Since my early days I have been fascinated by clean, clever design and smart typography. I’m fascinated by old advertisements from mid-century and how they used design and text to tell stories and lure customers. There’s also a tie-in with broadcasting. The wonders that William Golden and Lou Dorfsman created to enhance the perception of CBS, for example, are among my favorite things. You can likewise keep me spellbound with the works of Saul Bass and the inventive logos he developed for movies, corporations, and anything and everything under the sun.
I don’t pretend to be anywhere near the genius of any of those people. (I will also admit that I’ve stolen from them from time to time. But remember, we call it homage.) I do, however, like to think some of the things I’ve come up with have added something unusual, and occasionally clever, to some things I’ve worked with.
Without question, the biggest job I’ve taken on has been serving as creative director for the 2016 International Plastic Modelers Society/USA National Convention, which our IPMS/USA chapter hosted in Columbia. I was responsible for the logos, website, social media feeds, advertising design, decal sheet, signage, awards, and anything and everything else. Everything from the magazine ads to the wristbands daily visitors wore, I designed it.
Below are a few examples of what I came up with. The theme – “Every Model Tells a Story” – came from a conversation Ralph and I had one day about the hobby’s greater meaning. I decided to tie the name “Columbia” to the many ships that had carried the name, which also allowed me to refer to the coast in the design. (Look closely and you’ll see the constellation Columba above the space shuttle; I converted Columba to seven stars as a memorial to the STS-107 astronauts.) The Palmetto tree and crescent were an obvious way to work our state’s symbols in.
We needed a less complicated logo to use in places where we couldn’t use the full-color logo, and that’s where the logo above came from. It’s what we put on the embroidered staff shirts, paper goods and other things. The full-color logos went in ads, on the back of the convention shirts, and elsewhere.
I also designed the instruction book for the convention decal. Here are some sample pages.
Our campus LGBTQ alliance needed a new name and logo. Within a few minutes of the subject coming up in a meeting, the new name, and the first version of what became this logo, just seemed to tumble out of my pen.
I always loved the signage CBS put on its Norelco PC-60s in the 1960s and 1970s. The first chance I got, I adapted it for our cameras. I may be the only one who gets the reference, but it dresses the cameras up a little bit.