Shirt Prototype
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
I've been having fun playing around with shirt designs lately. My family and I have been experimenting with different textile paints, stencils, silk screens, gocco, and even the sewing machine. I'd like to someday sell shirts on the website a la Panic, but with a distinctly handmade/ artisan perspective.
The above shirt (prototype) was inspired by the trend of recycling older materials into new items. For example, Re-Sails bags (made for sail cloth) and these Rice & Feed Laundry Bags. We also recently bought some hand printed shirts for the kids from Potato Playground which I totally dig and have been inspired by.
To print this shirt, I cut a large version of the new logo from freezer paper used an x-acto knife to make a stencil. Then I ironed the freezer paper stencil to the shirt and masked it to the seams of the shirt. Finally, I printed the ink using a sea sponge to give it an organic and worn looking texture.
By the way, the shirt is from Edun Live. Check out their intro video.
Let me know what you think!
New Bee Docs Logo!
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Here is the new logo. Designed by Turnstyle in Seattle.
I think they did a brilliant job of capturing the brand characteristics I described last week as well as creating something that is beautiful in its own right. I hope you like it too!
Rethinking the brand
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Thank you to everyone who left a comment on the two logos I posted. You didn’t say what I thought you were going to say, so it was very educational to hear your first impressions.
As you may have guessed, I have begun a process to rethink the brand of Bee Documents. I picked the name and came up with the concept for the original logo (pictured here) in December 2002. At the time, I was working exclusively on a web-based document management system for lawyers, thus the “Documents” in Bee Documents.
In the last five and a half years a lot has changed. The focus of the company is now timeline software, I have much more business and life experience, and the company generates income to name the first three things that come to mind. I’ve decided it is time to update the branding. It is an ongoing process, but hopefully you will see some improvements to the brand in the coming months. Eventually the changes should show up on the website, blog, videos, product design, etc…
By the way, the black and white logo that I posted first was meant to represent the stamen and other inside parts of a flower. I had this ambitious concept that instead of making the viewer look at a bee, the perspective would be reversed and the viewer would become the bee looking at the flower. Out of the concepts that I have played with so far, this was my personal favorite but I can see now that it is too abstract for folks to grasp at first glance. So, back to the drawing board…
Logo #2 - Feedback Request
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Here is another logo from Design Hovie Studios for which I would appreciate your feedback. Just to reiterate, the kind of feedback that is most useful is not what you would change about the logo or even whether or not you would personally choose it, but rather the feelings, connotations, and impressions that the logo gives you. Thanks!
Logo Design - Feedback Request
Here is a new company logo I had designed by Design Hovie Studios. Would you please a quick comment with a word or two that describes the your impression of the logo (For example, "breezy", "uplifting", "oppressive", "bubbles", "itchy", etc...). Please be creative and don't just say -liked it-.
There are a few hundred people subscribed to this blog so I would like to see at least 50 different comments on this one. It will only take a second... Please?!
Calling Card Color Study
Friday, March 02, 2007
I got a chance to work on my stamped calling cards again last night. I bought a new "sky gray" ink and tried out as many color combinations and I could make. I think my favorite so far is a black bee with the gray block.
Labels: calling card, colors, logo, stamping
Calling Cards Progress
Thursday, February 22, 2007
I worked on my new calling cards some more Tuesday night. I was able to pick up the paper that I wanted from the craft store, but they were out of the stamping ink I wanted, so I went ahead and make a few dozen cards with the inks that we already had on hand.
The black and bright orange scheme is actually kind of rock and roll in a color-your-converse-shoes-with-sharpies kind of way.
Labels: calling card, logo, stamping
Bee Docs' Shirts
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
The upcoming Apple WWDC Conference inspired me to create a Bee Docs' Shirt. Last year, the conference was mostly a sea of humanity wearing black shirts and jeans.
However, the Apple employees had brightly colored shirts that they wore every day. Aaron Hillegass wore his hat most days so he was easy to spot in a crowd, Allan Obgaard wore his Textmate shirt most days, and the Delicious Monster crew were easy to spot in their brown shirts they wore each day.
Other than that, there were like 3,000 people wearing black shirts. I remember the guys I listed above because they were different. This time, I want to be easy to identify and remember too, so I designed the orange shirt with my bee logo you see above.
In the old days, I used to make band shirts by creating a custom silk screen and printing the shirts in my parents' basement. These days, you can just design and order a t-shirt from Zazzle and have it in a few days. It is more expensive for large quantities, but it is great when you want something quick and you only want a few.
