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Omniture and Adobe in chalk

December 17, 2009 in Freelance, Graphic design, Illustration | Comments closed

The common area at Omniture, known as the Living Room, has a wall-sized chalkboard, which needed some new embellishment last summer. It made for an exellently intense, full day of work away from the computer and a lot of dust (the fruits thereof seen below).

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Unfortunately, that design didn’t stay up for long, and the time came again to disturb the clean black slate with a new design reflecting the Adobe ownership. The concept is to relate the right brain/left brain differentiations with the creative suites of Adobe and the analytic software of Omniture.

A bit of process to near-finished product—

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—and after a bit of restoration, the good addition of ears, and some spray fixative that I’m sure made the day more enjoyable for everyone in the building—

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Green to the Extreme: Omniture to Adobe

October 23, 2009 in Events, Freelance, Graphic design | 2 comments

Omniture Timeline

This past evening was the “Green to the Extreme” Omniture celebration party remembering the past thirteen years and marking Omniture’s transition to an Adobe company. As a contractor, it’s fantastic to be invited and mingle with the sea of green. I have acknowledge and congratulate my friend Brad McCall, of course, for his creation of the Omniture brand.

For the event, I was able to work on a large banner commemorating Omniture’s history to date and really pleased with how the seventy-foot banner turned out. Steve Gustavson and Ben Child of the marketing department had a great concept for having a shape underscore the flow of time (using the signature green, naturally). As the banner is being sliced into year-sections, framed, and auctioned off, I wonder somewhat how much a design I worked on is being sold for all told. And yes, I used Adobe products to create it.

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A little UXD

May 12, 2009 in Business, Freelance, Graphic design | Comments closed

Once again I’ve neglected my blog. I could, of course, outline some professional reasons for this— occupied with clients, travel, in progress with portfolio projects— but, in truth, I’ve just been lazy about it and haven’t taken the time to organize my thoughts and experiences into an interesting and germane post.

I’ve had the opportunity to work on some product icons with the Omniture UXD team lately. Posted is a small sampling of icons I worked on and a portion of a screenshot for the product with a couple of them implemented.

Honestly, I enjoyed these icon projects, though there are some in the various sets that have a trick of telling the story in the succinctness of the icon, particularly if the function is uncommon to the user vernacular. To me, there are some icons that are simply not going to be able to fully communicate a complicated or specialized new action without mouse-over text, but should make sense within the set after that blank has been filled in.

 

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“Smash your brand”

February 19, 2009 in Business, Events, Freelance, Graphic design, Website | 3 comments

After a couple intense weeks of working on pieces for the Omniture Summit, I was able to attend some of the events yesterday. It’s an interesting sensation to walk into the event venue and be surrounded by all this signage I’ve been collaborating on. That’s a lot of green.

The closing session for the day featured Martin Lindstrom who related many great things to work into professional practice. One in particular is the idea of “smashing your brand”– that is to say, having recognition of your company and product without the logo at all and more so by the smallest elements used in building your brand (i.e. a familiar color, sound, or the way photography is used, etc.). I was sitting with the UXD team who had to credit my friend Brad McCall for his handling of the Omniture brand in it’s initial conception such that many elements are recognizable as signature Omniture to people who have worked with them. For a session at a conference for a technology company, I was thinking how much of it was directly applicable to design, which gets me fired up to design and examine some new ideas.

I’d like to think that I’m building my identity fairly well so far. Of course, I don’t have a logo as yet, but feel that the use of sketched elements that I create almost subconsciously sometimes that I used for the buttons, borders, and menu items on my site make it unique as something identifiably me.

Peace Meals

January 30, 2009 in Freelance, Graphic design | 4 comments

Last summer my brother’s design firm Rigsby Hull hired me to extrapolate some patterns from some beautiful old textiles to print as divider and end sheets in a cook book they were working on called Peace Meals. It was one of those projects which devoted a lot of time to enjoyable intricacy. I’m glad to have just recently seen the printed product. Aside from the very small design portion I was involved in, there’s some great photography which involved some processes I found intriguing and makes even me a bit hungry.

Atlas Capital Management Logo

June 9, 2008 in Business, Freelance, Graphic design | 2 comments

The Atlas Capital Management logo is another collaboration with Michael Hancock of GoFish Creative similar to a previous piece for the Orion Management Group. I often see images of Atlas in profile, but for this one, my instincts leaned toward face-on symmetry for a stronger and more stable appearance… something that seems more inline with Atlas. Again, my mythological geek side comes out to make the point that Atlas supports the sky, not the earth as is sometimes depicted. I designed a simplified armillary sphere, not wanting to make more of the sphere than the figure. Pictured above is the final figure that I created at left and Michael Hancock’s implementation at right.

