Not only did the owner of Diamond Lifestyles want me to design her an identity she also wanted a business card that represented her ideals. The brief was to create a business card that clearly represented the health industry but also had a sleek, modern and professional look. In this post I show some of the business card designs I developed before arriving at the final one.

Initial Logo Design

The benefit of being hired to design the logo and business card is that I can play with the two side by side to see how it may work on a printed piece of material. When I was first designing the logo I wanted to see how it may look on a business card. I tried the logo on a pure black and white background with inverted colours. I wanted to keep the design minimal as it would look more clinical and relating to the precision that health products and services usually provide.

Aloe Vera Focuses your attention

This was a design that the client really liked. She liked the Aloe Vera Leaves on the card but she wasn’t quite sure black was the right colour for her company, it was something I wanted to keep in mind as I was designing the logo.

Full Colour relates to Aloe Vera

When I designed the logo in a minimalist way I was a little worried that there was little relation to Aloe Vera and rather about the diamond relation. To combat this I considered how the business card and future collateral could show the Aloe Leaf & plants and possibly using the colour of the plant in its brand guidelines. It wasn’t the client’s favourite choice, she definitely wanted something minimal and she preferred the white rather than the black so I created a few more options.

 Portrait Minimal Business Card

As the client wanted a minimalist approach I took the design right back to as much of a simple design as possible. By keeping the card to a minimum it gave it the clinical look that was desired but I wanted to give several different options so tried a few more different layouts and styles.

 Final Design

Considering that my client liked the Aloe Vera Leaves on the card design this was inco-operated into the final design. It added visual interest and communicated exactly what the product was that the company sells. The logo in the 3d Chrome/Silver effect worked well with the white background and vibrant green of the Aloe Leaves. The font choice was classic and re-enforced that of a professional and competent health professional. See the final design below…

By this stage of blogging I imagine if you are reading this you have had a good go at blogging your own thoughts, ideas and content, you find it a great way of relaxing in a productive way, advancing your own skills whilst being able to help others. You may have even noticed traffic to your website increase ten fold as an added bonus to this new hobby you have found. It is a great start to gain traffic and awareness of what you do but there is another way to increase your traffic levels one step further and that is through guest blogging.

What is Guest blogging

Guest blogging is where someone who doesn’t own the website, blog or social media account create a blog post that the editor of the website is happy to share with its audience.

Usually a blog post by a guest will be related to theme of the website so that the audience will be interested in what is being written otherwise a blog post about knitting won’t go down too well on a blog about gardening ( unless the target market are a group of pensioners maybe).

Why website owners love guest blogs?

Its not secret, the best way to generate traffic to your website is to create content and a lot of it! By guest blogging for another person or business it gives them the ability to generate more content. Great for website owners as it has the potential to generate new leads and potential to also gain more revenue.

Whats in it for me?

So far it sounds like the website owner is the big fat banker and we are the lowly peasent but it isn’t so! By guest blogging on another website that is relevant to your industry you are promoting your work to an audience who may not have seen what you do before thus arriving at your website through someone elses, maybe even a competing business. If the reader is impressed enough ( or if you ask nicely ) the new reader may also become a social media fan of yours and follow you on one of the many social media platforms.

Still not sure if guest blogging is for you?

Well here are seven points why guest blogging will help you and your own website improve conversions.

1. SE0
2. More Brand Awareness
3. Showing yourself as an expert in the industry
4. Increase your reputation and be respected
5. The website owner respects your opinion
6. Increase your website traffic
7. Increase your fan base on your website & social media

Interested in guest blogging on JAWilsonDesign.com?

If you are interested in guest blogging on my website please contact me with content at [email protected] or you can sign up to myblogguest.com locate me and send me a blog post through the website or alternatively if you would like me to guest blog on your website or blog please feel free to contact me with subjects or topics you think are appropriate. Have a great time blogging guys!

Finding Blog topic inspiration can be tricky. Sometimes you may have noticed my blog posts start drying up…I go three to five days without posting anything new and it sometimes is due to a lack of creative writing inspiration but how do we get back into the flow of things when this happens? How do we get our creative cogs turning again? In this post I give five suggestions on how you can get inspiration and start writing regularly and freely.

Trending topics

Sometimes what others are saying about a particular topic in your industry can be useful to spark your creativity. I have written about how to find out what is trending on the major social media platforms before here but there are other ways too!

