Penflare Designs

I’m excited to announce that I am re-branding myself to brandclay.  Penflare is going to cease once the web design is fully coded and operational.  In this post I’ll include the design process for the logo and the full web design for the site.  I decided to change the name after much feedback and logo attempts for penflare, and never being satisfied. I’ve been most dissatisfied with the association of what people think penflare means.  Mostly people draw from it a quill pen or a lens flare, both things I don’t want to be associated with. I brainstormed for a few months now and have come up with the word brandclay™. It means a lot to me because of my faith in Jesus Christ, him being the potter, me being the clay so he can mold and shape me. It also works for brand creation when thinking about shaping and forming a company.  Thus the tagline, “where creativity is formed.”  Here are the three initial logos that were designed by Jerron:

I liked concept 1 and 2, and number 3 was good but I didn’t feel it fit me and the look I was going for.  I decided to tinker with concept 1 and 2, but before I knew it, I fell in love with concept 1 and stuck with it.  Here is how the final design turned out:

Before the logo I could not design anything for my site, or everything I did, I trashed. It was actually quite liberating, having the logo done.  Everything came so easily for the web design.  Here is how it turned out:

Homepage:

About:

Portfolio:

Experiments:

Testimonials:

Contact & Hire Me:

The Blog design

That is it for now.  Thanks for looking and have a blessed day.  I Would appreciate any comments/critiques!

Here are some new portfolio additions that I’ve recently finished up with.  I have to be honest when I say, none seemed to be the usual job.  Some interesting names, interesting clients (you know who you are ), and a lot of back and forth communication.  Knocking some of these out was a task of a lifetime but it all worked out in the end.  I’d love for a comment or two to know your thoughts.  I’ll be doing a case study on the logo for Dartboard Media later in the month.

Brandstack:

Cloud9:

Dartboard Media:

Fleym:

Gearhost:

Raw Shhugar:

Rhythm Dance Crew:

SnapCritique:

Thirdee:

Finding Fernando:

Thanks for looking and as always, I appreciate compliments and criticisms. God bless

-Sean

Another busy month has gone by along with some very fun and exciting logo design projects.  Proud to announce the completion of Jupiter Grilles new logo, a restaraunt opening up in Washington.  I also finished an iPhone application logo called iWish.  Enough reading! - just take a look already…

Client: Jupiter Grille
Role: Logo and stationary design

Client: We Heart Short Films
Role: Logo design

Client: IdeaCouch™
Role: Logo design

Client: Franklins Row Music Publishing
Role: Logo design and business card design

Client: iWish
Role: Logo design and UI design

Client: Practice Gears
Role: Logo design

That’s it for now.  I do have some more coming soon, just have to finalize a few more details!

God Bless!
Sean

Spring is a busy time for the design industry. I’ve been busy at work with some new and exciting logo design contracts. In this post I show some of my recent logos and if possible, the before and after of each company’s logo. Some possible reasons for re-designs include: their old logo doesn’t reflect what they do now (i.e. the products/services have changed); the company is going in a new direction; there has been a name change; or there is a need for a new more effective logo.

Client: TAG - The Anything Guys
Role: Logo and stationary design
Before:

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After:

Client: iLessonPlan
Role: Logo and stationary design
Before:

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After:

Some new company designs:


Client: Hatchbrands
Role: Logo design



Client: Video Burst
Role: Logo design and stationary



Client: Century Merchant Services
Role: Logo design



Client: Edge Payment Systems
Role: Logo design

Hope you’ve enjoyed this latest portfolio addition, and please check back soon for some more new and exciting work!

Hello Everyone,

I’ve been hard at work lately with a lot of logo designs and branding campaigns.  I wanted to update my logo showcase and also go into detail about some of the logo’s I’ve done recently.  You can get an idea for my design process’s, thoughts, symbol development, typography choices, etc.  Please take a look and comment and critique if you’d like.  I’m always willing to take constructive criticism as this is always a learning industry.

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Client: Argoworks™
Role: Logo Design
Description: Using their original typeface choice (Aviano Sans) I was presented to make a unique wordmark to represent their company.  I made the A a complete triangle to represent a compass in the effect that it is pointing north.  The name Argoworks™ came from the movie Jason and the Argonauts, and the client wanted something that resembled adventure.  I then made some slight tweaks to the original type to give it a more custom look.

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Client: Brickscape Contracting
Role: Logo Design
Description: Design a wordmark using a classic and heavy typography mix.  I used Cocktail Shaker from veer.com to give it a sleek, approachable feel, and mixed in Rockwell Extra Bold to maintain the masculinity of the company.

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Client: Cube Holdings Limited
Role: Logo Design & Stationary (not shown)
Description: I went with some of the traditional concepts of a cube in the first concepts sent to the client.  He liked them, but then he mentioned the word organic,.. and that got me thinking.  I then decided to free hand a cube and make it look more like a “organic” cube.  After matching it with the font Meta, it was a perfect match and the client was thrilled with the outcome.

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Client: Tony Geer
Role: Logo Design
Description: The EICDI stands for Energy Industry Competency Development Initiativ.  This means they need to drill smarter.  What do lightbulbs have at the end of them?  A screw most of the time.  I then thought about implementing a drill into the light bulb to represent smarter drilling.  A simple and memorable logo.

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Client: Fatmoose Media
Role: Logo Design
Description: This concept was drawn up for incspring.  It was purchased on March 7th to Jeff Mangan.

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Client: Korpis
Role: Logo Design
Description: Client wanted something a little abstract, so I came up with this unique K monogram.

