London I Cars is a taxi firm that wanted to freshen up its image and move towards looking more professional while giving the (accurate) impression that their service is both high quality and affordable. We set to work creating a simple iconic logo that combines the company initials into a form that hints at a passenger sitting in a comfortable seat:
We went on to create various marketing materials, and we should be taking on a re-design and re-build of their current website sometime in the near future.
We are very excited to announce our biggest ongoing project yet: a multilingual (English & Arabic) magazine available in print and online called Education Gateway. We have worked closely with Prime Education Consultancy to create a brand, a magazine and a website with the purpose of helping Libyan students and young professionals further their education and professional careers.
This is one of our most unusual briefs to date, partly due to the challenges of creating a bilingual magazine featuring English and Arabic content side-by-side – it involved a lot of research and a definite step outside of the comfort zone – however, with four issues now under our belts we feel confident dealing with Arabic, and well equipped to work on multilingual projects in future. In the initial stages of research many questions came up, for example:
How do you present English and Arabic side by side in a magazine?
How should English and Arabic content be organised on a website in an easily navigable and manageable way?
How do you manage and deliver communications with a multilingual email subscriber list?
Through research, development and trial and improvement, we overcame all of these challenges, and are proud to say that the first issue of the magazine was very well received, with an estimated readership of around 6,000 and more online, and those figures look to be increasing in the more recent issues.
The bilingual website has now been officially launched, and we are in the process of developing and optimising it further.
Issue 1 of the magazine is now available on Issuu, Newsstand, in PDF form and in print.
Please take a look, and feel free to comment both here and on the Education Gateway website!
I have recently been carrying out Adobe Illustrator workshops for a Theatre company, HunkyPunk. During of one of these workshops, I drew a few shapes to demonstrate the process of creating a custom brush, amongst other things. After we had finished, I was about to close the file without saving when I was grabbed by the urge to turn these vectors into something rather than waste them – an urge I think any creative person feels when they see something with the potential to become beautiful. In this case I decided I could spare a couple of hours of my Sunday evening to play with the artwork and see what I could come up with. Creating this vector artwork made me think about ways I could get more creative with my work, and inject a bit more colour and creative flair wherever possible and appropriate. I really enjoyed the process – it reminded me how much I love to illustrate, and how I used to find satisfaction in the process of taking a scribble or a written note and turn it into a doodle.
As a freelancer, you get into a routine that works for you and it’s easy to forget about skills you have that might not seem relevant to the day-to-day, but taking time to express yourself creatively in ways that may not be directly conducive to your business goals can really fuel your enthusiasm for your work and make you take a fresh look at your projects. I feel more motivated than ever to ensure my clients’ websites are not only fit for purpose and easy to use, but also look beautiful.
When I sat back and looked at the result of this quick design, I was reminded of a quote by Maya Angelou:
“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”
I think there is a lot of truth in this statement. Looking at what I created in just a couple of hours filled me with enthusiasm to illustrate more, to draw more, to doodle more, to generally spend more time creating. In fact I pitched for a layout project today that involves a large element of illustration.
I would like to mention that this illustration is strongly influenced by the supremely talented illustrator, Jonny Wan, who I first heard about in Sheffield’s most excellent Now Then magazine.
When I’m not busy designing things or making music I am partial to a spot of climbing. It’s always a real pleasure when I’m asked to design something that relates to a passion, so when the Mountaineering Club of Bury asked me if I’d design their new tees I didn’t hesitate for one moment.
This was a really fun tee design, and probably my best yet. The 3D extruded lettering on the front is incorporated into a simple illustration of some of the activities you can get involved in, and on the back there’s a more straightforward ‘flat’ logo and slogan:
Deli Breaks, a subsidiary of River Village Foods, approached us in September 2012 with an idea for a range of wholesome ready-to-eat microwaveable meals. This was to be our first food packaging… in fact our first product packaging brief, so we were excited to get stuck in. We went on quite a journey, as the exact nature of the product changed, so here is a selection of the steps we took:
Deli Breaks logo development 3
Deli Breaks logo development 1.5-01
Deli Breaks product packaging Lancashire Rose
Deli Breaks product packaging Mezze
You can see the final packaging designs on our portfolio here.
Here’s some samples of an identity we have lovingly crafted for a brand new venture, The Travelling Baker, that Instadesign is proud to be working with. We are also building a lovely website (currently just a holding page).
Whenever we can, we take on pro bono work for charities and nonprofit organisations. Love For Orphans approached us with the idea of creating a postcard that is to be sold in Tanzania with all profits going towards helping orphans.
In April 2012, Radio 1 DJ Charlie Sloth announced he needed a logo designing. I had a couple of hours spare one afternoon so I took up the challenge and created this design which I sent through. Charlie is a busy man though and it looks like he still doesn’t have a logo. Help us catch his attention by re-tweeting us!
Caroline Purvey of Living Change UK commissioned us to tie together her three business ventures under one umbrella brand, Living Change UK. This involved taking two existing logos and reinventing them, while also coming up with a third minimal logo representing the idea of turning over a new leaf.
Living Change UK flyer for Eclipse Yoga
Living Change UK flyer for Indian Head Massage UK
Living Change UK flyer for Caroline Purvey Coaching For Change
In the Living Change logo we feel we have achieved this effectively and with a degree of elegance, and Caroline was extremely impressed, as you can see from the testimonial she wrote about us:
I highly recommend Instadesign for a complete marketing & design solution. My customers are very impressed with my branding and marketing materials.
Our client wanted a quirky logo that was reminiscent of Dr. Seuss’ Cat in the Hat, so we tried to do just that, and guess what? It worked. Here’s the original logo for Cirque Du Manc that we designed:
Cirque Du Manc Logo
I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.
– Dr. Seuss
