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Design for Extraordinary Results

I'm a graphic designer living and working in beautiful Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I create well-crafted websites, do brand development and logo work, design printed publications and brochures, and much more. My services »

I work for businesses, entrepreneurs, and not-for-profit organizations in southeastern and central PA – and all around the world – thanks to the marvels of modern technology. Check out my work and contact me if you like what you see. Maybe we could work together and create something extraordinary for you.

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Recent Work // Blog

Looking back at an older project – banner design

I’ve got a lot of exciting projects in the works for 2012. However, I’d also like to use this blog to highlight some past projects I’ve done over the years.

Back in 2004, Lancaster Theological Seminary asked me to design a banner for their graduating class at the time. The theme was “Called to Serve.” After exploring some different ideas, I settled on this concept . . .

Example of one of the traced hands

Each graduating class member did a tracing of their hand on a white sheet of paper. We scanned the papers and then I did a vector art tracing of the hands to use as part of the final artwork that I created in Adobe Illustrator. The hands appear to be launching out into the world.

The banners are used outside the LTS main building at various times. It was a fun project, and I really liked the participatory aspect of how each graduate had a “hand” in the final artwork.

Old hand-painted signs around town

In a recent post about my new logo, I mentioned that I’ve been influenced by the typography I see on the old buildings around town. There are some amazing signs that have been hand-painted directly on the brick of various warehouses and businesses. Some of these signs are old and fading and will eventually disappear. Fortunately, some of these signs have been restored as a way of preserving the unique character of the building – even if the original business is no longer in existence.

Here are some samples of these signs. I will add to this gallery as I come across more.

iPhone photography

iPhone photography

My iPhone has been opening up a whole new world of photography for me recently – probably because it is so convenient to snap photos, and I always have it with me. Here is a composite panoramic photo I took in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania recently. I took several photos of this amazing sky and pieced them roughly in PhotoShop just to play around and see how it might turn out.

reflectionHere are a couple photos taken in Virginia when visiting relatives during Thanksgiving. Both of these were edited on my iPhone using some photography apps.

waterfall photo

Is your website mobile friendly?

Gone are the days when you can expect to have your website viewed only on computer monitors. People are connected to the internet through a wide range of devices now in addition to desktop and laptop computers. How does your website look on:

  • smartphones like the iPhone or Android phone?
  • tablets like iPad?
  • TVs?

If you don’t like the way your website looks on these different devices, contact me and we can talk about how we might adapt your site to be more scalable / responsive in nature. It is usually advantageous to have a website that can adapt to different screen sizes rather than one site for desktop computers and a separate site for mobile users.

Making a site “responsive” in nature is done by employing some HTML and CSS magic, creating . . .Responsive Web Design

  1. Flexible, page layout grids/structures
  2. Flexible, scalable images and media
  3. CSS3 media queries to allow for custom styling at different screen widths
  4. And last but not least, excellent craftsmanship and attention to detail when building the site

Kudos to Ethan Marcotte and his recently published book, Responsive Web Design. I found it very helpful and has been influential in my recent approach to designing/building websites.

My new logo

A designer’s biggest challenge is often developing their own logo/brand. Doing this work for a client seems so much more clear-cut. After working on my logo on-again-off-again for a number of weeks, I arrived at a solution that I felt represented me well.

New logo

Logo/tagline combination

The design is my reaction against slick “Web 2.0″ style logos (i.e. the new Xerox logo, among others). This design harkens back to Lancaster City’s industrial past and the typographic styles from that era – some of which can be seen on the historic warehouses and business buildings around town. See some examples. »

Logo without tagline

I also decided to incorporate a descriptive tagline “Web. Print. Visual identity.” as part of the logo but it can also be shown without the tagline, depending on the context.

Logo variations

Variations of the logo

A good logo should be adaptable so that it can work well in color, grayscale, black and white, and white against a dark background as shown above. This is one of the things I always try to ensure whenever I am designing a logo for my clients.