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Client: Logoreview
Role: Logo Design, Stationary (not shown), and Web Design (shown in Various Web Work)
Description: One of my more simpler marks, but has an immediate impact.  Logoreview.com will be used to judge and critique logo’s being done for clients and business’s who want their logo judged by the best logo designers on the internet.  The check mark represents review, and is shown as the letter ‘v’ in text “review.”

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Client: Loudbus LLC
Role: Update Current Logo
Description: Made the logo stand out a bit more with proper kerning and tracking.

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Client: mcorp
Role: Logo Design, Stationary (not shown)
Description: Arrows going up to represent vision, growth, life, moving forward.  I also arranged the arrows to look similar to a bird flying

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Client: Myself
Role: Logo Design, Stationary Design (not shown), Web Design
Description: I have gone through a lot of logo changes, but this one feels timeless, something that I can live with for a while.  A customized italic serif font.

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Client: The Well Church
Role: Logo Design
Description: This is one of my favorite logos.  The client requested simplicity as his biggest priority.  I went with a mark that was simple, recognizable, and easily identifiable with consumers.

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Client: Tweetsocial.com
Role: Logo Design
Description: I designed two unique twitter birds interacting with each other to represent the “tweet social” in the most vertical thinking.  Duh.

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Client: Viralheat
Role: Logo Design
Description: Client request: Design a unique logo that draws attention and looks bad-a*s.  He was thrilled, and so was I.  First time doing a bunch of effects on the flame.

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So thats it for right now.  I have quite a few more to post, but until then, please check out my logopond showcase that has nearly all of my logos.  As always, God Bless and hope you’ll comment.

Cheers!
Sean

Recently, I headed up a project for a charity organization called Gamers for Giving. Founded in 2007, Gamers Outreach Foundation is a non-profit organization that utilizes video games for community improvement based endeavors.  Their foundation takes a unique approach towards addressing community needs by directly using video games in ways that improve the livelihood of others.

The project was for their annual event called Gamers for Giving.  It’s an event where hundreds or thousands gamers come together, beat on each other virtually, and raise money for charities.  You can read more about the event here.  Here is some of the work produced for the event.

Front of the flyer:

Back of the flyer:

Banners:

I was also able to design a t-shirt that was going to be sold at the event.

And that is it,.. would love to hear your thoughts, comments, criticisms.  Thanks for looking and as always, God Bless, and take care!

Cheers!
Sean

I recently did a logo design for a Baptist Church in California named Pleasant Valley.  In this post, I show the different concepts and revisions that we went through to get to the final logo you see to the right.

The key words that were described in the initial brief were:

Enrich, Community, Christ, Color, Lively, Growing, Tree, Revival, Passion.  The tagline was “Enriching our Community through Christ.”  Some other things they wanted portrayed were a crown and a valley because the church was centered in a valley.

After sketching out about 10-15 conceptual ideas, I went to illustrator and came up with the following.

Concept 1: A valley with the white space creating the form of a tree to represent life growing/springing forth even when we are going through valleys.

Concept 2: I took four valley’s and rotated them to form a cross in the white space.

Concept 3: This one was created by using an enclosure.  I created two fields/valleys with a cross/tree springing forth from the middle.

Concept 4: A crown made up of connecting people to represent fellowship and communion around Christ.

They decided they liked concept #3 the best so we just needed to refine and tweak it.  Here are some of the revisions.

They decided after looking at these they didn’t want to go with an enclosure logo and wanted the field to be open.  I then began sketching out fields and came up with this approach.

They loved this idea, and that it represented the valley/field aspect they were looking for but also, the way it represented interweaving and community and fellowship aspect with Christ in the middle.

I had a couple more ideas for tweaks and felt like it needed some seperation between a couple of the fields.  Thus the final logo was born.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the outcome of the final logo.  Thanks for reading my post and God Bless!

Cheers,
Sean

Incspring, for those of you who don’t know, is a site where designers can get their creative juices by creating brands for whatever they choose.  A site where there is no limit to your creativity and anything (well almost anything) goes.  I’m sure if you are a logo designer, you have had your fair share of unused concepts, concepts that you may have felt would have been perfect but got thrown to the curb.  The concept still works, you just don’t know where or who to sell it to.

Da da daaa… In comes Incspring.  Upload your designs, name them something, and have your logos looked at by companies and entrpreneurs.  I have had some success on the site, selling six logo’s to date to three different owners.  Incspring allows you to sell your logos at whatever price you choose, and they just take a cut.  Be sure to check it out and hit up Wes Wilson on twitter (@incspring).  Here are some of my logo’s that I’ve created just for incspring.

Cloud9
Concept: Girl or guy floating on cloud9 represented by a heart.  Good for a dating site/blog.
Price: $475
Link

Beauti
Concept: A bird made up of multiple colors/layers.
Price: $1,000
Link

Firebox
Concept: A box filled with a flame
Price: $500
Link

Foxybeats
Domain included: www.foxybeats.com
Concept: A music note with a fox tail at the end
Price: $2,500
Link

Heavenly Made
Concept: A ladder with wings
Price: $450
Link

JUICED
Concept: A kangaroo with a lightning bolt coming out of the top of his head
Price: $2,000
Link

Mailfizz
Domain: www.mailfizz.com
Concept: A mail icon with fizz (suds) coming out the bottom of it
Price: $2,000
Link

Raining Women
Concept: An umbrella raining down a woman.
Price: $355
Link

Shute
Concept: An abstract parachute type icon.
Price: $500
Link

Starfish
Concept: A unique mark resembling a normal fish with a star on the inside.
Price: $349
Link

Octopog
Concept: Unique octopus type icon.
Price: TBD
Link (will update soon)

Thanks for looking, and as always, check out my other sections for more unique concepts and more of my work.  I also have implemented a dedicated page on this website for unused concepts and random creative work.  This work can be found in the “Lab” section.

God Bless,
Sean