Welcome

Welcome to the Relic Design Studio blogfolio. Having spent my entire career working as a production artist and graphic designer for ad agencies and on “the client side,” I’m now happily working independently — and without the commute! I specialize in a variety of collateral materials including brochures, posters, fliers and direct mail, as well as stationery packages, newsletters, annual reports, signage and advertising. I’m also a skilled illustrator capable of producing high-quality custom artwork and logos. I’m posting my work as a blogfolio in order to showcase how it develops, morphs and progresses over time — like all creative ventures inevitably do. So please come back often to see what’s new, and click on the posts for a larger view. If you have a project you’re interested in having me work on, please contact me at relicdesignstudio (at) comcast (dot) net. 

Thanks for your interest in Relic Design Studio.
Brian

Green Report

An annual report of sorts. Greenprint Denver is an initiative within the city helping coordinate and implement positive environmental practices. Essentially, the design of the brochure is meant to be modern yet accessible, conveying all past, present and upcoming plans for the city’s overall environmental health. I was glad to have worked on such an important program.

SOTC Invitation

Here is the printed program as well as the e-invites for the Mayor’s State of the City address. Since the location was held in a park that has Greek columns, it was only appropriate to replicate the stately feel of the place as well as using tried and true government symbolism. Basic and effective.

Streecats Logo

I had lots of fun with this one. I know next to nothing about cars, but I like a lot of the art and attitude amongst the motorhead- greaser- kustom kulture crowd. My client needed a logo for his merry crew of gearheads. You can find them rolling in Golden, CO and beyond at Roddin’ the Rockies and the Golden Super Cruise. Bring the fam!

Relic Apparel at Zazzle

I’m featuring the latest designs that I’ve done for my Zazzle shop. I focus mainly on old school hardcore punk rock, Sicilian themes, graphic design and art. This is something different for my blog.

With the punk rock/HC stuff, I have a chance to really put an international face on it and regionalize the designs. As a kid, I learned about so many fantastic bands from across the pond and beyond. I still like listening to bands that sing in Italian or Swedish just as much as those that sing in English, maybe more. Punk was, and is, truly international. We’ve always spoken the same “language” and I’m trying to honor that spirit with some of these designs. To me it was never just about the music, and I will be putting together some designs that speak more to punk philosophies and lifestyles.

As for the Sicilian/Italian themed shirts, I am just as excited about those. You’ll also notice in the punk section that I’ve included all of the major Italian cities too. I’m particularly interested in Sicilian or Mezzogiorno related themes, as they are part of my heritage and interests. Further, I will always feature designs related to Carlentini, Sicily. It’s just a blip on the map, but it means something to me and others from the Omaha, Nebraska Italian Community. I would like to expand distribution of these lines of shirts to wholesalers that cater to Italian festival vendors or tourism vendors nationally and internationally. I have many ideas for these and am looking forward to producing a high-fashion line past my Zazzle capabilites.

Love Paul Shirt Design

This is a draft version of a t-shirt design that I recently did for Love Paul Clothing. I didn’t use any clip art, and all design elements were done by hand. I used an existing font as a reference point and also based the girl’s image on a silent movie actress that I thought would fit perfectly with the Nouveau-toned design. I dulled down the colors and distressed the design to be intended on a light-color shirt.

Holiday Party invitation

This was an e-invitation for a holiday party hosted by a prominent Denver official and his wife. I was really happy to work on this, as the design they wanted needed a red theme and was to be held at RedLine, an artist’s workspace and gallery. I think the design was a success and was very simple and direct, echoing the host space’s own marketing material as well as the invitation’s purpose.

Saarinen logo and stationery package

This was a stationery package for Saarinen Landscape Architecture. The client needed a new identity, letterhead, business card, invoice and a sign. Being that they are designers themselves and have an acute sense of proportion and an overall design sense, made this job especially fun, yet challenging. I think that the final mark turned out really well, with an absolute Spartan-like quality to the lettering in the mark as well as conveying a sense of what they do via the coloring and suggestion of a hill.

Logos

I thought with this post I might explain a little about my work regarding logos. I usually do some preliminary work such as reviewing a client’s current logo, their competition, if they have an existing color pallete, and what mediums it will be used in. Depending on the situation, I generally work up around 10 or more ideas with a pencil & paper. Given time constraints, I might just scan in my sketches and enumerate each one, asking my client to visualize some colors and proper fonts. I prefer to work up a handful of vector-based logos so there can be changes made quickly and the ideas are more concise.

Presented here are some marks that I’m fairly certain never made it out of the shop for daily use. Included are versions for a medical scanning company, a band, a garage and some fishing lures. I made them all an annoying magenta so you can view them. As an aside, I use magenta as a working color tool for warnings, die lines, etc. while designing.

29th Street Disciples

This was a design for the Denver punk band 29th Street Disciples. Initially, they asked me to do a logo so they could have merchandise at shows — mainly shirts, stickers, badges and stuff for a web presence. The original logo (and shirt design #1) is the typeface-comprised skull that makes up their name. I was going for an 80s-type skate punk kind of feel like you’d see in Thrasher magazine, etc. This new design (shirt design #2) was borne out of me wanting to tinker with Adobe CS2. This one has engine-blocks, scratches and paint splatters and is more in line with the type of design styles coming out of the recent hardcore punk scene.

Update: We’ve turned the band into a full-on marketing juggernaut, complete with a formal CD, in-store poster and web banner. At some point, they’ll need a MySpace shell and some art for online sales portals like Interpunk or iTunes. I’m excited for them and hope they get far with their music. Westword likes ‘em.

MGMA Conference brochures and landing pages

The above is a 16-page brochure that was one of several detailing an MGMA specialty conference in various cities. Each brochure had it’s own landing page associated to it for online registration purposes. There was a simple navigation at the bottom of the web presence that directed the user to registration information and other vital information. I tried to design these with a very clean, minimal look to set it apart from some of the organization’s other materials at the time.