The one design element they wanted me to incorporate is a “night sky” theme (since this is outdoor theater after all) and after hearing some of their horror stories about webmasters, I wanted their website to be something THEY could maintain without having to learn anything. This ended up being a great learning experience for me working a little more deeply with WordPress (editing .php files!) and I really love the result.

As you can see once, we started with the website, their original logos needed a little love too.  And then while I was at it, I had a go at their current show logos as well. 

The original Park Playhouse logo was dominated by the large hand drawn lakehouse (which is the stage for the productions) which left “Park Playhouse Inc.” to be squished underneath. I simplified the lakehouse drawing and chose a more clean, modern font to compliment it.

The long narrow logos seem to have been working for most purposes but, again, I’d hate for them to be high and dry later so I also created a secondary set of square/vertical logos in case they need them.

And lastly (for now) I updated the show logos for their current shows, Annie Get Your Gun and The Wiz.

This winter I did some branding for a consultant who was looking for a logo that conveyed:

…simplicity, trustworthiness, and experience. ¬†The logo should be appropriately solid and not-hip. Though preferably not as sleep-inducing as most consulting firm logos.

Thomer is nice enough to relay all the good feedback he gets about the logo back to me so I know it’s coming across well.

I also did some other pieces to round out his business materials:

Next we have a website re-design for Park Playhouse in Albany, NY that turned into a website re-design, logo re-design, and show logos re-design so stay tuned!

Since I used to work full-time with an in-house design department and know all brand and all the players, a lot of times I work like an auxiliary designer to their team when they’re in a pinch.

In the Fall there was a piece that had been waiting on feedback from the project manager and then the designer was going on vacation right when the piece needed to go to the printer to make it in time for an upcoming conference so it’s safe to say with a week left– they were in a pinch. It was one of those “it’s half done, we’re just waiting on copy edits” and then I talk to the project manager and find out it’s more like “we don’t like it at all and haven’t been able to vocalize what we don’t like so that’s why we haven’t given any feedback.”

This has happened a couple of times and surprisingly is a situation I like. I read an article not too long ago that really resonated with me by Andy Rutledge about how Creativity is Not Design (which I got to via Astheria’s Learn about Design, Not Making Things Pretty) so I see these opportunities to really solve a problem. I know, terribly corny.

Anyway here’s a small sample what the files looked like when I got them.

It was a 12 page self cover with various treatments for the tables/call-outs and one page that just has “need one page of filler type here to eliminate ‘white space’” written in big letters with a graph spilling over onto the blue side bar opposite it.

And here’s the solution I provided:

The brand surrounding this piece is pretty weighted to futura and shades of blue (except for the pie chart which remain the colors seen to continuity from earlier pieces) and a lot of times all that blue and all that futura just way too much. I added some coordinating colors and some neutrals to round it out a bit while leaving the blue for the call-outs and the cover (not pictured) and in the process dropped the page count from 12 to 8. Yay! Thrifty designer!

Now I’m not saying it will run out and win any awards but I think anyone who needs to know the information contained within will be able to easily find it and reference it later.

Hm, why don’t we give out awards for that again?

The same client also wanted their blogger blog customized as well. If nothing else this reminds me why I so love WordPress.

And to round this out, something a little more standard: banner ad. I feel like banner ads come in two flavors: the rotating two words per frame go on forever banner ads and the sorry, this can’t rotate but I still want this, that and the next thing. This was the latter but I think it turned out nicely.

Also, I’ve switched from Contact Form 7 (which I never got to work) to cforms by delicious days which is just wonderful so if you’ve been holding out to contact me- you’re all set now.

Yesterday I was asked to create H1N1 posters for the elevators areas of a corporate headquarter and I could not have been more tickled about it!

Something about remind adults to wash their hands and how they MUST contact the proper authorities (okay I’m being dramatic, HR) if they’re sick is kind of WWII propaganda/motivational posters to me. So, that’s what I did!

Ways to be healthy with a not-so-subtle-if-you’re-in-the-know “Keep Calm and Carry On” vibe.