Perfect Practice Logo Build

Hello there, blog readers! Let me apologize for it being so long since I've last posted. I've been super busy finishing out the interface for my Demo Reel DVD, generally tying up loose ends with my branding, and enjoying the fruits of that labor in terms of new clients and new work. One such great project that I want to talk about is a log animation I did with my friends at Outsider Entertainment.

 A lot of what I've done recently, and continue to do a lot of, are motion infographics, data visualization sort of projects. Which are great, by the way. I really enjoy doing them, and they're in depth enough that I get to really flex myself in terms of not only my graphics abilities, but also try out new things with art direction and illustration. However, this means that I haven't gotten to do much of what I consider "back to basics" Motion Graphics. Stuff like logo animations, lower thirds, network idents. Stuff like that. So, in view of my desire not to be out of practice with such things, I was excited, and certainly a bit bemused, to start work on the logo for a company named, aptly enough, "Perfect Practice".

 

 There are a lot of different theories around about what makes a good logo animation. Different projects call for different approaches, certainly, but a good animation to me should conform to a few things, in order of priority:

 1.) It should be fairly short. Longer animations can be great, but save anything over 3-5seconds for an intro or a bumper.

 2.) They should try to capture a bit of the brand "personality". A logo animation is an extension of the logo, which is in many ways the "face" that the consumer will be interacting with most. Thusly, the animation should move in a way that reflects who that brand is.

 3.) If possible, but certainly not always, the animation should say what the company does. For example, a construction logo could be brought in by a crane. An airline logo could fly in, ect.

 As a company, Perfect Practice makes a device which you wear around your waist while exercising and tells you how much you're tilting one way or another with little tilt bars. Staying upright apparently improves the effectiveness of your exercise, and thus the product's appeal. Poking around in some of their company collaterals, I collected a list of worlds like "Bold" "Strong" and "Precise" and central to their brand personality.  After working on a lot of very corporate stuff lately, it was refreshing to work on a something a lot more athletic.  After the figure gracefully draws in, bold movements and a constantly in motion camera snaps back and forth, demonstrating the tilt bars of the product.  Upon reaching the end state for the figure, the "PERFECT" comes in in action movie style, and "PRACTICE" surges in with the logo's swoosh.

Motion Graphics as a Presentation Tool

Lately, I've noticed more and more instances of Motion Graphics being used as a presentation tool as opposed to some of its more traditional uses. This isn't an extremely new trend, and is something that I used years ago to wow NSAC judges when I was in school. I've found that this is an unexpected use of motion graphics to a lot of people and I thought it was worth devoting a blog post to. Above, you can find a piece that I did a few months back with Origo Branding. It was used in a presentation the governor's team and a number of other state of ohio bigwigs to try and gain more funding for opiate awareness. It's a piece we were all proud of and was very well received, but what is also important is how it was used. Whereas a lot of motion graphics stuff that I've done in the past has been logo builds, show intros, lower thirds and the like, this was utilized as more of a really high end powerpoint than anything else. At three minutes, it's longer than even a full-motion commercial, and takes time to have a full narrative arc of introduction, problem, solution, call to action. Stylistically, it's closest to some of the excellent motion infographics that have been popping up recently, and it certainly stands well on its own in that regard as well. But in context, it represents an area of demand for these types of services that I don't think a lot of motion artists are considering. PowerPoint changed the way that a lot of people did presentations, but it's graphic capabilities were very limited. Additionally, what was once impressive about it, people have long since become numb to (I've read that an inane powerpoint presentation was cited as a cause of the mars rover crash). Motion Graphics a proven powerful way to transmit information. As either a stand-alone video or with narration (live or pre-recorded), it can provide the pizzaz that PowerPoint fails to do any longer. Additionally, since the tools to create motion graphics are so powerful, and the skills needed to use them so specialized, the amount of artistic freedom that can be put into a piece is immense. Instead of being stuck with a handful of presets, transitions can be infinitely customized and tailor-made to your project. Kinetic typography and constant motion provide far more visual interest than a slideshow does, and impactfull pieces result in much greater message delivery.

The Last Month

So, obviously, I haven't posted on here for a month. You were probably asking yourself "did something happen?" or "Did he forget about us?" or "Did he take a break for the holidays, never to return?". Well, yes I did take a break for the holidays, but I've been right busy since! Business cards and reel cases came in. I've still got some stuff to do on the reel cases until they're finished, but I've already started to hand out the cards, and I couldn't be more excited about them. When I get everything ready, I'll take some nice pictures, but in the meantime, there's a post over at Dingbat Press about the technical aspects that went into it. Just as excitingly, I've wrapped up creating my website, and am officially soft launching it. All of the links up top are now working! All of the 'works' section is flushed out, and I've added social media icons at the bottom. It's an entirely home made effort, with help from some friends on the tricky parts of the code, but I'm pretty proud of how it's come. And unless I get feedback otherwise, this is how it's gonna stand going forward. With luck, it will serve me well! I'll try and be posting here more, now that the business of the holidays is over. Thanks so much for reading.

