This project started as an ask from a colleague to create a logo for her cycling team. At the time I had no idea I would be designing the logo for a team aiming for the Olympics. Rather then write my own explanation of the logo or work around the Project London identity, I will quote from the march team newsletter.

“Jeremy Harrington was challenge to come up with the right logo that was to represent the soul of 5 young Americans, who have little in the way of resources, but have a lot in the way of sheer grit, determination and the will to represent the United States in 2012 London Olympics.

After a month of searching, the idea came. History. History often repeats itself. Where in American history, did scrappy young Americans, underdogs, stand up and beat the odds? The American Revolution.

How did these young men beat stronger rivals? They believed, they believed in themselves, they united a country and started a revolution. . . the 13 colonies, which was represented as stars in the very first American flag sewn by Betsy Ross, are the same 13 stars represented in the Project London logo.”

Keep your fingers crossed for Project London and don’t forget to give the guys your support at www.projectlondon2012.com

The Scrubie team came to me in need of a logo as well as a modular expandable packaging system, they also wanted something they could update and tweak on there own. Our goal was to use existing clear jars and create a label system that would accentuate the product, without stealing the spotlight from the natural color and texture of the product. The logo was a result of developing a visual that spoke to the flowers or fruit blossoms one would associate with the scent of the product, as well as the shape and flow of the human body with water.

As a way of creating a consistent visual language while allowing for new varieties of the product I provided the Scrubie team with a label and business card template. The templates had key areas where color accents where to be used to highlight the variety of the product, and provide some pop to the label. Areas with variable text where also set up with a set number of characters so variety name, and details, could be called out on a product by product basis. As a designer creating this type of system, where the client is expected to modify designs, can be scary. At some point the project is out of your hands and the umbilical is cut, however I feel that the Scrubie team was provided with a solid logo, and packaging system.

Christopher Murr Photography
Chris came to me needing a revamp to his business card, and was intrigued
by my experiments using ornamental type as illustration. After perusing his
collection of work, I felt this particular photograph lent its self exceedingly
well to the organic ornamental elements, and the resulting design was born.

Get Lost
This piece was the result of a collaboration with the goal of promoting
sustainable tourism in Oregon.  The piece consisted of a series of post-
cards with possible odd destinations throughout the Willamette Valley,
a travel journal, and a folding pocket map. The concept behind the piece
was to encourage people to get lost, and in doing so, find their own
unique destinations.

Josh Fitz Art
Josh Fitz is a local Portland artist and comic book writer. While
collaborating with Josh on his comic layout and business card designs I
suggested the concept of a crayon box and coloring book set to showcase his
work. The initial concept evolved into this design which now doubles
as a business card for Josh.  His art, comics, and coloring book can be seen
at his website.

Periodic Table
This piece was the result of a project in which the goal was to reproduce a fold-
able periodic table that was based on an 8.5 X 11 inch scale, and used only four
pantone colors. Major challenges involved creating a complex grid structure that
suited the folds, as well as effectively displaying a wide array of information in an
effective legible format.  The final piece was 17 X 22 inches and folded to 8 x 5.5
inches.

826 Valencia
These pieces were the result of a project to promote an event for the
826 Valencia writing school, www.826valencia.org while staying within the
visual language of their current identity. My chosen event was Lard Day,
and focused on the identity of the 826 Valencia pirate store. After some
research I created a web page to promote the event and display their
collection of lard stories as well as packaging for their lard giveaways.

Ksibah Dance Company
Karima originally came to me wanting just a business card, and offering the
challenge of designing for both an audience in Chicago and Marrakesh.  After
speaking with her and getting a feel for her business, as well as some of the
traditional aspects that where important in the company’s image, I set to work
researching Moroccan Henna, mosaics, and textiles. This research lead to the
development of a unique visual language and has since resulted in a continuing
collaboration, and an entire identity system.

BurningSquare.com Matches
Sometimes the best way to get noticed is to give something away. Made as
a promotional piece to help advertise my web site; these matchbooks soon
became a great alternative to my business card, or as a handy leave behind
during an interview. So why burning square? What does the name mean?
What does it say about me? Guess you will have to meet me in person
to find out right?

