GeMUG Logo

It's a new logo for Georgian Mac User Group. They have chosen a grapevine leaf, because vine is strongly associated with Georgia. It's bitten off from one side to resemble the famous Apple logo, and the main version has rainbow stripes from the old version of that logo, as a nod to the company's rich and colorful history.

Below you can see different variations of the logo. By default, the logo graphics are contained inside an iOS style rounded square, but this can vary depending on the occasion.

Goldfish Rebranding

Long time, no see. I seems I'm back to blogging, finally. I know most people expect art-related posts from this blog, but I'm still not quite back on track in that department after the exceptionally busy end of the last year. Hopefully, my "art block" will be over soon. Meanwhile, here's my report on a big design (or, rather, redesign) project, started last year and still going on.

Okros Tevzi is one of my oldest "foodstuff clients." Contrary to the name, which is Georgian for "goldfish," the fish-related products make up only a tiny part of their assortment -- they are more into semi-prepared foods and meat products. So last year they approached me with this idea of total rebranding, starting with the logo. Their old logo represented a goldfish placed on (or, in some versions, inside) a circle. My task was to retain the symbolism, but make it more simple and modern.

Usually, making a logo is a time-consuming and laborious work for me. Most of the time I end up with dozens of different versions, painfully searching for forms, colors, visual ideas. But, sometimes, the very first draft turns out to be exactly the thing, making me not to look any further. Fortunately for everyone, this was the case here.

For those who may not not know: in many countries touched by Russian culture (Georgia is certainly among them) a goldfish represents something more than just a fish variety -- it's a symbol of fulfilling wishes. This fairytale theme, originated by the Brothers Grimm and hugely popularized in Russia by Alexander Pushkin with his Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish, is very well known to Georgians. Fully utilizing this awareness, Okros Tevzi always used slogans related to fulfilling wishes. But I went a bit beyond that, expanding a simple "Make a wish" slogan into a whole logo concept.

The "general" version of the logo, intended for publicity, business cards, documents, websites and other general usage, resembles an empty box, and comes with the aforementioned slogan, implying the readiness to be filled with the wishes come true. The "specific" versions of the logo, intended to be used on actual products, represent the same box, but filled with different colors: green for semi-prepared foods, red for meat products and blue for fish products.

Georgian khinkali and Russian pelmeni represent the "flagship" products for many Georgian companies specialized in semi-prepared foods, and Okros Tevzi makes no exception. So, naturally, when it came to trying out the new logo on actual product packaging, they were the first in line.

After probing various directions, we stopped on a concept derived from the logo idea: a table (sort of) placed in a natural environment, with a white box, showing the product, on top of it. In this case, since the packaging is transparent, the actual product could be visible through the non-printed area inside the box (in the design samples this area is filled with product images for better visualization).

 

We made two variations of khinkali -- Traditional and Chopped (hence the big knife), and two of pelmeni -- Siberian (hence the frost) and Italian (hence the Venetian scenery). You probably noticed a cute goldfish chef holding a white fork -- I came up with this mascot somewhere in the process of making the package design demos. It was just a designer's whim, but the client liked it so much that the little guy got himself a permanent job.

This is only the beginning, as there are loads of Okros Tevzi products waiting in line to be rebranded and redesigned. So, until next!

Pegė Logo

Last month I won a logo contest at uzdarbis.lt, a Lithuanian design-related forum. The logo was for an online store for baby products, such as prams, soothers, etc. This is the final version the client chose:
Next, they asked me to help with the facade design for their physical store, fitting in style with the new logo. The process turned out to be quite long, mainly because of the window design, which went through numerous trials and tribulations, until it was finally approved sometime in the middle of April.


But that's not all. The final task was creating the website header. They wanted something cheerful, in the mood of the logo. I liked the idea of their draft header, which included sun, fluffy clouds and a rainbow, so I decided to offer my version of it. Here's the result:

I know, I wasn't much of a blogger this month, but I have quite a few ongoing projects, so, hopefully, I'll be more active next month. See ya!

Project 24

Project 24 is a soon-to-be-launched charity initiative by Oceanida, a Georgian fish products brand. Each time someone buys a product which has a Project 24 sticker on it, 1% of the profit goes to a special fund, equally distributed among 24 orphanages (or Children Homes, as we call them in Georgia). It's a very good cause and I'm proud to be working on such a project as a designer.