Labels: bee documents, logo, shirt, WWDC, zazzle
Branding Part II
Friday, July 22, 2005
Speaking of brand… I noticed this Business Week report that Apple’s brand equity has risen 16%. What is interesting are the words they use to describe Apple: outpacing, breakthrough, iconic, innovation. I would add “cool” and “design conscious” to the list, but it pretty well sums up Apple’s brand.
I wanted to blog some of the marketing choices we have made to help build a brand of historic innovation, craftsmanship, and simplicity. First, is our name, “Bee Documents.” I wanted to find a name that was easy to say and was based on a real word. I like the "brand" that bees have going for them: busy, engineers, fond of flowers, and aggressive. It seemed like the potential was there to create a logo that would instantly make sense, like Apple’s logo which is very easy to remember.
Speaking of logos, I designed an ugly draft of the logo and then gave it to a designer who tweaked the spacing and made it look nice. It was a priority to have a logo that could be displayed in one color and would be readable at very small sizes. I’m very happy with it, though it may evolve slightly to reflect a more timeless look. It would be nice to have a logo that looks like it could have been used 50-100 years ago.
All our printed materials are on thick 100% cotton papers and use the Adobe Garamond typeface which is beautiful and historic. Every business letter, contract, and quote uses the same font, in the same size, with the same margins and spacing. We always use Adobe InDesign as a word processor as it does the right thing with OpenType fonts (Word and Pages do not). I’m thinking of printing my next round of letterhead, business cards, and blog cards with a letterpress (in black and white) to push the craftsmanship feeling even further. My wife and I sent out baby announcements a few months ago that were letterpressed from metal type onto thick cotton paper from the oldest paper factory in Italy and they turned out very nice. I’d love that kind of look for our marketing materials. The unfortunate thing is that the look is hard to translate into a web site. Maybe someday I’ll find an innovative graphic design artist that can build a web site look that better compliments the older print techniques. I like our web site now, but it would be better if it could more tightly integrate with our print branding.
The last thing I wanted to mention is personal branding. As a very small company, the people have as much or more brand value than the company itself. This is something that I realized a few months ago and started making more of an effort to brand myself. The blog is part of this, participating in user groups is part, and writing articles for other site/publishers is part. Think about Apple, or Microsoft, or Amazon. These companies have very public leaders who are an integral part of their companies brand (for better or for worse). I have come to accept that being a founder means developing a personal brand and reputation that contributed to the company brand.
Labels: apple, bee documents, brand, logo
The Quest for the Ultimate Desktop Background
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
I don’t know if any of you obsess about details like this, but it is really important to me that all my computers are tweaked to optimize efficiency. I am not only talking about having fast processors and lots of memory, I mean adjusting the settings so that I can work with minimum distractions and maximum comfort. One of the most noticeable graphics settings on any computer is the desktop background that you choose.
You know, the blue swoop of the Mac or the grassy hill of Windows XP are just not going to cut it. While I like having pictures of my vacations and family on my wall, I find photos to be very distracting behind my work. What I want is the ultimate computer desktop picture.
Let me describe to you the criteria for my perfect background picture.
First, it has to be grey. Any other color would clash with some of the content I work with. Grey is the perfect background color for any graphics including web sites, icons, and photos.
It can’t be distracting. I need to pay attention to my work, therefore, I need a background that fades into the background. For this reason, I clean all my files and shortcuts off my computer’s desktop at the end of every day.
Consistent! I regularly work on three different computers: an Apple PowerMac with 20” monitor which is my main workstation, my Apple PowerBook laptop, and my HP Windows XP machine for Windows software development. It is important to me that all three machines look and work as similar as possible, including the same background image. This not only looks nice but helps me to minimize changes to my work style as I move between machines and operating systems.
Look cool. It just doesn’t look cool to have a solid color (grey of course) in the background. I like to have a little texture. I also wanted to put my logo on the screen in a way that doesn’t look distracting, but is nice if I am giving a demo or have one of my computers at a trade-show display.
Here is the best desktop background that I have come up with so far. I created it in Photoshop using various noise, coloration, and blur filters:
I like the subtle fur look and it meets all my criteria. If you would like to download the high resolution version click here (1680 X 1050 - 920kb). It looks best if you center it on your screen with no scaling. Also, if you have multiple computers, the image will look the most consistent if you have scaling turned off.
Let me know if you like it.
Labels: desktop background, logo, wallpaper