New Logo Design, ID and Bio — Kontinental

completed an identity refresh this morning for kontinental, an entertainment venture with ties in africa, europe and north america. i created the original logo in 2007, with three key changes enabled this past week. drop the word “entertainment” from the entity name. revise the color palette to a cool gray and two shades of gold. introduce new iconography — a winged hero and a cheetah.

click on to read the biography i crafted for kontinental’s founder, nana opoku. Read the rest of this entry »

“The Year in Pictures” Feature Now Available

“the year in pictures” feature is now available for viewing. to receive a guided tour with anecdotes, please call (202) 494-4326 or email eric.s.townsend@gmail.com. i’d be happy to share a few stories as i outline my services offering.

Atlantic Time Capsule – Branding at its Best

looking for a great example of how branding helps to build a warm, fuzzy feeling for your organization that then drives sales? take a look at the atlantic records time capsule, a product from one of the oldest music labels in the world. the production and promotional effort represents five years of dedication from serious music enthusiasts — which can be seen and felt readily in the product’s attention to detail, quality and nostalgia. if only every product received such focus and dedication! behind all of this is a sentiment from legendary founder, ahmet ertegun: “we started atlantic simply because we wanted to sign a few artists whose music we liked, and make the kind of records that we would want to buy.”

Typesetting is a Key Differentiator

one talent that differentiates a design pro from an amateur is his/her typesetting savvy. below is a splash of logo drafts i’ve provided to sun and moon yoga studio (arlington/fairfax va). when art is presented in black ink only, the strengths and weaknesses of the forms rise to the surface. note the interplay of fonts and illustrative elements. be on the look out for desktop publishers who create “art” in non-designer programs (like anything microsoft, for example). all he or she is doing is typing with a system font. there’s no consideration for things like kerning (the space between letters), texture, balance between elements, etc. there is a general lack of sophistication.