Here are some poster designs that I made last year for a volunteering group called British Chinese Network who organises social and community events in Manchester.

The client wanted the posters colourful and vibrant, with each event having a different design. I used a similar layout for all the posters to give a consistent look but using different fonts and graphics to give each poster it’s own style.

I kept the design simple and tried to keep the text clear and readable, I used larger bold fonts and colour backgrounds to make the main heading as the focus on the poster.

British Chinese Network | BCN – www.e-voice.org.uk/bcn

Tags: Indesign, Poster.

I always wondered how my sample of logo designs would look on a professional business card but rather than getting them professionally printed (which would of been costly), I decided to take some photos of a blank card and superimpose the logos onto them.

I started by trying to find a nice quality card that I could use. After going though dozens of people’s business cards that had been given to my dad, I stumble a card that had a nice premium quality texture to it and conveniently had a blank side on the back.

I got the camera out and went around taking photos of the card on different surfaces. First thing I quickly realised was the camera couldn’t focus on the blank white card so every photo had to be manually focused. I had to move back and forth to find the right focus spot which was quite tricky as it was difficult to see on the viewfinder.

After several takes and finding the best photos I imported to Lightroom for some quick photo correction and then opened in Photoshop to add the logos in.

In Photoshop, I began transforming and scaling the logo to fit within the same perspective as the card in the photo, I aligned the logo transform box with each edges of the card and then placed in the middle with some minor adjustment by eye to make the logo look convincingly placed on the card.

I chosen Multiply on the blending mode of the logo layer to make the card texture show up underneath it. On some of the logos I also added a drop shadow to give it a fairly convincing emboss look.

The final piece to the overall look was adding some Gaussian Blur in the logo to match with the lens out of focus blur in the photos.

I’m pleased with how the photos turned out, it really helps visualise and showcase the logo designs in a real environment.

One thing that I would do differently would be to add a small temporary marker like a sticker in the centre of the blank card so that the camera can automatically focus onto the card, this can then be easily Stamp tool’ed out afterwards and save the hassle of manually focusing.

Tags: logo, Photography.

Here are a few more samples of logo designs that I’ve created in the last month.

Logo – no entry

This logo design came about after doodling for ideas on other logos and saw a letter e that I’d written at an angle which made me think of the No Entry symbol. My mind quickly joined the two pieces together to create the final look.

I chosen a serif font as I think it fits with the authority look of the symbol. I imagine the logo would make a good branding for a clothing range or cosmetic products with a rebellious theme.

Logo – Alive

This logo started with the figure, as I drew a circle above the letter A, I immediately saw a figure character with the letter being the body and then I added the arms in.

I chosen a word that seems fitting with the expression of the figure. I think this design would work well as a logo for a charity organisation.

Logo – cornucopia

I chosen the word cornucopia as the logo name as it’s a nice word that I like. I tried to emphasise the rounded look of the letters with a round san serif font.

The font was altered to make it more even and symmetrical, giving it a uniform look.

Logo – Pet Walkies

This design began by trying to come up with a logo for a dog walking service. I went for the obvious and create a paw symbol as a starting point but I wanted to implement both the walker and the dog interaction in the logo.

I was trying to think of what image or symbol could be used to portray the human side like the paw image used for the dog, it took me a good while of thinking and then it suddenly hit me… a foot print! so obvious now! The 2 images then got merged into one after playing around with the arrangement.

The silhouette of the dog walker was added in last as I felt the shoe print area needed something to fill in the blank space.

Tags: logo.

Just as a fun exercise to see what I could come up with, I’ve redesigned the logo for a popular guitar-related forum that I frequently visit called The Gear Page or TGP for short.

I tried to create a logo which was simple yet bold by using silhouette shapes. A dark blue colour was used to match with the colour palette of the forum.

Since the forum is called The Gear Page, I wanted the logo to represent all the different sections within the forum such as amps, guitars and effects.

Below are a few alternative design layouts.

This last design came about after moving the silhouette shapes around and saw the circular gaps of the guitar pickup as a window frame for the other items.

It was fun coming up with a new design on an existing logo, my personal favourite would be the last one as it has a cleaner sleeker look and shows the different parts of the forum very clearly.

Tags: logo.

I’ve uploaded some of my favourite photos that I’ve taken over the years and placed them in separate albums in Flickr.

Most of the photos were taken in RAW and then processed in Lightroom.

I will be uploading new photos from time to time so please check back for new stuff!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/raykitshum

Tags: Flickr.