I recently redesigned the logo for Resignation Media, a company responsible for popular photo blogs including The Chive. The final logo came from a concept based on the California flag (the company is based in CA). Check it out on their site.

logo ideas

New NBA logo, I’m feeling pretty good about this one.

The Team

Like the 76ers, the Pistons are one of the 8 original NBA teams still in the league. They are not doing too well this year, but . There have been 2 significant eras in the Pistons organization, where they won their 3 championships:

The Bad Boys era (80s-early 90s)

Physical, blue-collar, balanced, defensive team led by Isiah Thomas, Joe Dumars, Bill Laimbeer, Vinnie “The Microwave” Johnson, a young and sane-looking Dennis Rodman, etc. Won championships in 1989 and 1990. If they weren’t rivals of the Celtics I feel like I would have loved these teams.

…the other good teams (2004-2006)

Sheed!

Physical, blue-collar, balanced, defensive team led by Chauncey Billups, Ben Wallace, Rip Hamilton, Tayshaun Prince, and my all-time favorite Piston, Rasheeeeed Wallace. Won it all in 2004. They were one of the more unlikely championship teams because they had no superstar player. This team could have continued to contend for championships if they didn’t go ahead and draft Darko Milicic ahead of Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony, and Chris Bosh in 03′.

Past/Current Logos

Fort Wayne Pistons - 1941/42 - 1947/48, 1948/49 - 1956/57

Yup, this happened. The team started in 1941 in the NBL as the Fort Wayne (Zollner) Pistons in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Owner Fred Zollner owned a foundry, which manufactured pistons for car engines, so that explains that. I can’t decide if this is supposed to be a guy in an Iron Man-esque piston suit, or a piston robot with human hands, but either way its pretty cool. The detailed illustration is a lot more impressive compared to other team logos from this time.

1957/58 - 1970/71

This is stright from Wikipedia, but “In 1949, Fred Zollner brokered the formation of the National Basketball Association from the BAA and the NBL at his kitchen table.” In 57′ he moved the team to Detroit and adopted this new logo. This is pretty generic stuff, at least the robot had some connection to the team name.

1975/76 - 1978/79

1979/80 - 1995/96

For 20 years or so the logos were pretty similar. This last one was definitely the best, but looks the least like an actual basketball?

1996/97 - 2000/01

This one is about as ridiculous as the previous ones are plain. It’s a great example of the over the top borders and whatnot that a lot of the modern logos suffer from. I do like that they tried to tie it into the car theme with the horse (horsepower!) and exhaust pipes, but it’s a little too much and the color scheme is garbage.

2001/02 - 2004/05

After a few years they at least went back to the blue and red colors. Good for them.

2005/06 - present

And here we are, the current logo. First, the positives: They stuck with the blue and red, and that does actually look like a real basketball. The font is pretty bad and this is still really generic. You could insert any city/team name here. If you were ordering cheap reversible jerseys for a basketball league, I feel like this would be an option.

The Redesign

Basically, I wanted this to look almost like a car logo. The team name and the city they play in is such a good match, and the current logo doesn’t reflect that at all. The text in the logo was heavily influenced by the Heuer logo, which has nothing to do with cars (shit) but I thought it had the feel of an old car logo.

Like I said before I did like the horse in the older Pistons logos, so I wanted to include that. One big inspiration for the horse was the Mobil pegasus logo. I also looked at a lot of Art Deco-style hood ornaments from old cars. these are perfect because they are simple and have a great sense of speed.

See the rest of my NBA logos here »

Homepage

I recently redesigned this site for a local studio that does boudoir photography. It’s built in Wordpress, and integrated with all sorts of good stuff like Twitter, Facebook, Mailchimp, and ConnectMe. Check it out

Blog

Prices page

Backstage Client section

A while back I was approached to design these old-school Celtics sweaters. The guy ended up flaking on me and I never got paid so with Christmas and the NBA season 1 day away I figure it is a good time to post these. Since this project resulted in basically nothing, it would have been cool to go completely over the top and make something like an ugly Christmas sweater with Celtics players stitched all over the place. Maybe next year…

alternate logos

The NBA is back in less than a week, and I’m back with another team logo.

The Team

The 76ers are one of the 8 original NBA teams still around today. They haven’t been championship-contenders since Iverson’s first tour with the team, but I would be surprised if they weren’t back in the playoffs this year. Thats all I have to say about them.

Past/Current Logos

Syracuse Nationals

In 1963 the Syracuse Nationals moved to Philadelphia (the Philadelphia Warriors conveniently moved to San Francisco the same year) and became the 76ers.

1963/64 - 1976/77

The new logo was clearly inspired by the Revolutionary War, with 13 stars for the original 13 colonies. As overly patriotic logos go, this was a lateral move from the USA map/stars and stripes from the Nationals logo. I really like how simple this logo is. I’m not sure why the 7 is so weirdly shaped, but overall we are off to a solid start. Hoops-wise, the team beat the Celtics and went on to win its 2nd championship in 1966/67 led by Wilt Chamberlain. Boston had won 8 championships in a row, but I still like to think that Bill Russell was pissed about this one.

