New Work : Alliance Business Insurance

Alliance Business InsuranceohTwentyone was recently asked to develop a logo and business card for a new company called Alliance Business Insurance. Although the name of the company is a reference to an area of the DFW Metroplex called "The Alliance Corridor" we decided that a more apt meaning of Alliance for an insurance broker would be the relationship between them and their clients, or the assemblage of various parts to form a cohesive unit.

New Work : ACEP Prospect Kit

ACEP (The American College of Emergency Physicians) wanted to use something different to send to prospective new memebers this year; something that would get some attention through the mail, and something that would focus on their most important asset: their members. Images should be in the portfolio soon,
but in the meantime you'll have to settle for a little snippet of how the client feels about it.

"We LOVE it! Everyone is excited and this is so totally member-centric from our other pieces. Remember the brown folder? It looks fantastic!"

New Work : ACEP Dividends Logo

ACEP Dividends LogoACEP asked me to design a logo for their member benefits program, titled "ACEP Dividends." ACEP provides four fundamental types of benefits to their members, which was the inspiration behind their final logo. The four colored squares represent Education, Career, Advocacy and Financial benefits, and form a plus sign. The logo also references their main organizational logo, which is comprised of a grid of squares.

Client Testimonial

"For the record, the ER/DR shirt is a great big giant hit! Everyone was clamoring for the shirt at [the convention]. We’re thinking about using it for an incentive for our graduating residents. Now that it’s been such a huge success, with even our board members wanting to get their hands on one, I’m more than pleased that we stuck to our guns for this excellent design. Thank you for all your hard work and dedication."

-Kris Williams; ACEP

New Work : Pedroza Capital Web Site

Pedroza Capital Group WebsitePedroza Capital Group's Site is the first site I've produced in cooperation with FactorHelp.com. It's also the first business site I've completely produced on the KeepOpen.com Zope/Silva content management system, and I'm pretty excited to have it out there in "the wild." It's been a learning process, developing for the CMS, and developing my first site for the Factoring Industry. Thankfully, Dave (the Pedroza in Pedroza Capital) has been very patient and very appreciative of the time and effort put into the project.

To which I say, no, thank YOU Mr. Pedroza. ;-)

New Work : Pedroza Capital Logo

Pedroza Capital LogoPedroza Capital Group is a financial services firm that helps small businesses finance growth. Although it's a new company I wanted to give it a sense of history and substance. I also wanted give the company a sense of family history and elevate the logo (and the company's marketing in general) from simply a company that a guy named after himself to a company that he is proud to put his family's name on: a company that can become his legacy.

So, with that in mind, one of the avenues that I explored while developing the logo was the idea of a signature. However, I didn't want to use a normal script text to symbolize a signature, but instead to use a typeface that would give that idea some weight.

New Work : PharmaStrategies Web Site

PharmaStrategies WebsiteWork is has been continuing on the PharmaStrategies web site, and today the actual coding and graphics production work will begin, because they client has accepted this design.

The interesting part of this design that I'd like to see implemented more often is that the navigation is on the right of the page. It's never made much sense to me to put the content after the navigation, because what we really want is that the user would read and comprehend the content on the site, but we always put the navigation in the primary interactive position. Recent studies have actually showed that putting the navigation for a site on the right increases reading and comprehension of the material on a site, so if you have a site that you want people to read, by all means, move your content left.

News : The Digg Effect

KeepOpen.com LogoLast week ohTwentyone.com saw a significant uptick in traffic to our server. After a little investigation, I've found out why: Digg.

More specifically, the logo I designed for KeepOpen.com was included in an article about "Great" logo design on another designer's 'blog. I have no idea how often that happens, because there are approx. 4 million design blogs out there so none of them generate a tremendous amount of traffic, but this one made it to the first page of Digg, the social bookmarking site. Unfortunately, that designer's hosting account got "restricted" as a result of all the traffic, so I don't think I really saw the full effect.

The comments are, of course, mostly positive. Everything has "haters," so I try to ignore them...but there were some really flattering comments as well. Like this:

"The KeepOpen.com logo is great, definitely one of those ‘wish I’d done that’ designs."

New Work : Live for the Cure

Live for the Cure WebsiteEvery once in a while I get to help a new charity or non-profit launch themselves out into the world. It's always a proud time for me. I know it's a little silly to still feel like a proud papa every time I get to help someone introduce their new organization/web site/product to the world, but I can't help it.

I designed and developed their web site, designed their logo, and they have a brochure on the way as well. Visit Live for the Cure.

News : LogoPond.com Top 20

Tidy Tom's LogoWhen I design a new logo I put it up on a design community site called LogoPond. People can leave comments and discuss logo design, and they vote on their favorites. Well, I was pleased to recently find out that not one, but TWO of my recent logos are currently in the Top 20. There are roughly 7,500 logos on the site as of this writing, so having one in the top 20 is really great. Two is even better. It's unbelievable, actually.

New Work : KeepOpen.com Logo

Although all of our clients are special and wonderful, this one is extra-special…because it's me. KeepOpen.com is my new company that I have started with my long-time friend, Dãv Clark.

KeepOpen.com is a hosted Content Management System solution that we're sepcifically marketing toward artists, micro-businesses, and non-profits. So, if you know an artist, a sole-proprietor (or other micro-business) or small non-profit, send them on over. We can design and build a completely customized web site, host it, and build them the pro-level tools that they need to use the web to it fullest extent.