Logo and brand identity design
Custom logo design, and the system that keeps it intact. The logo itself is the fun part, and you'll see it drawn in pencil before you see it polished. What makes it last is everything around it: every logo version, every brand color, every file format, drawn at the same time and handed over together as one big happy family. Your logo looks right everywhere it lands.
Custom logo design, and the system that keeps it intact. Most of it is logo design for nonprofits and university centers, where your logo has to sit beside the university's without fighting it. The logo itself is the fun part, and you'll see it in pencil long before you see it polished. What makes it last is everything around it: every logo version, including one built to sit happily in the university template, and the format your print vendor asks for. Your logo looks right everywhere it lands.
Full colorOn darkOne colorFavicon
Horizontal versionNurture NC's logo, in the versions it actually ships as. The whole system it belongs to, patterns and palette included, is further down this page.
The plan
How we get you there
Every plan uses the same three stages, and you choose which ones you need.
Who this is forOwners who need one logo that works on a sign, a shirt, an invoice and a favicon. Usually with one somebody made once, and no idea where the original went.Nonprofits, centers and programs whose logo has to survive a dozen hands and a university template. Usually with three versions in circulation and nobody willing to say which is right.
Clarify
How to tell your story so your audience listens.
Beautifyyou're here
Every place you say it: your website, logo, print collateral, email marketing.
Amplify
Systems that carry your marketing to the people who need to hear it: search, email and outreach.
Why people call me
Three things I hear about logos
None of them are that the logo is ugly.
We have a logo. Sort of.
A JPEG somebody exported in 2017, a version with a white box stuck behind it, and nobody still there knows where the original file went.
It falls apart off the website
Fine on screen, unreadable on a sign, and the printer keeps asking for a file that nobody has. So somebody opens it in Word and traces it.
Everyone's version is slightly different
Three departments, three logos that nearly match, and no one wants to be the person who brings it up in a meeting.
Scope
What you actually get
Since "logo design" can mean a five dollar file or a system that outlives you, let's get clear about what's included.
A university logo gets used by people you'll never meet, so the rules come written down. The files cover the printer, the sign shop and whoever makes this year's conference banner.
You'll be the one using these, so they come in the formats a printer actually asks for, with rules short enough to follow when you're putting a logo on an invoice at nine at night.
The logo
Drawn in vector, built on real geometry, never nudged until it looked fine at one size. It holds up at 16 pixels and on the side of a building.
Every logo version you'll need
Horizontal, stacked, the logo on its own, with a tagline if you have one. Made now, so nobody has to improvise one at 5pm the day before a conference.
Logo colors that hold up on a dark background
Full color, one color, knocked out white, and black. The one that matters is the one that still reads when somebody drops it on a photo.
Fonts that go together
A headline font, a working font, and the sizes and weights that go with them. Licensed properly, or a free equivalent if the license is going to be a problem.
Brand guidelines somebody can follow
Clearances, minimum sizes, the colors in every value you need, and what not to do. Short enough that a new hire will actually read it.
Every file format
SVG, EPS, PDF, PNG at the sizes people actually ask for. When a vendor asks for something exotic, send them to me and I'll make it.
Your logo portal
A link you hand to a printer, a conference organizer or a new staff member, where they download the right file themselves. No more digging through your email.
The social and avatar set
Cropped and centered for every square and circle a platform will throw at it, so your profile picture isn't your logo with the edges cut off.
It's yours
Full ownership of the logo and the source files, in writing. If you ever work with somebody else, nothing is held hostage.
One of them, in full
A logo, and the system that came with it
Nurture NC is a maternal and infant health campaign in North Carolina. The heart is built from two shapes, and everything else in the system works with those 2 shapes: the logo versions, the two patterns, the 10 colors, the reversed and one-color versions. Every piece below is the real artwork. A page about identity design shouldn't be showing you pictures of logos.
A few more
Other logos, same approach
Both of these are UNC Gillings. A society that raises money from alumni, and the school's innovation program. Neither needed a big system, and both needed a logo that still reads at the size of a lapel pin.
Rosenau SocietyThe cupola on Rosenau Hall, drawn into the R
Rosenau SocietyThe pattern that came with it
Innovation @ GillingsA badge built to work as a profile picture
Every file, one link
One link you can hand to anyone who asks
Every identity I deliver gets its own portal. One address, every file, every format, organized. You send the link to a printer, a sponsor, a conference, a new hire, and they take what they need without going through you.
Have a look around one
I drew a logo for a company that doesn't exist so you can open its portal and play around. "Sphere Incorporated" gets the same handover a real client does: Multiple logo versions, each in at least full color, one color and reversed. Every one downloads as SVG, PNG or JPG at whatever size the person asking for your logo needs.
Look at the one color versions next to the full color ones. I draw those for one color from the start, so they hold up on a single color press. A full color logo converted down turns into a gray smudge.
Open the demo portal
Process
How a logo actually gets made
You see the thinking in pencil before you see anything polished. Changing your mind is free at step two and expensive at step five.
We talk
Let's have a quick meeting. Who you are, who you're up against, and what the logo has to do that your current one doesn't.
Sketches, plural
I draw dozens of directions, rough, on paper. Cheap to make and cheap to throw away, which is the point of doing it first.
You pick favorites
You choose the one or two worth developing. I'll tell you which I'd pick and why, and then I'll build what you chose.
Refine the vector shapes
Where the real work is. Curves, weights, spacing, and how it behaves when it shrinks. This is the part that separates a logo from a sketch.
Bring it to life
Brand colors, logo versions, fonts, and the guide that explains all of it. The logo stops being a drawing and becomes a kit.
Portal and handover
Every file goes into your portal, you get the link and the source files, and you own the lot.
Sketched
Traced
Polished
Investment
How pricing works
Phased, a tight range per phase, and you see the number before the phase starts. Stop after any phase and you keep what was built.
No retainer, and no rounds billed by the hour. The files are yours when the phase ends, in every format a printer or a sign maker will ask you for.
Those are the ranges most identity projects land in, not a quote. What changes the number is whether your logo is just the name in type or built around an icon, and how many logo versions and file formats it needs. The rollout isn't a band at all: You add the pieces you need and pay for those. The phases below are how the money is staged.
Discovery and direction
The conversation, the competitive look, and sketches on paper. The cheapest way to find out whether we see the same thing, and you keep the thinking either way.
The logo and the system
Refinement, brand colors, logo versions, fonts, the guide, every file format, and your portal. Quoted as one number against what phase one settled.
Rolling it out
Signage, stationery, templates, a website in the new identity, whatever the brand now has to land on. Taken at whatever pace suits you.
Grant-funded higher education marketing. I quote against your budget lines and bill each piece of work separately, and I've been through enough university purchase orders to know what the paperwork wants before it asks.
Questions
What people ask before they hire me
How long does a logo take?
How many concepts do I see?
What files do I get?
Do I own the logo?
Can you work from the logo we already have?
We're inside a university with its own brand rules. Does that work?
Do you do the brand guide too?
The rest of the system
A logo on its own is a drawing
It becomes a brand when the things carrying it were built by the same person.
Adrial is absolutely wonderful and cares deeply about his work and the content that he creates. … We trust Adrial with all of our graphic needs.
Kauline CiprianiVice President for Inclusive Excellence, Colorado State University
I'd love to see what you've got
Let's have a quick meeting. Bring whatever you have, even if it's a logo somebody's cousin made in 2011. Tell me what the logo needs to do and where you want it to go. You'll come off the call knowing whether it needs refining or replacing, and if I'm not the right fit I'll happily point you to someone who is.