I love doing edgy designs, and that’s why I love this client.  Team Quest MMA (mixed martial arts) and their Fight Club is putting on a huge tournament for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Gi/No-Gi type fighting.  There was quite a bit of info to include on these small 1/4 page sized postcards, but I really made use of the space.  They requested that I use the “Fight Club” logo, which has a green fist instead of the usual white one as seen in the postcards below.  I was also asked to come up with a logo of sorts for the title of the event “NorCal Classic 2010″.  We used the trendy North Star over the state of California, and I added a little flair to the sides with what is actually an exclamation point punctuation from the font called “the King and Queen” (thanks dafont.com).  I had to convert those punctuations to outlines & give them a bit of rotation (obviously).  I also included their “burst” background to this layout because it’s kind of become a branded look for them.

Along with this order was another postcard for their “Back 2 School” specials.  They supplied a design for the front of the postcard, so I wont take the credit for that.  I was also given a word doc with a table for the schedule of classes to go on the back of the postcard.  What I did was, export the word file as a pdf and then I placed it into my own design layout for the back of the postcard.  I kept their design theme going with their official logo and the elements from their business card design.  Most all of this is vector art, and it really lends itself to the overall theme.

Love these folks… I’ve done a couple of other labels for their bottles, this one will go on the lid of their 1 pound tub of creamed honey.  If you have never had creamed honey, you’re missing out!  This product is absolutely delicious!!!  You can find Mincer’s at the Redding Farmer’s Market at City Hall on Cypress Ave.  Find their booth and eat their honey!!!

We’re going to print these full color labels on pre-kiss-cut 2.5″ label stock.  There are 12 labels on an 8.5×11 sheet, so at $1.50 a sheet for full color, the labels are pretty cost effective in small quantities (each circle label costs $0.125).  You can’t get full color labels for less than 12 and a half cents wholesale unless you buy 10,000 or more.  (I checked with an outside vendor on that one).

–updated 8/26/10–

Final design for KIXE Easy Street Sweepstakes (click image for larger view):

KIXE (PBS channel 9) is having their annual sweepstakes, and again this year we get to do the design & printing! It was nice this year to have a little more creative freedom with the concept of everything. When the marketing person asked me what came to mind when I heard the name “Easy Street”, I thought of monopoly type line art/cartoons.

I had Tony draw the street sign for me, while I did the rest of the flyer. I thought it would look fun if I put the sponsor logos in clouds at the top. The clouds were easy in indesign, I just drew several ellipses, then merged them together with the pathfinder->add command. The wood signs I downloaded from vecteezy (thanks guys), and I drew the rest in indesign with the pen tool.

When I first presented the layout to the staff, they were all excited about it. No constructive criticism or bad comments! I love doing work for KIXE because they always want the designs to look fun… and if you know me, I love doing “fun” designs.

This flyer is going to be used as a handout and a mailer, so I put the order form for tickets along with the Rules & Regulations on the backside.

We’re going to print this puppy offset on 100lb. Gloss Book paper (kinda like magazine paper), and it will only have an aqueous coating so you can still write on it with a ball-point pen.  The next projects to work on with this order will be the tickets and the large posters.  I will post the tickets when the art is approved

Final layout for ticket (front only):

I really wanted to keep the ticket layout simple, so I only put on the pertinent info.  The sponsors were put on the back of the ticket along with the portion of the stub that the entrant fills out.  These tickets will be numbered (also on back) so they can keep it legit.

I’ve done a few projects for this client, including their grand opening posters & postcards.  This project was pretty easy once I understood that it was actually an advertisement for 2 different things!  On one side (the blue side), they wanted to advertise to new MMA (mixed martial arts) students for summer sign ups.  I use the burst looking dealy-ma-bobber behind their logo on a lot of their stuff. It’s kinda part of the look ya know?  The client really wanted to put photos on this project so newbies would really know what they’re about: they are not a karate class, they teach everything from physical fitness to down and dirty fighting.

The red side of the card advertises their MMA camp to the same age group as new students, and explains what is covered at the camp.  The client actually suggested the different colors so that folks reading the advertisement would get the idea that it actually is 2 separate things being advertised.  I gave them an awesome deal on 14pt UV Gloss coated cards, and even printed 100 free digital cards so they could start handing them out the day they approved the artwork.  The Team Quest people have become great clients, and I really enjoy doing their artwork because it gives me an opportunity to do something different than the stuff I normally do.

This project was pretty fun for me because I don’t use photoshop for creation as much as i could.  I found some fun brushes on brusheezy.com for wood and made my own boards and posts. I drew the little screws in photoshop too… pretty easy with a gradient fill, then an emboss to make it look sunk into the board.  I used a technique with several steps to burn the logo into the wood, too.  Then I saved those images as tiff files and did the rest in inDesign.  The “Pig Xing” sign is an actual photo from the ranch, so playing on that I drew the sign for the name, phone # & web address using just the rounded corner effect on a rectangle from inDesign.  The background is a 3D rendering I downloaded (can’t remember where from).  I actually designed this business card after I did the elaborate brochure (below).

When I did my brainstorming on what I wanted this brochure to look like, I kept thinking “outdoors” but “clean”.  I think the background image really lends itself to that idea with the blue sky and all… Again, in photoshop I made a separate file for my little screws so I could place them in the layout using inDesign.  (click on the brochure image to see it larger – those screws were so freakin’ easy!)

I wanted all the photos of the hunters to look like they had been posted on a wooden pole with the screws kinda like drying freshly developed photos (old school).  Repetition of the boards at the top for the titles reinforced the theme of the wood, and just to be different, I drew scotch tape (in inDesign) and taped my little “note” in the middle of the brochure.  I probably spent about 3 to 4 hours on this project, and the client was so surprised with the design.  He said he didn’t expect something so unique!