Incidentally, last week I was in Manhattan and was disappointed that Lee Lawrie’s sculpture of Atlas in Rockefeller Center is covered. On the other hand, it’s great that it’s being cleaned and taken care of.

Venafi Business Case Guide

May 14, 2008 in Freelance, Graphic design | 2 comments

Following up on previous blogs, I’m posting a couple images from the Business Case Guide that I was working on for Venafi. The Systems Management for Encryption guide was designed to complement Venafi’s other collateral, which was facilitated by the fact that the company has a well-established color pallette, font preference, and parameters on details such as the corner radius of the curved boxes. I’m interested to see how the graduated tabs and subsequent increasing page width worked in the printed piece.

Second month at Omniture

March 26, 2008 in Business, Freelance, Graphic design, Illustration | 4 comments

It’s been a busy month. Work at Omniture has been centered on Summit, a fairly intense time for them. Frequently, people have been out of the office for Summit. It was an odd feeling going in to Omniture and being the one of the few people in the section of the building during the Salt Lake Summit. My contract there just finished this week and I’m looking forward to working with them again next quarter. The last major piece I worked on was a collaboration with Steve Gustavson for the annual report cover. The Omniture style makes an interesting challenge to design with two colors, one font family, and no photography.

Between work with Omniture, I’ve had some other small freelance jobs and have also been working again with Venafi on a couple of larger projects. I feel the increasing shift toward the corporate and technologies.

I was hoping again to balance out all the corporate design work and have pieces ready for the Communication Arts Illustration Annual, but despite their annual practice of moving the deadline back a couple times, the month was full enough with freelance projects to be able to do a satisfactory piece. I suppose that if work is that busy that I shouldn’t be needing to advertise for more just yet. Still, it’s always good to have as many options as possible.

Omniture Sales Kickoff

February 24, 2008 in Freelance, Graphic design | 1 comment

Three weeks into my current contract with Omniture, I’ve completed many projects for the Omniture Sales Kickoff. Their thematic concept relates to various historical achievements: Great Pyramid, Great Wall, Eiffel Tower, Combustion Engine, Microchip, all building up to Omniture itself. Above are two banner designs: one of my favorite drafts that wasn’t selected, and the final. Below are some smaller banners, the right pair are finals, and the left an unused concept.

Omniture

February 7, 2008 in Business, Freelance, Graphic design | 3 comments

I’ve gone corporate, as Brad would say. My latest client, Omniture, invited me to work on site a couple days per week over the next couple months. I’m working in the marketing department with Steve Gustavson and Ben Child and having a great time with the projects I’ve had so far. Hopefully I’ll be able to display some of that work later.

Hui No Ke Ola Pono and the Holidays

December 29, 2007 in Freelance, Graphic design, Illustration, Portfolio | 2 comments

This last month, my friend Justin Kunz was kind enough to refer me to Elias Akinaka, of Hui No Ke Ola Pono in Maui. Elias was really good to design for and had an interesting project for the native Hawaiian health organization that he works for. He asked me to design some traditional Hawaiian patterns for bandages as well as a simple illustration to promote healthy lifestyles. It was educational to work out the specific native details.

Being the Christmas holidays, my brother was in town, which makes for many opportunities for talking shop. My father Richard, brother Thomas, brother-in-law John Jensen, best friend Brad McCall, and I all have a background in design. Tom just received an invite to judge the Communication Arts photography annual.

Jamuse

December 10, 2007 in Business, Freelance, Portfolio

Brief entry on what’s going on lately. I had the opportunity to collaborate with Chip Haskell at Crowell Advertising and anticipate working with Chip more often, he’s been good to associate with.

I also nearly missed an invitation to join a creative site called Jamuse. It aims to be a forum for sharing work in progress with clients and colleagues by the use of a .jam file, which is meant to curtail copying. It’s not publicly accessable as yet, but I’m interested to investigate the site and check out its creative community.

Fall freelance and opportunities

October 17, 2007 in Business, Freelance, Graphic design, Illustration, Personal | 2 comments

Fortunately, the past couple months have been fairly busy. From early August, I’ve had a continual stream of freelance work and other opportunities to investigate. Curtis Packer at Venafi has been a very good client to work with, (icon samples above), and I’m looking forward to working more with him in future.