The logo conveys the idea behind the project by depicting a house-shaped money box where the aforementioned 1% of the profit is put in the form of a coin. The small sticker (see below) adhered to the products explains more details, but the full information will be provided through the media advertisement campaign which is going to be launched along with the project.

My Fairy Lady

By the end of last November I was contacted about logo and header design for a dance competition registration website. The URL was MagicReg.com, so I decided to make a dancing fairy figure, with a magic wand in her hand. The client liked the figure design so much, that he ordered additional dancing fairy poses for use throughout the website. The work went quite smooth and everything was finished and approved in about two weeks. The funny things started just after that...

What could possibly happen, one may ask. Dance experts, consulting the client -- that's what happened. They pointed out the inaccuracies in some of my dancing poses. Outrageous! I've been dancing since... no, wait... I don't dance. Okay, okay, I admit -- I have no idea about professional dancing requirements. I had no choice but to revise the poses according to the experts' recommendations. Naturally, it all got dragged on, with holidays and other stuff concurred, so the final dot to the project was put only a couple of days ago.

Here's the final version of the logo. In the initial versions the "working" leg didn't touch the "standing" one, with the foot keeping some distance from the knee. The dance experts considered it a blasphemy, so my "fairy lady" had to strike a proper pose.


Below you can see the additional poses, including some "funny" ones, like stretching a leg or holding a roster.
And here's the header design sample:

Being an inveterate package designer, I rarely do website-related projects, so it was fun working on this one (except the part where the experts intervened, of course) and I'm certainly looking forward for more work in this vein.

My First Lithuanian Orders

I've been living in Lithuania since the end of January, which makes it six months already, but I still haven't managed to establish myself as a designer in the local market, so to speak. No big surprise -- nobody knows me here, and starting things from the scratch is always hard. Still, after some fishing in the local Web I was able to catch me a couple of fresh Lithuanian customers. About time!

The first was a basketball-related organization called Krepšinis tau (meaning "basketball to you"). They contacted me by the end of July about modifying their existing logo for usage on blanks and other documents, and possibly creating a new one, if I managed to beat the current logo. Alas, the logo managed to beat me instead, although I tried really hard -- several dozens of different demo versions can confirm that. Yet, we managed to develop the print-optimized version of the logo (I don't feel comfortable with posting the visual sample here, since it's based on other designer's work). Also, the customer chose one of my versions (seen below) for possible alternative usages -- like web-banners, for instance.

The first pancake is always lumpy, as Russians say. Fortunately, the second pancake... er... order went with a swing. It wasn't exactly an order, though -- I won a logo contest on some local job-related website. The logo was for a company which rents and sells cars, and the client chose one of my versions.

Not much, I know, but still not bad -- I've done my first Lithuanian design jobs and pocketed (metaphorically) some local currency! Hopefully, there will be more of it... the works, I mean. And the money, of course -- designers need to eat, you know...

Solomon Spirits Logo

I've been working with Solomon Spirits (an alcoholic beverage company from Florida, US) since last year, when they ordered me a series of labels for their liqueurs. This year we have mostly worked on the advertisement for their vodka products -- Vonost 88 and BAMA. The latter is soon to be launched (more precisely, next month), so we needed to prepare its press release, featuring the company logo. Since there was no such logo, the company entrusted me with the task of creating one. The deadline was quite short -- I had only a few days for working on it. I made the first demo on March 29, and the final version was sent to the client on March 31. It's almost impossible to create a corporate logo in such a short time, because in my experience it usually takes a lot of tweaking before everyone is happy. Still, we managed to finish it on time, and since the client has expressed deep satisfaction with the result, I call it successful.
The logo represents a combination of two mirrored "drops" forming the letters SS with their shiny edges (or just one S in the form of the gap between them). It slightly resembles the ancient Chinese symbol of yin and yang. The corporate colors are black, gray and silver. Here's the version for using on dark backgrounds:

Rebranding

First of all, happy holidays everyone! This is my first post in 2010, so I think it's appropriate to begin the new year with something about a change.

My artistic career started exactly 15 years ago, and since that I have changed my signature twice. First time it was in 2000, and the second time it would have been in 2005, only I hadn't done any artwork that year (at least, anything worth signing), so "officially" the second change took place in 2006. As you can see, I have developed a sort of habit to change signatures once in 5 years, so it's time for another change -- hopefully, for good.