Twitter trends

For instance on Twitter you can #Discover things you are interested in. Okay so, for an example, I would probably search for something like #art or #graphics or #brand. This will bring back hashtags with those phrases on and give you inspiration to see what others are talking about in your particualr field of interest.

Instagram trends

Or on Instagram you can search for tags in your field of interest. It is a lot similar to the Twitter discover tool but obviously these are images relating to the hash tag. This isn’t a bad thing, why not take inspiration from an image and write about it or maybe do a review of another artist or someone else’s photography. Maybe an image will spark a piece of creativity within your own soul.

Tumblr trends

Tumblr offers the same ability to search for hash tags so there are oodles of ways for your to find some inspiration from others.

Questions, questions, questions

Have people asked you questions about your work or industry lately? This is a great area of inspiration, every time someone asks you a question don’t just answer it but write it down too! You would be surprised just how many people in the world probably have the same question.

Get your work colleagues to help

Are you a business man or woman reading this blog? How many employees do you have? For each colleague you could have a potential new blog post in each and every person! So if you have 40 employees and each creates just one post a week that is 40 pieces of new content A WEEK!! A huge advantage over a lot of your competition.

If your creativity is a bit low as sometimes happens call a friend and ask them for a little hand, we are all creative and all have things to say about the industry we work in.

Old Works

Another option is to consider old works such as case studies ( if you provide a service ) or artworks you have created ( like myself ) and explain the concepts you had behind them. You can even discuss what you learnt from the experience too, that might help you to readdress where your strengths and weaknesses are which is always a great thing to do.

Guest Blogging

If you are totally dry and still struggling to blog about something interesting then you could open up your blog to others in your industry. This will help to keep your readers interested in coming to your website but also allow others to gain promotion from your website. You may think this is crazy to allow people to post on your blog but the truth is that the internet has made it easy for people to shop around a lot easier for what their specific needs are so don’t get defensive at the thought of advertising or helping a fellow person in your industry, actually helping others is great for business!

By helping promote another you are building a relationship with the person who has blogged on your website which may result in internet karma and potential leads when that person can’t complete a job for whatever reason.

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Once you have some inspiration spend just ten to twenty minutes of your time writing down around 10 to 20 topics you can write about in the near future then, when it comes to writing you can choose from one of your titles you came up with at the start of the week.

Have you got any more ideas how you find inspiration? Please feel free to leave a comment in the box below.

Logo Design

I was approached by a health business expert who is in the process of starting up a business in association with Forever Living Aloe Vera Products to design a logo and business card. In this post I show how the logo developed and evolved over the two week process.

Starting point

To start I needed a basic understanding of the company’s service and products. I was informed that Diamond Lifestyles will be promoting a lifestyle selling Forever Living products and building a team of other sales members to keep the sales flowing, increasing your turn over and reaching the “Diamond Lifestyle”.

My first idea was to combine the Aloe Vera plant with a diamond as can be seen in this picture below. This was a very basic idea and only a very quick mock up to see what it may look like combining the two elements but I beleived it to be “too literal” and no at all professional or communicating the right message so… I went back to the drawing board!

Classical and elegant typography

My first thought was to be very visual but then I considered how other health companies represent themselves to the market and after studying some of the more successful brands a classic and elegant style is used by most brands. I decided that I would try combing the D and L to create an abstract use of the two letters and ensuring the typography was communicating the right message.

I decided this  was the right way to approach the logo but decided it needed some graphic within the lettering. As the company was branded Dimaond Lifestyles I wanted to include the diamond somewhere on the logo. Above you can see the first logo is inside the lettering on the tip of the L but something just wasn’t right so I got a pen and paper out and did a few sketches.

Realising that the key aspect of the company is to help people reach the pinicle point of a “Diamond Lifestyle” I took the back of the D & turned it into a pedestal ( as can be seen above ). This felt right and communicated the message in a more subtle way than the first idea.

Developing the logo idea further

The logo was starting to get somewhere! The pedestal idea was really liked by the business owner and thus some more development ensued. I realised that the new logo had no relevance or indication that Aloe Vera was involved in the company which I considered to be a slight problem.

Considering the plant itself, an aloe vera leaf has what look like spikes ever so often down the edges. Taking this element of Aloe Vera I added it to the D but after self analysis I concluded it was starting to look less clinical and elegant and starting to look a bit more cartoon like which I definitely didn’t want. The message I was sending out to anyone viewing the logo was going in the wrong direction so I took a step back and added The name of the company below the DL positioned like a set of stairs.

