The finished ARMY360 logo

Recently we pulled out some of the doodles we had made as we was brainstorming the visual identity of the ARMY360 software application for InVisM and figured we’d share some of them on our website.

As stated in the project description, the design spec simply listed the product name and called for an ellipsoid, “360°” shape.  Given that this application was built specifically for the US Army, we turned to imagery of military crests, medallions and patches — such as these — for most of our brainstorming.  We also added in part of the application interface — the 360° directional marker — and added it to the center of the image.  The bottom center sketch below became the basis for the final logo.

Various sketches made while brainstorming

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The official logo for InVisM, Inc.

This past six weeks has brought a lot of big changes around here. In addition to some big projects such as the ClearPivot logo and accompanying website design and some other projects we haven’t yet talked about, the biggest recent news is that I (Chris Strom) have accepted a full-time position as Senior Graphic Artist at a company called InVisM.  InVisM (formerly called Intelligence Gaming) is a Denver-based startup company that makes simulation and training products.  Our clientele up to now has been primarily in the government and military, and now we’re beginning to branch out into the commercial sector. The company has very aggressive growth plans, and—despite the state of the economy right now—is actually well on the way to achieving those goals.

So what does my job as Senior Graphic artist consist of? Maybe a better question is: what doesn’t it consist of? Since I’ve started, I’ve covered the gamut of graphic arts and production: web design, print design, logo and identity design, video and animation design, branding, DVD production, Flash, HTML, XML, jQuery, licensing and copyright issues, you name it.  Heck, I even chose the colors for the wall paint (we are a startup, after all).

I’m still doing some side work that I’ll feature on www.cstrom.com; in fact, I’ll be launching two new websites over the next 4–8 weeks.  And I’ll still update this blog when I can—though, of course, the frequency of updates will slower than before.  In the meantime, come visit our newly launched InVisM website, designed by myself, of course.  I’ll have to write about the design and implementation process for the site—there’s a bit of story behind that.  Maybe in the next one or two blog postings…

www.invism.com

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Wow, things have been busy around here recently.  Lots of work flying around these days it seems like.  One of our most recent projects was designing the identity, branding and website for ClearPivot, LLC, a Denver-based startup company that specializes in marketing metrics and analysis applications.

CLEAR = transparency in numbers, encouraging other parties to view and interpret the data, not hiding anything; open
PIVOT = swiveling from the data to the business (& back); the data provides information on the programs which in turn should align with the business goals; flexible; versatile
CLEAR + PIVOT= CLEARPIVOT

First part of the project was designing the corporate logo.  Working with ClearPivot’s CEO, Greg Davoll, we worked up many different possible logo drafts and discussed them with him.  During the creative process, we started out with rather complex logo design drafts but gradually began migrating towards more minimal, understated designs that concisely expressed the meaning of ClearPivot.  Finally we arrived at the current logo:

The final ClearPivot logo design

The clean simplicity of the logo illustrates the clear, open and transparent nature of ClearPivot’s product and business philosophy. The stylized “P,” of course, represents swiveling and pivoting, illustrating ClearPivot’s marketing metrics philosophy of aligning marketing data with business goals, which in turn pivots back to more marketing data.

After the logo was finalized, the next step was designing and building the website.  (As the web is increasingly becoming the foundation of companies’ marketing strategies, corporate websites are more and more the first priority when building a marketing campaign, second only to the brand identity itself.)

As with the logo, we increasingly focused on producing a clean, understated, yet still eye-catching site.  We decided on a color combination of predominantly white, gray and blue, (with a few other highlight colors for good measure) and a very organic feel in the visual forms.

The homepage for www.ClearPivot.com

The website is both visually and structurally flexible enough to grow with the company—as ClearPivot expands its range of products and services, so too can the website expand with additional content.  In addition, we paid special attention to the top banner on the homepage: focusing on bold marketing points, an attention-grabbing visual design, and strong calls to action (See It, Try It, Contact Us).

So come check out ClearPivot at www.ClearPivot.com.  As always, we’d love to hear some feedback: you can write to us on our contact form, or just leave a comment below.

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I love studying the languages and cultures of the peoples of the world, and integrating them into my work—one look at my graphic design portfolio will demonstrate that.  While up to this point most of my non-English design work has involved Chinese language and cultural elements—no surprise given that I lived in China for 3 years—I’ve always been keen to observe the shapes and forms, and the creative possibilities inherent within, in the written languages and traditional folk patterns of other people groups.  I especially love seeing examples of Arabic calligraphy. The letterforms in Arabic calligraphy run the gamut from traditional, highly readable letterforms, as can be seen here, to highly stylized, abstracted letterforms, as can be seen here.

The communication design blog Graphicology recently posted galleries of Arabic typography, focusing on how famous English-language Western brand identities translate visually into the Arabic script.  It’s pretty interesting to see how the companies translate their identities into an entirely different script, while still trying to retain a consistent visual branding across both languages.  Graphicology has a gallery of brand identities here, and a gallery of packaging design here.  Check it out, and let me know what you think.

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Like most of us, I see and use a lot of websites every day.  Lots of websites are lousy, most are just so-so, but as a designer myself, I love it when I find a really nicely designed site out there.  Case in point: www.commoncraft.com.  It’s a husband and wife that run a business producing videos explaining technical terms like RSS and Wikis in language that non-technical people can easily understand, using paper cutouts and hand gestures to demonstrate.  You can see examples of their work here.

Anyways, about the site design itself: Despite having a moderate/large amount of content — lots of videos, a full store, lots of blog postings — the design and navigation is still kept very simple: just five buttons on the top navigation bar, with additional links on the bottom or side of the page when needed.

Of course, simple does not necessarily mean visually boring: the use of subtle textures and gradients, along with a bold (though not overly bright) color scheme still make the pages highly visually engaging. I also really enjoy the button rollovers on the top navigation bar: a nice change from the typical “change of background color” rollover effect on most website buttons (my own website included).  I don’t know about you, but buttons like this just make me want to click them.

The navigation bar button rollover effects: on the left is the button's inactive state, and on the right is it's hover state.

And to top it off, the site is built on a solid technical foundation: clean XHTML code with pure CSS styling —no deeply nested tables or tag soup here, folks.

As I build websites for my own clients, it’s always great to get inspiration from other places and people on the web that are doing it well.  So if you’re into web design as well, check out their site for yourself.  Oh, and their videos are great too.

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