I also received a call from Becton Loveless at NutraSanus, who I’ve done freelance for off and on over the past couple years, and there’s the possibility of some continuing projects there.

Another referral out of the blue came from Chip Haskell at Crowell Advertising. I anticipate some good business relationships there. They have some really great offices at the Gateway in Salt Lake. Chip also said he enjoys maps and astronomy– that’s a bonus. Always nice if you can work with someone with similar interests.

Brad Pamer also contacted me about potentially collaborating on projects that he has, some of which are former clients of the now defunct Indigo Creative. We even talked about the possibility (however fanciful) of a virtual studio (called Indigo Orange, of course) of our former collaborators at Indigo Creative. I was surprised that our website is still up, but, as Brad explained, he owns the URL and pays for the hosting– the owner of Excel and Indigo never reimbursed him for those expenses. I also saw Michael Hancock the other night and am pleased that he’s doing well. We talked about freelance work versus full-time work. He says he’s in a good place right now with the freelance. I have to admit, it’s nice when you have enough work to sustain you and can have your schedule to yourself.

Unfortunately, with many things occupying my time, I didn’t complete a piece to submit for the Society of Illustrators annual. I’m hoping that my dad, Richard Hull, enters some of his pieces that he did for a current exhibition at Brigham Young University. He mentored a group of students a year and a half ago in Ghana and this month they’re showing pieces inspired by their time there.

I’m off today to Asia for two weeks, and I’m already anticipating all there is to follow up on at the start of November.

Freelance and unexpected referrals

August 28, 2007 in Business, Freelance, Graphic design, Website | 2 comments

It’s always good to have freelance. Recently I had a couple of small jobs come in from my friend Michael Hancock at GoFish Creative, including some illustration work for a logo for Devereaux Mansion in Salt Lake. I enjoy these collaborative jobs and am glad to see what Michael does with the type treatment and arrangement of the logo as a whole. It reminds me of the days at Indigo Creative.

At the same time, I received an unexpected freelance referral from my website. I didn’t design a website to be the first tier of self-promotion as it’s a rare thing for anyone to be browsing the internet and happen to come across a portfolio site and request work that way. Yet, I had the fortunate surprise of just that occurence. Alicia Quillin from Dangles Hangers contacted me and asked for a logo and accompanying illustration and layout.

As I’ve left Indigo, I’ve applied to other studios while freelancing, one of which was Rare Method (formerly B/O/W/G). I didn’t get the job, it isn’t always the right match, but Rare Method did refer an associate of theirs, Curtis Packer at Venafi, to me to make some modifications on a series of icons.

Epic Experiences

July 25, 2007 in Business, Freelance, Graphic design, Portfolio | 1 comment

Recently a contact of mine from Razor Data asked that I design some logo concepts for a business he was starting up: Epic Experiences, an outdoor adventure tour company. His original thoughts were that of a circular shape including a mountain, another mountain with a rockclimber, a river, and a forest. I indicated that that many elements would likely be difficult to incorporate into a legible logo.

I attempted one logo involving the different elements, focusing on the rockclimbing figure, and simplifying the two mountain concepts into one central one. I also variated many other simpler designs, again focusing on the figure and the mountain. Sketching out ideas triggered ideas of aboriginal-type designs and mirrored E’s to form the mountain. Having further feedback from a graphic designer family and friends, I added texture and focused more on the facing E’s, being among the favorites.

Life after Indigo

June 11, 2007 in Business, Freelance, Graphic design, Personal | 2 comments

Friday i quit my job at Indigo Creative to return to freelance and portfolio-building. Having been debating the timing for awhile, my quandary was answered when it was announced that Excel Graphics, our parent company, is finally collapsing with no money remaining for paychecks, having gone to fill the printing company’s increasing debt, and that the owner was requiring a designer to be laid off immediately. As I was planning on leaving in the near future anyway, I quit so that Indigo’s art director wouldn’t need to terminate our newest designer only to have me leave soon afterward. Sadly, after having lunch with my former co-workers today, it sounds as though they may shortly be joining me in life after Indigo.

After over three years working for the strange business association of Indigo and Excel, I’m happy to have worked with excellent designers and hope to maintain ties with them. Michael Hancock, our first art director, has already moved on to GoFish Creative. I’m interested to see the progress of Brad Palmer, the current art director; and my other associates, Kevin Sheehan; Scott Troxel; Jared Wright; and Kira Ludwig Shelton.