Big is best?

After showing the logo to my client we discussed how we both felt the diamond was being lost a little so I made the diamond a lot bigger and more prominent in the logo design than it used to be. Below are a few different variations of the logo with a large diamond.

Add some colour to your life

Now we had enlarged the diamond colour was the next thing to be considered. My client said “I don’t think black is the right colour for an Aloe Vera company” and maybe she was right.

The black is the colour I usually create any logo in so that colour doesn’t influence design but black can also be used in logo design to represent a clinical and crisp feeling which is a characteristic that I felt was important in designing for a health company.

Listening to my clients wishes I took the favoured logo design and then tried varying colours to see what it may look like.

Realising that flat design is in vogue at the moment I tried to steer clear of gradients…now that the logo had colour I didn’t feel it was adding anything of particular value and I still felt as though the black was best closely followed by the white, my client agreeing but also showed interest in the green ( for the literal sense of aloe vera).

Too cartoon like again

Again I felt adding colour to the logo in this flat fashion gave the impression of a cartoon like and even worse, cheap impression to the company which I wanted to avoid thus I spoke to my client and suggested we strip back the colour again and consider “the colour of a diamond”.

A diamond doesn’t have any colour, it can trap light and thus become iridescent of every colour of the rainbow but it is in my opinion a diamond shares similar qualities to that of ice…all these thoughts of multiple colours led me naturally onto considering a 3d gradient approach.

Diamonds are forever

As can be seen in this logo the diamond has been reduced right down but an edgey diamond like gradient has been applied to the logo. Showing this to the client she was extremely happy with how it looked, she preferred a 3d look rather than the flat logo, it was really starting to go in the right direction.

Final Logo

The final logo was slightly metallic/silver. It kept the initial idea of a clinical and sleek look to represent the health industry whilst keeping colour to a minimal to avoid any message linking to colour. Although there is no representation of Aloe Vera my client and I concluded that the key aspect of the company is the “Diamond” status for new members of the sales team.

We discussed that the Aloe Vera could be on the business card thus communicating the link to Forever Living. To learn more about Diamond Lifestyles please click here.

In my next post I will show and discuss the business card I developed in combination with the logo.

Schedule tweets you say? But how?

Juggling your time between social media accounts and the important part, your paid work, can be difficult at times. You want to be seen as active on Twitter and attempt to add something of value but you also want to ensure you complete your work to as high a standard as possible so tweeting ever so often isn’t really productive to your job’s productivity. Do not fear, there is a solution! In this post I discuss how you can schedule tweets to appear at different times of day throughout your working week allowing you to get on with other elements of your job.

Managing your Tweets

Social media managing program “HootSuite” is a great tool to see all your social media identities all in one place. One of my favourite features about HootSuite is the ability to schedule social media activity down to the exact day and time it will be posted, how good is that!?

1. Set up an account with HootSuite

Setting up an account with Hootsuite is simple it even gives you the option of signing in with one of your many social media accounts once you have registered them. As you register to use Hootsuite you will arrive at your dashboard and a button will say “Add a Social Network”, click it.

As we are looking at Twitter then simply follow the instructions to add your Twitter account as your first social media to manage via Hootsuite, you can add all the others later.

2. Flying in to publish and schedule tweets

Once your log in to HootSuite there is a dashboard to the right. To proceed click the paper aeroplane symbol (publisher ) and you will arrive at the screen to schedule tweets that can be seen above.

In order to begin scheduling Twitter posts you type your tweet where it says “compose message…”.

Once you have composed the message you want to communicate, to the right of your newly created message is another box where you select the social media platform you want to share the message on.

As mentioned earlier Hootsuite isn’t just for managing Twitter and scheduling tweets, you can manage every social media program you use via Hootsuite so proper use of the program can really help you to be more productive with your time whilst enhancing your social media experience for you and others.

What time is it!? Schedule tweets tiiiimmme!!

Once you have completed your tweet and added a link to the post then you simply click the calendar icon ( shown in blue on the above image ) and a calendar will pop up with the date and time options. This is where you plan your social media activity.

There are optimum times of day that are best for posting on different social media  see this infographic on my Pinterest account for more information so you can get the most of scheduling your posts for certain times.

Once you have completed the time setting press “send now” and it will appear in your schedule list.

Repeat the process until you have a weeks worth of scheduled tweets at varying times, sit back and watch the tweets roll out allowing you to focus on the other parts of your job.

