I recently had the pleasure of working with Noah at Structure Studios on a logo project for a new venture the company is developing. Buybuild.com is an e-commerce site the company is launching to provide simple shopping solutions for their clients. Pool builders and landscapers often have a hard time finding the right vendors for the things they buy, and buybuild.com will make it easy to find any product found in the Pool Studio and VizTerra design packages.

My role in the project was to design a logo that would be suitable for the website. They wanted a simple logo that would work well as a symbol, and communicate the idea that they could easily buy things directly through the site. I submitted several initial ideas (seen below) that combined some of the brainstorm items I initially came up with Noah's requests and ideas.

Noah and I both liked the box concept, and after presenting the idea to others in the company they decided to move forward. Since this idea was already a polished item we tried a few variations with adding the letter "b" and seeing if we could incorporate the name in any other way. The final product however was basically our original box idea.

Overall this was an easy going project. The process is usually a little more painful, but Noah had some great initial ideas, and we were able to hit the nail on the head early.

I know what most of you looking at this entry are thinking ... If a robot flying through space at the speed of light fires his proton gun, does anything happen?

In other news, the new quarter has begun and I am busy teaching XHTML, CSS, and all that digital fun stuff. I am giving the students a crash course in the basics before I let them touch Dreamweaver in hopes that they will better understand what is going on.

I am fortunate enough to have a wife who loves me enough to get me a Cintiq tablet from Wacom. It is a smooth little tablet, and I will be posting some sketches and other finished pieces as I finish them.

So, as Shawn Hayden and I have been working on the Chinook award invitations we were playing with the theme of "1979." It is really broad, so we brainstormed some ideas of things we identified with the 70's. Well, as folk who never really lived during the 70's, we had different ideas then some might.

Pong was one thing that we loved, so I slapped this little baby together. What a better way to bring the spirit of the 70's then with the video game that marked the pinnacle of electronic prowess in the mid 70's. All modern technological advancements pale in comparison to Pong and it's simple, yet addicting game play... I guess.

Happy mid holiday season, I hope to get this blog thing back to full steam before I get back to classes in January.

We are in Sutherlin Oregon visiting family for Thanksgiving. It's strange to be back in the rain, but I love the green. Be checking back in next week.

Last week marked the end of my first 6 weeks teaching at Perry! Wow, it seems like it's only been 2 or 3 weeks. At the end of the 6 week section I gave my students a final project for the Creative Advertising II course. The project was to create a poster promoting the VCG Program. What made it interesting was that they had to take 4 photographs of graphic design related tools or objects and use those in an abstract way to create the poster, either by using the objects to create something new, or combining them or altering them in some way.

I went ahead and did the project with my students (I am surprised I found time) and the image you see was my result. Some of the students came up with some really unique images, and I hope I can show them sometime as well.