Off to the printer's!

As a bit of a subtext to all of this design work I've been doing for new personal branding is my trying to find a printer who can create these designs I've been doing and not charge me a zillion dollars. Prices seem to be pretty variable as far as these things go, and the quotes that I got have been almost comical in their variety. Of course, quality is just as important as price. I've decided to go with the quirkily named Dingbat Press. They were real pleasant to work with, and cut me a good deal. Obviously, I haven't seen the cards yet, but I'm optimistic. It's rare that you see a "Best Business Cards" list (and trust me, I must have seen hundreds) without a card of theirs being on there. Here's the card design that I'm going with:

The DVD Cases were a bit trickier. I had to reluctantly abandon my idea to use a wax seal to seal them. It just didn't fit with my brand anymore, and wasn't seen anywhere else in any of my other materials. Also, trying to design a case that worked with it was becoming increasingly difficult. One of the things I really wanted with my DVD case was something a bit more sturdy and substantial than just a simple CD sleeve. I wanted it to be a tactile part of the branding with a plastic part inside to hold and protect my reel. It needed to be able to sit on a shelf and have enough of a spine so I could put my name and craft on it, like so:

Of course, I ran into the problem that no one seemed to be willing to print these for me. Eventually, I figured out why-- you can't run a case like that through a letterpress because the force of the impression crushes the plastic. Why so many printers were hesitant to tell me that, I have no idea. In the end, I'm getting the paper part printed and will be assembling them myself. Finding somewhere that sold the plastic inserts was tricky (everything online was a huge chinese reseller that wanted me to buy at least 400), but I'm really excited to get them in and start assembling.

Business Cards

As someone who primarily designs for screen, I sometimes forget how different it is to design for print. Things that look good on screen can have the tendency to look overproduced or poorly designed when printed. And some of my favorite print designs, often with big fields of flat color, would look almost laughably incomplete viewed on screen. While I'm glad I've realized these things, it's made trying to design for print, adapting from my designs for screen, an interesting challenge. I've been long overdue in getting a business card, and that's one of my first orders of business behind a reel in my big new rebranding. I've sorta fallen in love with the idea of a nice letterpressed business card. The actual physical indentation of a card fits nicely within the visual metaphor or different layered colors that has coalesced into my branding. Also, I think that a nice well-crafted business card with a good tactile feel will leave a nice impression of myself as a capable, stylish, and established artist-- three of my most important brand "personality traits". The cards won't be cheap, and I hope won't appear to be either. While in some professions that might be a risk unto itself, I feel that commercial art is one of the least so. While I know that potential employers will look at my rate, which I feel is very reasonable, I don't think any artist wants themselves, and thereby their work, to be defined by the word "cheap". And even if it's a very important consideration to them, I don't think that any creative director wants to think that they chose an artist for their project based on who's the lowest bidder. Of course, letterpressing provides for interesting challenges on my end. I can't exactly print one off at home to see how it looks. In my comps, I've added drop shadows, bevels and gradients to try and make it look right, but I really can only imagine how it will actually be. I've narrowed it down to two-ish basic designs. I'm pretty satisfied with the back (but I'd love to hear about it if you aren't), and have two different ideas for the front. The first one looks like so:

Obviously, this one highlights the circle motif and plays nicely with the die cut at the bottom. Both sides would be a nice cream color. Here's my second idea:

This one is interesting as well, because the front is almost entirely inked, so the cream parts would look raised compared to the rest of the card. It's hard to visualize, but I was inspired by something like this:

Obviously, the image is a bit more simple and direct, and I get the benefit of having two different colored sides without having to spend a zillion dollars. Alternately, I was thinking about doing the same design without the die cut, but with a painted edge:

Anyways, would love to hear any comments you all have. Thanks for reading. Happy thanksgiving!

Slowly but surely

After spending the last two days wrangling with CSS, you may now notice that the "reel" link now functions! Also, that page has replaced the "Coming Soon" page that had long been the landing page of digitalelliott.com. Horrah! Progress! Anyways, tell me what you think. Is the layout nice? Does the video load quick enough? Thanks, ~Elliott

That was harder than it had to be!

I'm not a web designer nor do I ever intend to be on any real scale, but I do style myself a designer designer, so I'm picky when it comes to what fonts I use and general colors and layouts. Blogger did not make this easy, which was very frustrating, but it did make it possible, to its credit. There are a number of pretty cool default templates on here, but when you make things more user friendly, you always run into the risk of making it power user unfriendly. Or, to clarify, when you make it hard to screw up making a blog, you make it really hard for people with a sense of design to exercise it. Obviously, blogger didn't like my site branding of overlapping elements and my header with the navigation and whatnot on it. Obviously, the links at the top don't work yet. But I feel like I did a pretty good translation. It even mostly works on my iPhone. And, after a long day of wrestling with both the design and technical challenges, I feel pretty good about how it turned out. Tell me what you think!