So we just finished branding a new client of ours under the name Solid Gold Bomb. We thought it would be neat to preview the conceptual sketches along with the finished piece. Although Adobe Illustrator is a great tool to use, when it comes to branding, Christy and I tend to embrace a more traditional approach by utilizing a pencil, graph paper, compass, protractor, and a lot of erasing. This way we’re not limited to our knowledge of Adobe Illustrator, only our imagination. Besides, sometimes we just have an idea, and we need to get it out before we lose it.

Anyway, hope you enjoy.

Peace

- m / Colorcubic™

Okay, so we’ve narrowed down the selection of brand identity work that we want to submit to the communication arts competition to these two pages. Unfortunately we are only submitting five identity pieces, so as you can see we’re in a bit of a pickle. Any help deciding would be greatly appreciated. We have until Monday (June 9th) to make our final decision. Feel free to leave us a comment, or send us a message to help us decide.

Thanks much in advance.

Peace

- m / Colorcubic™

Hello everyone, sorry for not writing on here for a while. We’re really under the gun to get a lot finished in a short amount of time, all while keeping up on here. So anyway, if you remember several posts back, we featured some brand identity work that was currently in the works for some clients of ours. One piece in particular was for “Rogue Samurai Farm™.” Anyway, we all decided that Rogue Samurai Farm needed a change in the identity direction we were moving in. We were thinking of something along the lines of minimal meets stencil, or something that could potentially be used as a stencil. So far everyone seems to be really happy about the outcome, and so we’re now moving in the direction of implementing this design into some mock-up collateral pieces to promote RSF. Let us know what you think… or not.

Enjoy

- m / Colorcubic™

We found these logos in the Graphis Annual™ 1985 /86 edition. I really love how minimal, and traditional these are. It’s very easy to walk away from viewing these, and still remember their associations. It wasn’t until the 90s that people really went crazy with the idea of branding, and started peddling crap for logos. Personally that’s one of my biggest pet peeves when people forget the purpose of a logo / icon / brand identity, and just produce shiny, colorful abstract shapes without considering who’s going to be viewing it, and whether or not it’s memorable.

Christy and I usually follow a strict guideline when branding a client, or product. We believe strongly in the use of negative space, a flat 2D approach, and a minimal use of colors (if any). When we’re finished with the brand identity / logo / icon (whatever you want to call it), it has to look good in black and white initially, and then we add color to it if necessary (depending on the client, and the client’s demographic). I wish more logo designers would follow this rule of thumb. I’d like to take this time to give credit to the designers whose work we featured in the image above. Going from left to right, top to bottom:

• Icon designed for the American Protection Industries, Inc. Designed by: Gary Hinsche.
• Logo for the Central Typesetting Company. Designed by: Emmett Morava.
• Icon designed for GoTech™ Inc. Designed by: Peter Adam.
• Icon designed for landscape designer, David Baldwin. Designed by: Alan Colvin.
• Icon designed for Dacosystems™. Designed by: Emmett Morava.
• Icon fro the Japanese bank Mitsui™. Designed by: Takenobu Igarashi.
• Logo for Transportes Urbano de Sevilla. Designed by: Roberto Luna & Fernando Mendoza.
• Icon designed for the amalgamation of two flour mills. Designed by: Rosmarie Tissi.
• Icon designed for the LAOOC (Amateur Athletic Foundation). Designed by: Ray Wood.

Hope you enjoy

- m / Colorcubic™

Sigg™ bottles are probably one of our favorite drinking bottles of all time. If you don’t already own one I would suggest picking one up. A few pros about why Sigg™ is the way to go over most other drinking bottles: The Sigg™ bottles are aluminum lined with an inner coating resistant to fruit acids and isotonic drinks, unlike most plastic drinking bottles that with excessive use begin to contaminate the beverage contained within it. Sigg™ also spent some good time on their brand identity (which for me makes it more enjoyable to drink out of). They also have a pretty crispy option if you’re a company or a collective of individuals, and you want to stylize or personalize your Sigg™ bottle. They give you the option to have your logo featured on their bottle. I believe it’s with a quantity of 20 or more ordered at a time, but don’t quote me on that as my memory doesn’t always serve me best.