1977/78 - 1996/97

In 1976 the team acquired Julius Erving (Dr. J) after the NBA-ABA merger, got sold to a new owner, and lost the the Blazers in the NBA Finals. Just when things couldn’t get more exciting, they introduced a new logo with the “ers” text and a sweet volleyball-looking ball behind their old logo. Are there any basketballs in old-school NBA logos that don’t fuck up the seams on the ball? Ridiculous. Anyway, the 76ers won another championship in 1982/83, when they basically started 5 All-Stars, including MVP Moses Malone.

1997/98 - 2008/09

Fast-forward to 1996: the team drafted and got rid of Charles Barkley, and are the worst team in the league. #1 pick Allen Iverson joins the team, rocks cornrows, breaks ankles, etc. The next year the team releases this new logo and black/gold color scheme. The black and red outlines on this annoy me. However, I had a pair of these 76ers shorts that were pretty much my favorite piece of clothing when I was 12 or 13, so I can’t hate on it too much.

76ers current logo

2 years ago the team decided to go back to their old logo with some slight changes. I like the nostalgia, but they could have done this better (fix the lines on the damn ball).

The Redesign

My main goal here was to capture the simplicity of the original logo, but clean up the weird form and spacing of the 76. the bell shape is obviously(I hope) supposed to be the Liberty Bell, which symbolizes the city of Philadelphia. I love the 13 stars, and wanted to make them more prominent instead of putting the whole thing inside a ball.

I’m sure most people’s complaint about this logo will be the disjointed Phila-delphia text. I think it adds a little more modern feel, but I can see why people wouldn’t like it. The “PHILA” text on the alternate logo is inspired by the old Philadelphia Warriors jerseys (left). that one might be a better option.

See the rest of my NBA logos here »

A friend of mine recently needed help with his blog about partying, music, and random hilariousness (probably not a word). I designed and built a custom wordpress theme integrated with Buddypress to add some cool features like user groups, community forums, etc. Check it out

red cups

a nice hover effect on the header graphic

main logo

Just recently finished a logo design for Periodic Pictures, a startup film production company. They wanted a logo to match the scientific theme of their name. After working through a lot of early ideas inspired by the periodic table, we settled on an atom as the symbol to build the logo around. The stamp-like logo above is the main logo, and I also made some simple variations for different uses. These guys are filming a movie right now so I’m looking forward to seeing this in some opening credits very soon.

alternate designs for letterhead, etc.

atom icon

I made this poster for the “Old School Video Game Show” at Gallery1988 in Venice, CA (opens this Friday). I thought I had mastered the skill of blowing dust off of NES cartridges when I was a kid. I read an article recently that said it actually did nothing, but everyone did it anyway so I thought it would be an interesting topic. The characters are from Mega Man 2, one of my favorite NES games. I printed 50 of these for the show, so if you happen to be in the Venice, California go buy one.

Update

This is up on the 1988 site.

Finally got around to another NBA logo. What better time to think about rebranding your team than coming out of a lockout? I couldn’t decide to go with my original idea(with the player) or the simpler version, so I’ll post both.

The Team

2 memorable Pacers teams since I have been watching basketball:

The mid-90s team that battled the Knicks every year in the playoffs, led by Reggie Miller, 7′4 Dutchman Rick Smits, and the Davis brothers. Check out the awesome documentary about this team, Winning Time.

The 2001-2003 teams, notable for strip club shootings, and beating the shit out of some fans in the infamous Malice in the Palace brawl in Detroit.

Last season the Pacers snuck into the playoffs and lost in a close series to the Chicago Bulls.

Past/Current Logos

1967/68 - 1975/76

The Pacers franchise started in the ABA in 1967. The team appeared in the ABA Finals five times, winning 3 championships, and finished as the most successful team in ABA history. This logo is kinda cool but the ball clearly looks like a tennis ball, and the hand is a little off.

1976/77 - 1989/90

In 76′ the team was one of 4 ABA teams that merged with the NBA. Because of financial trouble, the team announced that it might have to be sold and moved elsewhere. Luckily a local TV network held a telethon to sell enough season tickets to save the team, a goal they apparently reached 10 minutes before the show ended. This sounds like a horrible 70s movie.

1990/91 - 2004/05

Not much interesting happened to the Pacers for a while, except trading away their 1984 draft pick, which turned out to be the #2 pick…which they could have used to pick Michael Jordan. Anyway, they drafted Reggie Miller in 87′ and went on to be pretty successful in the 90s. I like the P with the ball better than their old logo, but the double P bothers me.

2005/06 - Present

In 2005 the Pacers used this updated logo, adding a gray border around the P for some horrible reason. This is slightly worse in every way.

Redesign

we really need more gun-related nicknames

The name Pacers is apparently a reference to harness racing(a kind of horse racing) and the pace car in the Indianapolis 500 race. I wanted the logo to have a sense of speed but also keep it pretty simple. I think I could have drawn the player a little better because it doesn’t look great at small sizes, so maybe the version without him is better. Anyway, I leave you with this incredible poster I just found:

See the rest of my NBA logos here »