A little one-on-bot half court

MoMath opened a new exhibit this morning – the idea of which is to enter the parameters of a basketball shot into a ball-throwing robot and allows you to try your hand at trying to replicate the shot yourself at a basket placed next to the bot’s. A computer analyses both shots – allowing you to change what you did on both your shot and the bot’s to try to correct for a miss.

The task for me was to create the logo, marketing graphics, and directional graphics (for the Ball Bot).

I’ve played with the Bot. It’s a heck of a lot of fun. I mean, it’s a robot that shoots basketballs… what’s not to like about that?

Summertime, and the learnin’ is easy.

Summer is coming and with it the salvation of all parents who work full-time: summer camp. I was tasked with coming up with the logo for the summer program of the Museum to appear in promotional materials as well as the t-shirts the kids will get. (The final design can be found is on the upper right.)

The math festival this city deserves

The directive was to come up with a logo for what is hoped to become an annual mathematics festival for New York City. In the end, the Museum decided to go for a more generic look for the promotional material, but I was quite pleased with how these were turning out so I decided to showcase them here.

The key to your happiness, a door to your future: a real estate company re-brand.

Unfortunately, neither of these designs were picked by the client as he wished to go in more of a hand-drawn, Etsy-style direction (which was executed in a subsequent iteration). At any rate, I was fairly pleased with both concepts.

Stop

I was recently hired to create a brand name, logo, and packaging for a brake pad manufacturer who wanted to start selling their product in the United States. Below I’ve included the logo concepts, final logo, and package design.

As a side note (to explain a geometrical anomaly): the traditional octagon was replaced with a hexagon to draw the eye across to the next part of the wordmark. An octagon would, as it should, stop that movement and make the logo more clunky whereas a hexagon, with its side-corners, points to the next word. Maintaining the traditional stripe and field theme of an international stop sign (not to mention the word “stop”) keeps the message clear without hurting the flow.

Down(real-e)state New York

tiny little mind has recently been engaged by Clarke Realty to create new business cards and promotional material for their real estate sales efforts in New Rochelle and the surrounding area. When I went up to meet with the client I was blown away by the beauty of the place… even in the dead of this crazy New York winter. I cannot wait to go back up with my camera to take pictures when Spring really takes hold for the upcoming direct mail campaign. Below is newly designed business card concept.

Same sh*t, different day… beware of overdoing it on social media.

These days I find there are times that I simply don’t want to open my Twitter or Google+ accounts.

I follow a few marketing people on both of these services and though there are some who are wonderful and incisive in their observations and choice of post-sharing, others are repetitive in their posts and self-serving in their content. They seem interested in merely boosting their own reputations and egos in a way that makes the rest of us feel like we are being forced to subscribe to a cult of personality. If you want to use social media as an outlet to boost your reputation and spread some well-earned knowledge you should feel free to, but be warned: the internet is a fickle place. Preen and strut at your own risk. If you have something important to say, say it. If you want to remind people of something you’ve posted in the past, do so, but space those reminders out thoughtfully. Just posting the same sh*t day after day (or even several times in one day) is just you trying to keep your name in the newsfeeds. You’re not sharing anything we’ve not heard before. Don’t alienate your base audience just because you fear being forgotten. We’re fickle but not so much that you will vanish from our minds within hours. You risk us thinking that you’ve not an original thought left and we’ll move on.

If you had something to say that was worth our attention, we’ll be grateful and remember you for it. If all you post are the same things over and over, day after day, you’ll soon find yourself un-followed, defriended, and… uh… anti-circled. You’ve abrogated your right to be considered an expert, you are now just noise. And all you’ll have left is your ego and a massive number of “followers” who have decided to ignore you but are just too polite to say so.

All up in his business (card).

I belong to a local business marketing group called BNI that works on the concept of giving business leads to others rather than concentrating on getting your own… which, of course, you do. Their motto is “givers gain,” which sort of explains the whole concept. Anyway, we’re encouraged to bring in new prospects at our weekly breakfast and special events. I decided to bring in a fellow I know who does home computer consultation, troubleshooting, and networking. He was running low on business cards and his last one was a bit out-of-date so we decided to sit down and redesign, coming up with a brand-new graphic and slogan…