Branding / eightyone design / graphic design blog

Design development for Wakeham Asbestos

Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

Back in February we were approached by Wakeham, a new company in the asbestos industry who offers training and consultancy. The company required a full set of branding as well as brochure and website.

As with every design project, we start at the beginning - the logo. They felt that their industry was particularly male dominated and wanted a logo which was strong and bold yet quite simple. After an initial discussion we concluded that the logo could center around these themes:

Utilise the “W” of the company name
Focus on the “A” in the company name highlighting Asbestos
Use the three strands of the business (training, management and surveying)
Focus on some imagery or representation of asbestos

Other than requiring a strong, bold logo, Wakeham didn’t have any other specific requirements in mind. The logo was to be used online as well as brochures, stationary, invoices etc, therefore it had to work on all types of media. (more…)

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Posted in Branding, Graphic Design, Logo Design, News, Portfolio, Web Design

How easy is it for a graphic designer to brand themselves?

Monday, June 2nd, 2008

I don’t know about you, but it took us what seemed like decades to decide upon our name, logo and branding. We went through rigorous brain storming and research trying to iron out what we liked, what our market would like and what would stand out against the crowd.

Our main problem was that we wanted something that was a little crazy and ‘off the wall’ that would make us stand out from the crowd. We thought that having no client restraints would be great as we could do all the crazy design things we had always wanted to. However, we knew that this wouldn’t quite work with our potential clients due to our location as quirky branding may put off our target market (which consisted of mainly small to medium sized local businesses). Once we thought this through we had a much better idea of our market place (our potential clients and competitors) and how we could slot into that, so we started at the beginning (as it’s a very good place to start) with our name. (more…)

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Posted in Branding, Featured Articles, Graphic Design, Logo Design

What makes a good business card?

Monday, May 19th, 2008

So you throw your business cards onto your desk and what do you see shinning back at you? Are you struck by their originality? Their striking design? Or do they in fact look like every business card you’ve ever seen - with a white backdrop and illegible text to boot?

When it comes to business cards I think you need to go back to the beginning and understand what their purpose is. It is essentially designed to allow people to contact you. No matter how fancy the design or how striking your logo appears on the card if the receiver cannot contact you due to illegible type face or cluttered design you may risk them not contacting you at all.

There are a couple of things to consider when it comes to the contact details on a card: (more…)

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Posted in Graphic Design

It’s all black and white

Monday, July 23rd, 2007

When designing a logo, do you design in black and white? Or do you jump straight in and use all of the many wonderful colours and shades the latest packages allow you to use?

When brainstorming an idea for a logo, consider the worst common denominator - where the logo will look its absolute worst. This is normally a photocopied / faxed / laser printed document. All of these have one thing in common, they will display your logo in black and white. So if you start your design process in single colour, you ensure your logo does not rely on colour to work.

I always tend to start any design with some rough sketches on paper, which of course means my ideas are entirely black and white. Then, when you move to your mac or pc, leave the design in black and white. This will give you one less thing to worry about so you can really focus on the design. You can make sure every little detail fits together without worrying about what colour each part is going to be. It is only when I am fairly happy with the design that I then move into colour. (more…)

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Posted in Logo Design