Logo and brand identity design
Custom logo design, and the system that keeps it intact. The mark 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 lockup, every colorway, every file format, drawn at the same time and handed over together. 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 the mark has to sit beside an institutional identity without fighting it. The mark 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 lockup, the version built to sit happily in the university template, the format your print vendor asks for. Your logo looks right everywhere it lands.
Full colorOn darkOne colorFaviconYour OrganizationHorizontal lockupMy own mark, standing in for yours. Every one of these is a separate file, and every one of them is the reason the logo still looks right in two years.
The plan
How we get you there
Same three stages on every project.
Who this is forOwners who need one mark that works on a sign, a shirt, an invoice and a favicon. Usually with a logo somebody made once, and no idea where the original went.Nonprofits, centers and programs whose mark 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
What you're actually saying, and who you're saying it to.
Beautifyyou're here
Every place you say it: the site, the mark, the print, the email.
Amplify
Systems that carry it 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 left in the building 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
Written out, because "logo design" can mean a five dollar file or a system that outlives you.
The mark
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 lockup you'll need
Horizontal, stacked, mark 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.
Colorways that survive 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.
A type system
A headline face, a working face, 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 reads it instead of guessing.
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 instead of hunting for it.
A portal to send people
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 mark and the source files, in writing. If you ever work with somebody else, nothing is held hostage.
One of them, in full
A mark, 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 so is everything after it: the lockups, the two patterns, the ten colors, the reversed and one ink versions. Every piece below is the real artwork rather than a picture of it, which on a page about identity design is the difference between showing the work and describing it.
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 mark for a company that doesn't exist so you can open its portal and press things. Sphere Incorporated gets the same handover a real client does: three lockups, a full color version, a one ink version, a reversed version, and every one of them downloadable as SVG, PNG or JPG at whatever size the person asking needs.
Worth looking at the one ink versions next to the full color ones. They are drawn for one color rather than converted to it, which is the difference between a logo that survives a single color press and one that turns into a gray smudge.
Open the demo portal
Process
How a mark 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
Twenty-five minutes. Who you are, who you're up against, and what the mark 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 mark from a sketch.
Bring it to life
Colorways, lockups, the type system, and the guide that explains all of it. The mark 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.
Investment
How pricing works
Phased, fixed per phase, and you see the number before the phase starts. Stop after any phase and you keep what was built.
Those are the ranges most identity projects land in, not a quote. What moves the number is whether the mark is a wordmark or built around an icon, and how many lockups and formats it has to work in. 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 mark and the system
Refinement, colorways, lockups, type, 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 work. I quote against your budget lines and invoice per deliverable, 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
Twenty-five minutes, and bring whatever you have, even if it's a logo somebody's cousin made in 2011. Tell me what the mark 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.