Just wrapped up a fun logo for The Hernando County Office of Business Development’s annual “Plane ol’ BBQ” networking event out at the Brooksville Airport. The Plane ol’ BBQ is held just off the runway beneath the wings of some very cool aircraft.

A logo is a unique visual identity. “Logo designers” who use clip art are actually more arrangers than designers. Here is a few behind the scenes shots of the identity I developed for Country Boy Beer. I do enjoy working on these illustrative logos when I get the chance. It is always a challenge to create an effective logo that is also packed with detail.

In the end it was decided that the truck by it’s self was much more effective as a logo than the entire piece. So the actual country boy gets shelved to use on other pieces of collateral for the brand.

In the future I’ll be putting up some more behind the scenes shots for other various projects. If you like what you see check out some of the other identities I’ve developed with out the use of clip art.

Directly below this post you will notice a post about baby shower diaper party invites. Here is the update. As of right now we are officially a family of four, the whole set, a girl, a boy, a cat, a dog. We even got the minivan. Everyone is happy and healthy. My two year old daughter is now a big sister and loving it. My wife is amazing. My son, well he destroys about eleven diapers a day. Me, I’m trilled. The best part is I’ll finally have an excuse to buy hot-wheels again.

Before my daughter was born I got the chance to design the invitations for my wife’s baby shower.  A little girl riding on the back of a tyrannosaurus rex. I don’t blame people for not seeing the relevance. My wife got it and she’s the boss. Fast forward, we are now having a boy and I was able to develop a second illustration because the ladies are throwing us another baby shower but this time they are calling it a “diaper party”.  Call it what ever you want ladies, the invite is getting another dinosaur! This time it features a nosey little brother with his brontosaurus. Yes, I heard that the whole brontosaurus thing was a huge mistake and it never actually existed. This magnificently fictitious beast will live on in my boyhood memories, probably on the PLANET Pluto or something.

There actually is a point to this. Think of these images as prototypes for a children’s book I am developing. In fact I am pretty sure this is the only reason my wife gave them the green light. As far as what the book is about and the story behind the illustrations, well I’ll get to that soon enough.

By “Cobbler” I mean “Graphic Designer”, and by “children” I mean “Real Life Graphic Design LLC” and by “new shoes” I mean “new Website & Logo”.

So after many years doing good work for other people I have finally spent some time getting my own house in order. My old website for Real Life Graphic Design was cumbersome to maintain and so it ended up resembling those cities on “Life After People”. I hadn’t been around in months and you could tell. I try not to think about the projects I might have lost out on by having that outdated website representing my work.

In order to make things suck-less I turned to the Thesis framework for WordPress. WordPress was originally developed for blogging but has evolved over the years to become a very powerful open source content management system. If anyone is interested in having a website developed shoot me an email. WordPress might be right for your project, maybe not. Either way, there are a lot of other options and I’d be glad to help. Examples of websites I’ve done.

I also designed a new identity for Real Life Graphic Design. More on that to come.