Nana Tomova, Logo Design

Revisiting one of my favourite design projects here to share a few images. A couple of years back, Storyteller and Photographer Nana Tomova asked me to design a logo that would represent her unique creative brand across her website, social media and to serve as a watermark for her stunning photography. Amongst her many talents, Nana takes incredible photographs of beautiful, wild landscapes and she wanted her logo to be evocative of nature and wildlife. Being a huge nature lover myself, this was a thoroughly enjoyable project for me!

There was plenty of scope for illustrative, inky, nature themed experimentation at the start of the project, which we later honed and narrowed down towards our final direction. I’m actually writing a case study of this project for my new website, so will save my longer ramblings for that and share it with you when it’s ready! For now, here are a few behind the scenes images from the project and the final logo design (top of post). Though Nana has since refocused her website on her Storytelling work, she still uses the logo on her new site, which I highly recommend visiting to learn more about her wonderful creative projects!

Project Flashback: The Sickle Buddy App

I’m trying to get better at posting little flashbacks to some of my favourite, client design projects….the reason being that these projects were so enjoyable, creative and fulfilling, that I would love to attract more like them!

A little while ago I had the pleasure of working with Imperial College London to design ‘Sickle Buddy’, an app created to help children who suffer from Sickle Cell Disease. Through colourful illustrations and fun interactions, young patients can learn more about the disease and discover new ways to look after themselves and manage their symptoms which can be painful and frightening at times.

I created the app’s UX, UI, Illustration and character design work and had lots of fun doing so! It meant a lot to me to be able to work on a project that could potentially help young sufferers and offer some comfort and relief through play.

If you’re in need of a freelance digital/games designer for a similar project, I would love to hear about it! Or if you have suggestions for similar apps you have enjoyed or found useful, then do please let me know.

You can download the Sickle Buddy app here on the Google Play Store.

 

Sibling Skill Swaps & Logo Design

Though my brother and I both live in London, we don’t always get to hang out as much as we’d like – so when we get the chance to collaborate on a creative project and share our different skills to help each other out, it feels really special!

Mikey Parsons is a talented composer studying his final year at Trinity Laban in Greenwich. You may remember that he worked with me a couple of years back to create atmospheric, chilling soundscapes for my Shackleton Illustration project with the Drawn Chorus.

He’s especially skilled at creating music for video games and as is hoping to enter into the industry when he graduates. As such, he had asked me to design him a logo that would help to represent him across social media and beyond as he reaches out to new contacts…

I begin most logo projects by creating a few pages of loose, quick experiments. I like to keep these playful and experiment with ideas, shapes, letters and textures to see if any interesting patterns or compositions begin to emerge.

Mikey draws lots of musical inspiration from magical games like Final Fantasy, from adventure stories such as Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter universe. Luckily our sibling interests align, so I was able to have lots of fun playing with dragon motifs and magical emblems.

For all of my logo and design projects, key moments are built in for the client to review and feedback on the work I’ve completed. This is important to make sure that the project develops in the right direction. Mikey selected a couple of his favourite directions from my experiments and I took these forwards to the next stage.

We were both quite taken with a small logo mark I’d drawn, in which each letter of Mikey’s name had a symbolistic feel to it. With the lead letter ‘M’ appearing to dissolve away as if made of magic particles. I took this design into illustrator and started to refine each letter.

Throughout the process, I shared design updates with Mikey. We’d identified quite early on that he would also need a reduced version of the logo that used only his initials. This would be used for social media profile images and read better when viewed at a smaller size. I developed this version in parallel to the larger logo to make sure both felt like they belonged in the same magical family!

I really enjoy working on logo designs for other creatives. It’s always a fun challenge to take their ideas, inspirations and personality and find a way to turn it into a beautiful logo that helps represent who they are and what they do.

Be sure to check out Mikey’s awesome music and check back for more design project posts from me in the near future!