Here is a branding design that I did last year for Animal Buddies, a small family run business based in Buckinghamshire specialising in pet services.

Since the client had just set up their business, they needed some branding designs. I helped come up the designs for their logo, business card and leaflet ad.

I wanted to design the logo to represent the family run pet business so I chose a bold round font in a light neutral colour to give a friendly and inviting look.

I kept the design of the business card simple to make the contact information clear and easy to see.

The leaflet would be in A5 size format, I carefully arranged the text and graphics by spacing evenly to make it easy to read in a small sheet.

Due to the amount of text required I had to make the font as small as possible but still readable at 8 pt. I used Object>Text Wrap in Illustrator to make the text flow around the images. I placed the contact details at the bottom of the sheet where it can easily be seen.

The final designs were exported to PDF with bleeding around the edges, ready for print.

Animal Buddies – www.animalbuddies.co.uk

Tags: brand identity, Illustrations, logo.

Here are some banner designs made last year for the British Chinese Network who are a volunteer group in Manchester. These banners are used for their social networking page.

The client wanted individual banners for their various events and in different banner sizes. I designed the long rectangular banners first and then re-adjusted the graphics to fit in the tighter square dimension.

In illustrator, I used Clipping Mask Tool to make an image photo appear inside a shape, this was done by selecting the 2 objects, right clicking and choose ‘Make Clipping Mask’, also making sure the shape object is arranged above the image for the mask to work.

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

Tags: Banner, Illustrations.

Here is an artwork poster that I had recently designed for Biguiyuan Kindergarten School in Zhaoqing, southern China.

The school staffs wanted a poster to help attract new parents and their children to the kindergarten school and also provide some details of contact information and a link to their website.

The size of the poster would be 750cm (24.6ft) tall and 600cm (19.7ft) wide which would cover most of the wall on one side of the building.

The design had to be fun and inspiring for the children and also show a positive message for the parents. We discussed different ideas for the design and in the end we came up with incorporating stars as a positive symbol and the children being the “star” pupils of the kindergarten.

I used photoshop to generate some designs ideas on the characters, I wanted to give each one a slightly unique look so I incorporated the different hairstyles of the school children into the design of each character. Once we were happy with the overall look; I then proceeded in converting them to vector and adding colour in.

Once the artwork was near completion, I sent the file across to the staffs via email for feedback and any changes to be made. Fortunately they were pleased with the overall design and only a few minor adjustments were needed before it was sent to the printing company. The contact details were moved to the top for easier viewing from a distance and the style of fonts were updated to a clearer font.

On the test run of the printing, an issue had cropped up on the smaller print version, with the outline strokes being thinner than on the original design, perhaps this could of been due to enlarging the image but without also scaling up the strokes. To be on the safe side though, I decided to convert all the strokes into shape objects using the Object>Path>Outline Stroke tool to quickly fix similar issue from happening again.

The artwork poster has received positive feedback from the school. I’m really pleased with the final piece; it’s always nice to have your work on display, especially in a vibrant place like a kindergarten where lots of children and parents will get to see it and hopefully find it fun and enjoyable to look at.

Tags: China, Illustrations.

Here is an illustration called Cherry Tree Panda. This was created entirely from Photoshop with the aid of a graphics tablet.

The idea appeared in my mind and thought the image of a panda chilling under a cherry tree would make a nice artwork. Before creating the piece I’d gathered some images on the net of cherry blossom trees and pandas for reference use.

The panda was quickly sketched in with the outlines later refined to a cleaner look. The trees were drawn from scratch using a swirl brush type with brush scattering mode turned on. I’ve added drop shadows, outer and inner glows on the layer style to give some depth and presence on the blossoms.

The background was created using a photo of my bedroom wallpaper which has a cloudy look, this was set to Soft Light on the Blending mode. I’ve also added a Noise filter which added some extra detail to the texture. With the base colour set to brown it created a nice leather-like appearance.

A Vignette effect was added to darkens the surrounding corners of the overall image, this helps emphasize the focus on the main subject.

I am pleased with the final look of the piece, particularly on the panda’s pondering look and its relaxed body position.

Tags: Animal, Illustrations, Photoshop.

Meet Cocktail Gorilla! created in Photoshop.

I’ve added a drop shadow on the layer style to pop the outlines out which gives some depth. The background has been applied with a subtle Noise filter to add some texture to the overall image and also applied Vignette to darker the surrounding corners.

Tags: Animal, Illustrations, Photoshop.