Wait! Don’t forget to interact with your Twitter community

Although its great being able to pre-plan your tweets don’t forget that Twitter is a “social” media platform so try and interact with people’s tweets and when you receive communication on your own tweets, respond back for Pete’s sake!

The more you personalise people’s experiences with your social media accounts the more you will gain in online respect as a social media influencer.Like in the real world talking and giving importance to others views and opinions helps to build relationships, no one likes to be just spoken to and not heard…

Hootsuite is a great social media management program and to be able to schedule tweets is just one of the many great features that it has to offer. I highly recommend you take a little adventure through this management program and see just what can be done with it.

If you have any feedback or have a question please don’t hesitate to contact  me below or hey, why no on my twitter account?

So you have your Twitter account and you have a few thousand Twitter followers, great stuff! After a small amount of time, you notice a feature on your twitter account to the top left called lists. “What the heck is this for, Twitter lists!?” you think, why on earth would anyone need a list feature? Well in this post I hope to help decipher exactly why Twitter lists are useful and how to use them effectively to improve your social media experience.

What is a Twitter List?

As your twitter followers increase and you start following lots of relevant Twitter users, being able to keep up to date with all your favourite Tweeps and finding useful tweets can become difficult, if not impossible. One feature of lists is to help you cut through the noise to find the diamonds amongst the coal!

Twitter Lists help you organise tweets you are interested in

A list helps you organise your favourite Twitter users into a type of “Twitter Groups”. So for instance, if you look at my Twitter Lists on my personal account you will notice at the time of writing this blog post I have around ten lists, three of which can be seen below.

Being able to add your favourite Twitter users to groups makes it easy for you to organise the most influential Twitter users you follow into categories like “Web Design“, “Graphic Design” Typography” etc and is useful for when you are having a day where a specific interest is grabbing you. I guess you could compare twitter lists to a telephone directory, it makes it much easier to find people and information you are looking for.

So why should you bother creating Twitter Lists?

There are several reasons you may want to create Twitter lists, one I have already discussed to keep track of your favourite Tweeters but there are more.

Another reason is to build relationships with those who really matter to you in your personal and professional life.

Build Relationships using Twitter Lists

By adding someone to one of your lists that Twitter user is notified and it is almost like giving that person a little high five to say “Yo! My hommie, your tweets rock my world!” and helps to build a mutual respect between the two of you, after all, you think that Twitter owner can add a lot of value to your digital life.

Recommend other Twitter Followers

When you create a new Twitter list you have an option to make it private or public. If you think that some of the people you have in your lists should remain private ( i.e. family members, celebrities you like or a bit of a detective keeping track of your competitors tweets) then do consider making a list private otherwise keep it public.

This helps the Twitter account user benefit from a little bit of publicity should your followers check out the twitter list they are on.

Make a Twitter Search for Twitter users easier by sharing lists

You don’t have to keep your lists stored away in the Twitter closet…get it out!

Simply navigate to the list you would like to share, copy the  url and post it into your Twitter Feed. Hey presto! Twitter list shared!

Do you have to be following the user you include in a Twitter List?

This is a question I asked myself when I started creating lists and the good news is, you don’t have to be following them!

This is particularly good news if you are reaching your “2000” limit and unable to follow any more users ( until you have a 10% followers to following ratio ) but don’t want to loose some really influential and educational tweets.

To gain the most benefit from this part of the twitter list feature  then you need to use twitter tools like justunfollow.com.

One of the features that Justunfollow has is that it allows you to find who is following, not following and unfollowing your Twitter account cutting out the mystery of who to follow and unfollow.

There are more features to this Twitter tool but I recommend visiting the site for more information.

Ok, so I kind of understand Twitter lists now but how do I create one?

Rather than rewrite the wheel, so to speak, I have provided a link to Twitter’s very own guide in how to do this here.

Should you have any questions about twitter lists or have some more information you would like to share navigate to the bottom of the page and please leave a comment.

P.S. Please add me to some lists too and I may just return the favour! Cheers my dears! 😀

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Getting the right typography for your graphic design work is really important, the standard fonts that come with a computer isn’t great for creatives and so sites where you can download free fonts and typography ( if you don’t or can’t design your own ) is really important. In this post I give you 10 links to free fonts websites. I recommend you bookmark the page so you always have this resource available to you.