Anyway, just thought we would share.

Peace,

- m / Colorcubic™

We finally finished an 11 x 20 print motif for Nueva Forma™ musica internacional, an electronic music label of Colorcubic. Once we’re finished redeveloping colorcubic.com, and nuevaforma.com we’re planning on releasing this print for sale.

We’ll be sure to post the release of when this is officially on sale and ready to ship out.

Hope you enjoy.

Peace,

- m / Colorcubic™

So we just found out this morning that version 2.0 of “the Combi™” was approved. We’re very excited about it, and we’re even more excited to see it put to work.

Check it out if you haven’t seen it yet. We posted a preview of the Combi v 2.0 in yesterdays post.

Also, we’d like to apologize for not picking up on this sooner, but if you’ve tried to leave a comment on our blog, you’ve probably had very little success. Unfortunately we’ve neglected our current site a little, say for minor updates, and keeping up on our blog due to redesigning colorcubic.com, and our current projects underway.
Anyway, we’ve resolved the error, thanks to one of our mates (Gejius) at nuevaforma.com for pointing that out. So you can now, (once again) leave comments… or not.

Peace,

- m / Colorcubic™

Alright, so this is version 2.0 of “the Combi”, a licensed product company in Australia. So far this is the direction we’re moving in. Now we’re just waiting to hear whether or not it’s been approved.

- m / Colorcubic™

About a month ago (around the same time we started moving into our new office) we decided it was time to change the look and feel of our site. Ever since we moved we’ve been trying to fit in what little free time we have to redesigning and developing our new site. So far everything is coming along great. We’re almost ready to start coding, but it’s going to take some time before it’s been tested and ready for a launch. Until then we decided that we would preview some of our new projects on our blog that we’ve been working on. Unfortunately we won’t be previewing everything, but there’s still enough to preview to give you an idea of what we have been busy with.

We thought it would be fun to start off with some of the brand concepts and designs we’ve had the pleasure of producing. We hope everyone enjoys them.

THE COMBI™

This is the first of 2 concepts we’ve produced for the Combi™, (a licensed product store in Australia). This project is really exciting to work on, and is still in the production stages.

With this first concept we produced, we really wanted to move in a “retro” direction. We were really inspired by mid 1970s John Deere Ads, and the early 1980s Intellivision gaming consul. Although not directly by the logos, we were more so influenced by that preconceived visual notion of what a “retro” logo should look like.

We still have another concept to deliver before a decision is made, and with this next concept we’re steering in a completely different direction.

Once we’re finished we’ll be sure to post it on here for preview.

COLIBRI COLLECTIVE™
This was a pretty fun project to work on. We produced this logo / icon for Colibri Collective™, (an electronic music collective in Germany). They provide a roster of many different producers in the electronic scene worldwide to preview and listen to.

When producing this we thought of unity, and wanted to produce an image that was timeless.

They liked it right off the bat, and they’ve already started using it on one of their social networking sites.

Check them out at www.myspace.com/colibricollective

ROGUE SAMURAI FARM™

Rogue Samurai Farm™ is an umbrella / incubator company for product and service companies. I know that sounds very boring, but it’s far from it. The whole idea behind the name was to show that a company doesn’t need to operate in such a conventional manner where all of the workers are miserable, and the top dogs reap all of the benefits.

Rogue Samurai Farm™ operates in a completely different manner. It operates more like King Arthur’s round table, or a head with many arms, or in this case “tentacles.”

We chose the calamari as a symbol for multitasking / juggling, and equality as a whole. It represents a body of many making up one strong entity, where every limb is an asset to the company. Much like the Samurai in the Edo period, only they’re not asking anyone to commit sepuku, hence the “Rogue” in Rogue Samurai Farm™.
On top of being very motivational, this was a really fun concept to produce. It’s still in the approval stages, and we still have another to produce as well. We’ll be sure to post the chosen logo / icon when the votes are in.

Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed this first of many visual concepts to come.

Peace,

- m / Colorcubic™