Moop Clothing
Oakes Came to me wanting a business card that reflected the whimsical nature of his
designs, as well as playing to the aesthetic represented in his clothing.  The result was
a visual language resulting from the textural aspects of magazines, fabric and a thimble.
As well as utilizing bright colors found in some of Oakes’s designs. Taking this further,
I added the sewing kit concept to the design of the card.

Revulsion
1.  A sudden strong change or reaction in feeling, especially a feeling of violent
disgust or loathing.
2.  A withdrawing or turning away from something.
This poster was an exercise in expressive typography inspired by major changes
in my personal life.

Auburn College
This Identity was based on Bates College in Maine. The goal was to create
a comprehensive identity system for the college to be presented in a standards
manual. The system included both the college and the athletic department
as separate and yet connected entities.

Cast Awry
This fully playable board game was the result of collaboration with four other
designers. The goal of which was to produce a playable educational board game.
We decided on the goal of teaching cooperation, and came up with the
concept of trying to escape a deserted island as the basis for our game.

BODO BEER
Leaky Tranny Lager
Rusty Piston Red
40 Wt. Stout

The concept behind this logo and packaging system was to design a beer brand
that catered to automotive gear heads. The cans themselves where chosen to
give a retro-industrial feel as well as to resemble engine additives. The visual
language of factory service manuals was incorporated to further this look and
feel.

WPESP template
Cforms II

Place these in the appropriate plug in or template folders for your word press install.

Activate Themes and plug ins:

See documentation on individual plug ins. The only thing tricky here is you need to go into the styling section under Cforms and turn off the CSS styling or things will look weird.

Create Pages:

About
Contact

Create Categories:

Work
Featured (which must be subcategory of work)

Change your settings for permalinks:

Under your settings for permalinks you will see an option for creating a custom structure. You need to check that box and  add/%category%/%postname% to the end of the URL for your webpage for example mine looks like  http://www.burningsquare.com/%category%/%postname% This creates a .htaccess file needed for the about and contact pages to work.

Edit some .php:

In WPESP theme

header.php

I start with the header. Find the navigation area and copy the about link and paste it below the origional. Now with this pasted copy we need to change a few things. Anything that says “About” needs changed to “Blog” in the copy.

footer.php

Also looking for the navigation adding blog and changing to direct links it shouldnt be too hard to figure out after doing the header.

index.php

Find the following

elseif( in_category(3) ) :
// Post in Category Work (in our case ID 3) *View Case Study* | http://codex.wordpress.org/Conditional_Tags#A_Category_Page & http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/in_category#Use_OUTSIDE_The_Loop

change the 3 to what ever category your work category ID is. Once again can be found by going into editing the catagory. You just need the number for this one not the whole page link.

portfolio_custom-write-panel.php

Find the following

if ($post->ID == 2 or $post->ID == 3) { // If is About (in our case id=5) or Contact (in our case id=89) page
$meta_box_value = get_post_meta($post->ID, $meta_box['name'].’_value’, true);

Here we change two number to what ever you page IDs are for About and Contact. You should have used them above in the navigation.

For the Blog we need to install wordpress again in a new folder called blog.

I give credit to this to sully design and directions are here.  http://www.sullyde.co.uk/blog/?p=62

There are other ways you can accomplish including a blog but after much consideration I considered this one to be best.

My first attempt used the blog in blog plug-in but I did not like the results I was getting. With more work it could be made to work but you have to work around some of its follies. I was able to hack apart the WPESP code to let me have a blog catagory that would display a blog page but ended up with a URL that looked like http://domainname/wordpress/http:/domainname/wordpress/catagory    Catch that odd http:/ in that URL yeah still clueless why its there but link wont work without it. I found the link by using the wordpress link to category function and then pulled the direct URL. I also had to begin coding a new sidebar and getting it to float correctly and not disrupt other WPESP functions. In the end I didn’t want to try playing with mod_rewrite to get the URL fished out. I have the server space and it also allows the blog and portfolio to be separate so if I should do something wrong with either the other is still fine.

After all this you should be up running and ready to go about skining or further tweaking to your hearts content.

Final note, Image sizes:
For thumbnails of work :  276 x 115
For featured works:   359 x 269
For cas studies: 626 x 468    but 626 by any height should work.