Birthday Bash!

Last Saturday (3rd November) was the 1st anniversary of the opening of Maidstone Harley-Davidson in Kent, UK Website. To celebrate the occasion, the dealership decided to hold a "Birthday Bash" at the store. There were some specially customised bikes in the showroom , a live band, a hog roast in the car park, as well as some mini fair-type games to keep everyone entertained throughout the day.

To advertise the event, it was decided that a unique logo would have the biggest impact and provide somewhat of an identity for the anniversary. The campaign included a mixture of web and print advertising, including an editorial and advert in Motorcycle News.

  

The design worked an absolute treat as around 100,000 people (approximately) braved the cold, wind and rain just to see my posters up close ...and probably to look at some motorbikes and that as well.


Primary Font: Clarendon
Secondary Font: Helvetica


To begin with, the logo was much more plain than the one you see above. Basically everything you see in orange wasn't added until later. As it was so close to bonfire night, one of my colleagues recommended incorporating fireworks into the design as it would all tie together with the theme of celebration, as well as the time of year. It was certainly a good addition and gave the logo a bit more punch and colour.

Creating this logo was admittedly a bit of a learning curve as it was the first design I had created completely in Illustrator. I have been daunted by the prospect of having to learn how to use Illustrator for some time so this gave me the impetus to crack on with it. It was frustrating at times as things just don't work the same as they do in Photoshop but I think the result was promising given my limited knowledge of the program. I'm sure with a bit of time and patience I'll get my head around all the little techniques and tricks.  

Unfortunately, my idea for a tagline to go with the logo was rejected. For some reason, nobody was a fan of "Let's Bash It Up Big Style!"

Insanity Radio Logo

The student radio at my university (Royal Holloway) recently held a competition to re-brand the station with a new logo.

Here are my submissions for both light and dark backgrounds.

One of my initial ideas featured the 'i'  as a person with headphones on, but side on. I showed it to a couple of friends and it took them a little while to figure out what it was so I had to have a bit of a re-think. One of the most important things about a logo is how much of an instant impact it makes. People aren't going to linger in order to decipher the point of it and so I went for a very classic and recognisable headphone design. The Napster logo was one source of inspiration.

I wasn't sure whether the headphones were related closely enough to the radio so I thought about how I could include a radio mast or radio waves. At first I chose the other 'i' and toyed around with that but it just wasn't coming together. It was only through a bit of doodling that I figured out the shape of the 'a' makes a perfect radio mast, especially in the Molot font. 

The design was chosen to be short-listed for voting alongside some very nice creations by other members of the university and wider community. The voting closed a few weeks ago, so fingers crossed it was the preferred choice! 

Thunderbird Storm Logo

The Triumph Thunderbird Storm is a beast, there's no doubt about it. Now I'm not the most bike-savvy person out there but even I can appreciate what an impressive machine this really is. If you're searching for the type of power that will leave your stomach behind when you open up the throttle, then look no further. At just under 1700cc this is a force to be reckoned with.
It occurred to me that this edition of the standard Thunderbird model didn't have it's own identity and it's not particularly distinguishable from it's slightly less formidable brother. I thought the best way to display the storm's individuality would be to give it its' own logo. 

The colour choice here was pretty straightforward; Triumph corporate colours are blue and white, so job done.
I've always been a fan of stencil logos and single colour icons; they are clean, clear and versatile. I must admit I was influenced here by the shape and layout of football clubs' badges; Middlesbrough and Sochaux come to mind at this point.
The bird image you see in the centre is the official emblem used by Triumph on it's Thunderbird models so it seemed pretty essential to include it. It's been around since the classic Thunderbird model of the 1940's so I imagine is recognisable amongst most bikers.
The curved text you see at the top of the logo was something I was keen to use on this project. I'll admit that I have always associated text-warping like this with word art, finding it pretty visually offensive. However, I recently came across a few examples of curved text effectively used in logo designs and fancied giving it a go myself. It took a bit of tinkering and ultimately a subtle adjustment really does produce the best outcome.


Triumph motorcycles are understandably quite protective of branding and so this project was never intended for public use. Hopefully I'll be able to put this to use as a template or something in the future for similar work.