My new signature is not exactly new. Actually, it's a simplified version of my original "pyramid" logo, used between 1995-1999 (you can see it on the right). I have just removed the triangle and left only the intertwined R and K. So it's like a return to the roots. Also, there will be no date under the logo, which means my artwork won't be dated anymore, only signed. This is bad for chronology, but good for "timelessness." Many artists prefer using signatures without dates, and among them are some of my favorites -- like Luis Royo, for instance.

My previous signature won't be completely abandoned, however. It's still going to be used on certain works, like the political series, some pastel drawings, etc. But all the mainstream surreal and fantasy artwork will be signed with the new signature from now on.

I won't start using the signature immediately, though. I still have to finish some artwork started last year, and since I usually date my works with years when they were started, not when finished, they're gonna be signed with my old signature. Most probably, the first artwork signed with the new logo will be The Little Heartbreakers, which was also started last year, but will be dated 2010, as an exception to my "dating rules."

Art Holding Logo

This one went surprisingly fast, smooth and easy. The whole process of creation and endorsement took only one day. The task was to create a simple, good-looking, modern logo for an art holding company, without going to great conceptual lengths. I was given only a couple of days, so I had a certain skepticism regarding the quality of the final product. But fortunately, my worst expectations proved to be wrong: the logo came out neat and solid. It surely was no world-beater, but the client was happy with the product, which was quite enough for me, considering the circumstances.

Originally the client wanted to use an eight-pointed star as the leading element of the design, because it was a trademark of their related project: the Hollywood-style memorial stars to honor the famous Georgian actors. I expressed a strong concern that such an element could give the logo somewhat cheesy looks, but still promised to work on that concept. And I did: on the right you can see one of the several demos where I used the suggested element. Fortunately, these "star" versions were rejected in favor of a more modern concept, just as I hoped.

Blog.ge Logo

I don't know about others, but for me working on a logo is a real pain in the buttocks. This pain gets especially strong with corporate logos, which usually need to be approved by a whole bunch of people with different tastes and opinions. A classic example for me was the Eurasia Partnership logo for its South Caucasus office, which I made a couple of years ago. It had to be approved by three different offices: Georgian, Azerbaijani and Armenian. The two months of intensive work went to pot, when the Armenian office rejected the final version, because the mountains in the logo reminded them of Mount Ararat viewed from the Turkish side. So we spent another month on tuning that element, frustrating me to the point when I was ready to leave the project.

Luckily, this time everything went a lot smoother. There were some frictions in the beginning, but it's inevitable on early stages of development, until the things begin to boil down. As soon as we defined the main direction, it was only a matter of polishing the discrete elements, which is not that hard, if you see the ultimate goal clearly. And we started to see that goal as early as in the third demo, but I was dissatisfied with the font, which seemed too hackneyed to me.

So we kept on searching. Our project lead offered an alternative font named Babycakes, which I also disliked at first -- I thought it was too childish. But when I actually used it in a demo, I clearly saw that it suited our concept better.

We were generally satisfied with the result, but there were still quite a few improvements to be done. The first thing was enlarging the capital letter. Originally we intended it to be small, but the project lead insisted otherwise -- she wanted to emphasize the letter B, so that the word "blog" dominated over the ".ge" part. It turned out to be the right decision, so now we had to find the color. I was shifting towards the blue version, since it's one of my favorite colors, but the project lead was inflexible in this matter -- she wanted it to be pink. How can you deny a lady such a request? Now we had both shape and color, and were almost done.

Almost, because there was still one thing left to do: our "Pink Lady" desired a glossy "Web 2.0" finish, and she was absolutely right about it -- it would bring an ultimate "candy" feel to the final product, which was exactly what the doctor ordered. A few additional tweaks and we were finally there!

Our brand-new sweet shiny candybar of a logo was all ready to set sail, and the only thing left to do was an appropriate favicon. I shipped them both and waved goodbye with tears in my eyes... Well, not really... but it sounds so melodramatic, I just couldn't resist. The beta version of Blog.ge already sports the new logo and the favicon, so you can see them both in action. As I was told, the new logo was a huge success -- especially in female population. I don't know about that, but I'm really glad it all finished without bloodshed.

That's it. Below is an example of one of the earlier rejected demos, just to show you what we went through at the early stages of development.