Time flies. It has been a long time since the last news from my graphic design studio. That doesn’t mean there was nothing exciting happening. In fact, work got so exciting for a while that I didn’t even make time for posting anything on this blog. Fall is officially here in Seattle which means productive design times. Today a small show and tell of my latest branding project. Local contractor Dyna hired me to revamp their business brand just before summer. And now, a few months later, all the pieces are coming together nicely.

Stay tuned for the new Dyna web site which will be up next week. I am very excited about this one.

For  a peek into the design process, these are  the logos I presented in the first round:

The cover design uses the same recognizable layout as the previous edition but now with updated typography, gold for the 50th anniversary, an anniversary logo and a dramatic and thrilling mountain shot. The interior page design comes from my hand too but the 600 (!) pages were produced by a different (very patient and dedicated) designer.

previous edition

Last weekend I was in Brussels and saw this banner on a building in the European Union ‘office park’. Later I realized the banner might have been up since February so I would hardly call this breaking news (but as I never go to Brussels I had obviously not seen it before….) Back in Seattle I did some research and found out the new logo was the result of a European-wide contest open to art and design students in which nearly 3,500 logo designs were submitted.

The winning so-called “Euro-leaf” logo is by Dusan Milenkovic, a student from Germany, who earned 63 percent of the vote after some 130,000 people voted online for one of three finalists.

This reminds me of the uprising of the Seattle AIGA chapter against Bumbershoot’s planned logo contest. The Seattle chapter’s president Jeff Barlow summarized the objection perfectly by saying: “Imagine if it were attorneys or contractors: I want you 10 to build me a house and I’ll pay the one that I like.” Bumbershoot listened and decided against the contest.

Interesting that a large European Union design project was realized in a way that is frowned upon in the design community. I couldn’t find any objections to the contest online. However, Logo Factory did a blog entry on the subject analyzing the design and explaining why not everyone is thrilled with the selected logo.

I didn’t see the logo appear yet on packaging in Holland and Belgium. I’d better take a trip to Europe again next year.

You can opt for a fun paint job:

Or something more elaborate:

And if creative bike decorating is not your thing, you go to this web site and order an “art bike”: http://www.artbikes.nl/

If you have good eyes you might find me and Hoyt’s brother and his girlfriend in this photo:

I might have to go back to marvel at the cool design of the store and all the branding. Oh, and the food packaging. A downplayed style is what you’ll find at Marqt: make food look as if it came straight from the field by using butcher paper, handwritten labels and such.

Marqt is the most expensive grocery store I know so perhaps I’ll stick with the many outdoor markets around town where the fish is still wrapped in newspaper (and not because someone decided that this would make the fish look ‘real’.)

Schrank8 is a 1930s showcase cabinet originally from Germany. It’s now part of the living room & studio of graphic designer Hansje van Halem in Amsterdam. Every two months an artist will be invited to fill the cabinet. I just missed my opportunity to check this one out. The blog is in English and is fun to follow for all lovers of the graphic arts: http://schrank8.blogspot.com/

Visit Hansje’s web site too. She designed some of the Dutch stamps. http://www.hansje.net/