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12.18.11
Happy Holidays
Happy Holidays to everyone! It’s been a great year here at Zephyr Studio and I want to wish everyone the best for 2012. With the birth of our first son, and having the pleasure of working with so many new clients I feel very fortunate. I hope 2012 is as fun as this past year has been, thank you to everyone. Below is our holiday card, our little guys first encounter with Santa… Have a great holiday!
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04.01.11
Vector Logo Recreation
As a business owner your logo is a huge part of your branding. Over the years I have been amazed how many business do not have a vector version of their logo due to their original designer not providing it to them, or it being lost over the years. If you only have your logo as a raster image file, such as jpg or tif, you may come across issues when trying to use your logo for commercial uses such as large format printing, clothing, and in general most forms of print collateral. Raster logos are fine for the web, but if your logo is not in vector format you may have problems using it for print purposes.
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Bitmap images have a set resolution, or amount of pixels they contain. When you enlarge this bitmap image the resolution degrades. For example you have a 4” x 4” logo at 300 dpi. If you need this logo at 8” x 8” for a poster, you would downgrade the resolution to 150dpi. Think of it as a sliding scale, as you enlarge the logo the resolution shrinks, and vice versa.
Vector logos do not contain pixels, they can be enlarged infinitely and never become pixelated or lose quality. A 1” x 1” vector logo will look exactly the same, and stay razor sharp, no matter how large you make it. Vector logos are also the preferred format for all printers, whether it be commercial, for a publication or for clothing.
I get a lot of request if a logo can appear on top of a photo or background without the “white box” around it. The white box is the background that you have on a flattened raster image. A vector logo would be transparent and either an .ai (Adobe Illustrator) or .eps (Encapsulated PostScript) file will allow you to place your logo on top of another object and not have the white box around it. Do not be fooled though by an .eps that was created in photoshop, as that is a raster file, it may be transparent, but will pixelate when you enlarge it. A true vector file is created in a vector program like Illustrator or Corel Draw, even though the extension may be .eps, it may still be a raster file.
If you look at the images below both are 1” logos that have been enlarged 1000%. As you see the vector logo on the left is still razor sharp, and the bitmap logo on the right has become pixelated. If you have ever flipped through a magazine and seen this type of pixelization on a logo, it is due to the fact that the logo was a bitmap and was most likely blown up a lot larger than it’s original size.
If you have a logo and do not have it in a vector format please feel free to email me a copy of it, I will be glad to give you an estimate on the cost involved in recreating it to vector format. -
02.05.11
New Logo Anatomy
I personally think the hardest design project a graphic designer can work on is branding your own company or logo. I have had a few logos in and out since I started the idea of starting my own company over the last few years but never really was happy with anything I did. Maybe I just didn’t have the time to really focus on it, or maybe I am just overly critical of deciding on something representative of my company. The concept behind Zephyr Studio is wind… a Zephyr is a light breeze or literally a west wind. Living on the east coast and surfing most of my life a west wind creates an offshore breeze, which is ideal for perfect surf. There is also something in the air when the wind switches west that feels clean, and fresh. This concept is what led to me to the creation of my new and final logo. I am a huge fan of minimalist logo design and tried to bring that and the concept of wind into the process. The typeface chosen is Proxima Nova which appeals to me greatly as far as cleanliness and readability. The characters in Proxima Nova are spaced very cleanly and each letter compliments the next.
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A colleague of mine back when I started designing used to use colored blocks to evenly kern or space his letters, this simple but effective technique is something I use on every logo design to date. I usually create two width’s based on what letters are bookmarking each individual character. As you can see on the breakdown of the logo below I treat the spacing on both sides of the letter “E” differently than I do on both sides of the letter “H” for example.
This is based on the shape of the bookmarking characters and whether or not they are top heavy or bottom heavy. The “E” for example has a Z and a P on either side, which both have an even top to bottom linear shape. The letter “H” has the letters P and Y bookmarking it, which are both top heavy letters but have slim stems, which creates the illusion of more space between the letters. These differences in vertical weight trick the eye into thinking the characters are not evenly kerned or spaced. As far as color? I couldn’t even go into the dozens of combinations I played with, I believe it got to the point where I was waiting for a feeling to hit me that summarized the whole logo process, and this particular combination did. -
01.14.11
Michael Bierut: 5 Secrets from 86 Notebooks
A very cool lecture I came across on 99percent.com
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01.12.11
New site is live
After a few months of trashing layouts and trying to find time to work on “my” stuff, the new site is finally live. I added a references page to the new version because I was asked for them on occasion. I also wanted to make the portfolio page very easy to navigate based on print, identity and web and I think this layout works well. The site was done in wordpress and to be honest I think I may try and do all future website projects in wordpress. I have noticed a lot of request lately from clients wanting to edit certain areas of their websites themselves, and designing their sites in wordpress and a little training is all they need. Feel free to give me any feedback, and if you notice any issues let me know what they are and what browser and OS you are running. Happy New Year!
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