it was not creating a smoky effect, just blended lines within the plume shape. Don't know what was going on there, but when I deleted and created a new shape, it worked fine. This could be fun within an illustration; I'd like to try making some shapes or drawings with it.