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1. Dafont.com

dafont.com is a great little website that regularly updates with free fonts that can be used in many creative projects. Before you go ahead with downloading a font make sure you have read the license in case you are not allowed to use the font in commercial work or you could land yourself in trouble from the creator.

2. Typekit.com

Typekit is a website from Adobe that provides fonts for use on websites. It is free, technically, for only one website using 2 of the fonts otherwise it costs some cash but it s a good place to get some really well designed typefaces for your web designs.

3. 1001freefonts.com

This site probably started with 1001 free fonts when it was launched because I believe it has more than 1001 fonts nowadays! Check it out, you are spoilt for choice, be warned though, some links ( particularly on the menu bar ) open new links to fonts to purchase! Cheeky sneeky sales technique 😉

4. Font Squirel

Font Squirrel is another great little website that regularly updates with free fonts that can be downloaded for free but again check that the typeface you are downloading has a license for free use before considering using them in commercial works.

5. Urban Fonts

Not only can you find lots of free fonts here but you can ALSO get free dingbats, you know, those typeface that look like little vector images? A very useful font site I think you will find!

6. Font Fabric

Warning! Not all fonts on this website are free fonts. The owner of the site has been a good chap ( or chapess! ) and shown a little red free icon in the corner of the image to not confuse things. That is always useful for the free seeker in us.

7. Fonts2u 

This website has a very similar layout and design to dafont.com so shouldn’t be a problem when you are looking for free fonts that work with your design work. Not only this but there are so many fonts! A great resource of fantastic typography this is.

8. PC Fonts

Are you still reading these descriptions about free fonts? Just visit the sites folks and make sure to use the bookmark feature so whenever you need free fonts you know where to come. 🙂

9.  Fonts for Web

Are you the owner of a wordpress CMS website? You are going to love this site then! Not only are these fonts free but they are also compatible with a plugin made for WordPress sites to make applying the fonts to your pages simple. I haven’t actually tried it out yet but it sounds like a great concept to add that extra bit of personality to your site.

10. a to z Fonts

On this site there is no messing! It clearly stats that you will find 100% free fonts, very useful if you want to make sure you aren’t breaking copyright laws.

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The typography you decide to use in any part of your graphic design work has incredible psychological effects on the viewer. Whatever the message is you are portrating the typography can re-enforce the feeling of the product or service you are trying to advertise so make sure you either a) find a typeface that works well with the message you want to communicate or b) sit down and design your very own font, probably the best way of getting a free font and adds a truly personal touch to your work.

What is your favourite font and what is your least favourite? Please leave a comment in the box below.

Your business isn’t just a grey box, paperwork and turnover, your business is a piece of art and a brand. The brand is the personality that identifies your product, service or company against your market rivals. Get it right and it will attract the consumers you are seeking, get it wrong and it could detract your potential customers away from doing business.

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2012 Olympics Brand Identity

If your brand is designed in such a way that provokes human emotion it can even get excellent media attention

Remember the 2012 Olympics Logo and games mascots? They were controversial and many people verbally communicated just how much they didn’t like it. By being controversial and so different to previous Olympics logos it was give huge media coverage which made the brand awareness and attention to the games itself very high on an unprecedented level.

Ugly is pretty

In my opinion it was an excellent brand design because it got people talking regardless of whether it was liked or disliked by the majority of people. What people experienced was something that was different, unexpected, pushing boundaries and futuristic.

It even grabbed the attention of conceptual extremists with suggestions of aliens making an appearance or there being a major terrorist attack. Bizarrely, this  increased the success of the brand design by spreading the word of the 2012 Olympics in all communities interested in these things and further put the Olympics into people’s minds.

Choosing a colour

The importance of choosing the right colour cannot be undermined. Colour have so many meanings to us on a subconscious and cultural level that different combinations can convey and symbolize a different emotion and concept.

Once you identify the colour combination that you like best and convey the message you need your designer MUST adhere to the EXACT colours so your brand is easily recognisable.

Conceptual symbol

Next to consider is the most familiar object of branding – the logo.

I believe that a good logo design must be able to communicate the product or service being sold in a conceptual but not literal way. Another words if you sell ice creams don’t simply use a clipart of an icecream and forget to edit it, instead consider your target market and what may attract someone to do business with you rather than go to one of your competition. What makes your ice cream business different from the rest? Can it be inco-operated into part of the logo design?

Style your advertising

After the design of the colour combination & logo a good brand designer will know the importance of creating a style guide so it easy to follow for future designs. The style guide is created so that any future branding works (such as advertising) relates and is identifiable as your company.