Park Square Logo

April 30, 2007 in Business, Freelance, Graphic design, Portfolio | 3 comments

Occasionally, I have the misfortune of designing logos that don’t hit the mark for the client. I received a client referral from my brother, Thomas, who is a partner at Rigsby Hull in Houston. The project was to design a logo for some new condos near Memorial Park in Houston, Park Square Condominiums.

Another skill I have yet to perfect is getting adequate information from clients concerning their needs on a specific project, and learning to work with the ‘We’ll know what we like when we see it’ kind of situation that often arises when clients honestly don’t know what they want, or can’t articulate specific parameters to the designer. I knew the logo needed to be a monogram, something streamlined and simple, and reflecting the park environment, and that there wasn’t much time allotted for the project.

Nevertheless, the first drafts monograms (a sample of which are pictured below) were rejected, with the further note that the committee had decided to put the logo on hold for the time being.

GoFish Creative and Orion Management Group

April 17, 2007 in Freelance, Graphic design, Personal, Portfolio | 1 comment

I had the opportunity lately of collaborating with my former boss at Indigo Creative, Michael Hancock. He now designs independently as GoFish Creative.

Michael needed a logo illustration for Orion Management Group, a business I really don’t know much about. All I needed to know is that they wanted an illustration of the constellation Orion with his bow and arrow. Being an astronomy junkie, I had to point out that Orion (though, a hunter) is never pictured with a bow and arrow (that constellation being Sagittarius, the archer), but is pictured instead with a club and either a shield or lionskin in the other arm upraised against Taurus.

I understand that the logo doesn’t require the strictest astronomical representation, and suggested that the primary traits that communicate ‘Orion’ are the belt of three stars, and any attributes of a hunter, usually his hunting dogs. The client suggested the concepts pictured below (they must really like the archer idea). The final version is being produced by Michael as he applies color and type, after which I’ll have another piece to add to my design portfolio.

It’s always good to have the opportunity to collaborate with someone you’ve worked with before. I first met Michael Hancock in the summer of 2003 when he worked at Focus Design, where I did some freelance for him before he became art director at Indigo Creative, where he hired me as a designer three years ago.

Custom Style

April 9, 2007 in Freelance, Graphic design, Portfolio

Another of my recent freelance projects has been for Mark Averett, who is progressing with his personal shopping business, Custom Style. I’ve been reworking his logo and brochure, producing a square tri-fold which I’m excited to see printed.

I understand that he’s received a lot of feedback from Sam Saboura of Extreme Makeover, who has noted his use of color and suggests that he’d do well with television and commercial work in the Los Angeles market.
Currently he’s building his business in Salt Lake City and networking well with models, photographers, and clients; but the Utah market is limited and progress will require him to move eventually.

It’s always good to see a friend taking a risk to do the things he’s good at and enjoys doing, and to be a part of building that new business.

Scribble on Walls

April 4, 2007 in Business, Freelance, Illustration

Some time ago Jon Bybee, a college classmate of mine, called me up to say that he liked the bugs posted on my site and asked me if I was interested in submitting a few for a business he’s a partner in called Scribble on Walls.

I knew of the website via a blog which I’d read and had jokingly made the comment that the idea of wall art reminded me of scrapbooking paper for your room. Not that that’s a bad thing of course. High-end scrapbooking paper, as Jon said. I’m interested to see that business progress and ought to spend more time looking at what other designers and illustrators have posted.

So here are a few more bugs to pin and label in my portfolio:

Day-jobs, Freelance, Life, and Balance

February 21, 2007 in Business, Freelance, Personal | 1 comment

I recently set up plans for accomplishing more pieces this month, including working up some illustrations to enter for the Communication Arts Illustration Annual. (I’m never sure that there’s much chance of getting into the publication, but considerably more chance if I enter than if i don’t). Of course, as soon as that happens, I’m called back to full-time work at Indigo. Pushing freelance and portfolio projects into the crammed recesses of the evenings when one doesn’t often have the momentum and energy for it.

It’s always good to be appreciated, and to asked back to full-time work. Upon that, there’s a new challenge that comes with it– the request to work on-site for a client, Razor Data. It’s almost like starting a new job. I know these are not my employers, but new environment, new rhythms to establish, people to meet. All this is good and adds flavor to work, but can often be intimidating as I want to be sure I mesh well with the environment and produce what is expected of me.

In the meantime, there’s that balance to be found in returning to full-time work (which admittedly, most the world copes with just fine), and the freelance and portfolio projects, while not losing my mind to stress and finding time to live.