When I launched my site a little over a year ago I didn’t give much thought to how it was branded. I focused primarily on the layout and content. A few months back I decided that I really should spend the time to develop a personal brand.
I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with branding work, particularly with designing logos. Early this year I had the opportunity to develop a logo for my good friend Casey Cease who is starting a church and thankfully it was one of my most enjoyable logo projects yet. A lot of the project’s success had to do with both the relationship we have, but also with how far I’ve grown as a designer and the other creative professionals I have in my life that I can rely on for honest criticism. Plus the Dribbble community has become a valuable resource for feedback.
Coming out of that project I ended up in another logo project that is in it’s final stages. I was riding a high and felt ready to tackle a logo for myself. Plus SXSW Interactive was rapidly approaching and I knew I wanted to have business cards ready, so the clock was ticking.
My original “logo” is on the left and the new mark is proudly situated on the right. I had the basic shape down already from some logo attempts that didn’t make the cut with Casey. I originally tried to incorporate my full name and title, but after a few attempts the whole thing felt too heavy. I worked up a version with only my initials, which I had planned to do anyway as a separate icon for possibly use on social networks as it lended itself well to the standard square form factor of avatars. The first iteration featured just the “P” and “C”, still set in Knockout. I had this version practically locked and ready to go not long before I was ready to get my business cards printed and site updated.
After getting some valuable feedback from my coworker Gerren Lamson, I decided to try to mirror the form of the “C” somehow in the “P”. A few tweaks later I ended up with what you see in the final mark. I wanted each letterform to appear as single, continuous shapes rather than trying to add a gap to the middle of the upper stem of the “P”. Once I made this edit I knew I had it and my mark went to a whole new level. It still amazes me after all these years how a little detail like that can completely transform the visual impact of the whole design.
Now comes the story of my business cards. My first idea was to go with companies like Moo or Zazzle. I hadn’t budgeted enough to really go all out on my cards this year, so cost was definitely an issue in whichever solution I went with. After some consideration I concluded that those two services didn’t give me the quality level I wanted. Next up was exploring the idea of screenprinting cards with a coworker who has his own kit. I didn’t have a design at this point and as I looked into screenprinting more I realized that method wouldn’t give me the level of clean detail I knew I wanted.
During the screenprinting research I came across a lady who does letterpress and we potentially had the opportunity to do an exchange of services. When that idea fell through I was maybe 3 weeks out from SXSW. So I then started looking into local print shops that could do a quick job. That didn’t pan out so I ended up with my last option which was to print them myself. I went to a local paper supplier, bought an ungodly amount of paper after a miscommunication (in massive sheets mind you), and got busy. The printer I was going to use ended up being a massive failure so the first day of SXSW registration I took my paper and files to Kinkos and had them work their magic. That night I pulled up episodes of “American Chopper” on Netflix streaming and started slicing and dicing. In the end, I was pleased with the result and felt confident to hand out my cards. Here’s what they look like:
I decided to base the design of my cards off my site instead of coming up with something completely custom. As I got started I discovered that the way my site is laid out fits perfectly with how I wanted to structure the content on my cards. Twitter has become my main social channel so having my username prominently displayed was important. I also knew I wanted my cards to be conversational, so the “Hello” portion of my site fit nicely with that wish. I placed my site and email addresses in the “footer” of the card.
Since I was printing these cards myself I also realized the “Hello” portion could say as many things as I wanted. I ended up with a five unique write-ups, but only handed out these four after failing to fix a typo (curse it!). I enjoyed watching people read them and having some pick their favorite to keep after showing them all four.
So that’s it. This experience was probably one of my best personal projects to date. Apart from the troubles I had getting my business cards made I barely had any internal struggles with what do to or what my brand should look like. Moments like these are rare and I’m still riding the high.