When designing a new advert this style guide should be consulted; it doesn’t mean it should restrict your creativity but instead keep your company looking professional and re-enforce the brand in peoples minds consistently wherever they see something to do with your business whether it is a compliment slip to a large billboard advertising it should speak you.

The importance of a well designed business identity

A well designed business identity isn’t just important, it is crucial to your business! When you start your company hire a designer you must make sure they are professional and understand how delicate an operation a well designed brand is and takes time to perfect.

The branding designer should be able to design everything that your business identity will appear on from letterheads to websites it should all have a consistent feel but also convey a message, even have a life of its own it has that much personality!! Don’t take your business identity lightly consult a branding designer today, you will find it is one of the best investments you make in the early stages of your business.

Blogging is something I decided to take up on my website only this January and I have found it to have many benefits not only to my website’s traffic but also in many other areas of my professional and personal life. In this post I discuss why you should,without hesitation, take up blogging on your website.

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Search Engines will love you

What search engines love is content and the more you blog the more content you are generating for robots to munch on.

The reason this is so good for your business/profession is that the more topics you write about the more keywords that are generated to get your website found and the only way to generate more business is to gain more brand awareness. For example, right now I have created just over 100 blog posts and gain roughly 2,000 unique visitors per month and it is all thanks to my blog.

Reach a larger audience

By blogging you are diversifying who you get your message out to in two different ways. The first way is that you become an international man ( or woman ) of mystery just like Austin Powers! The audience that visit my blog aren’t only British, actually the majority of my visitors actually come from the USA, people who would have been very unlikely to have ever heard about my work otherwise.

The second way is it attracts both the fellow professional advancing their skills but also those who need an expert to help them complete simple tasks. Imagine, for example, a lawyer comes to my site visiting “Add social media icons to your email signature” but is impressed by the free knowledge and so see’s what other services I offer. Realising he has wanted to rebrand his logo for a while he notices my service and makes some enquiries…and thus a lead is generated.

Encourages Learning

Blogging really encourages you to learn new things. As a regular blogger I want to create content that others are really going to benefit from, increase their own knowledge and also be quite entertaining. I have found the more I blog the easier it becomes to find new topics to write about and more interesting ways to present information.

Shows you are knowledgeable

You may think that giving away your knowledge of how to do things is absolute suicide for your business but you would be wrong. By sharing your knowledge it shows others that you have a good ability in what you have chosen as a profession and it also shows that you have confidence in your ability so aren’t scared about others gaining your knowledge.

Gives you a standing in your industry

When you write about topics that interest you you are also inadvertently becoming a respected professional in your industry. At first, you will only have a few blog posts about your particular topic but if you manage to blog every day for a year that will be 365 blog posts and a lot of shared knowledge, you could become the Gandalf wizard of your trade.

Question yours and others opinions

When you start blogging you will find yourself reading others websites and blogs quite often. What you read you won’t always agree with and it can spark your blogging creativity. For instance I read a blog post about five things to make a perfect logo and one of the points was that a logo must be timeless and I considered this to be rubbish! If you are interested in why I think this you can read the blog post here.

Look at things from different perspectives

If you read the last blog post I just referred to is, I know, opinionated ( but unlike the real world, being opinionated is quite important when blogging ). Even though I have my belief it is important to be able to try and see particular topics from different points of view. Learning to try and see things from more than one perspective makes for great reading and is also a skill that is useful in day to day life as it makes us become more compassionate and able to weigh up the pro’s and con’s of every situation, whether business or friendships.

An asset and a resource

When learning about new things and sharing it via your blog you are also creating a directory of resources that you can use in your future works. For example I created a blog post called 11 Free Texture Websites ( which interestingly was shared quite a lot via tumblr & twitter ), this is a really useful tool for fellow graphic designers and actually, from a selfish stand point, very beneficial to me too!

Keeps a curiosity

Life is about change and everything is constantly changing. By blogging it forces you to stay abreast of what is changing and converse your own views and experiences of what you are learning as time, tech and trends change.

Curiosity is great for creativity and if you think of the most curious people in the world…they tend to be children because they have a keen desire to learn!

Blogging allows you to become that curious child again, we should all be living lives as Peter Pan characters!

It can be a lot of fun

Above all blogging can be ( and is ) fun!

If you are a creative person then sharing what you know with others can be great entertainment and really good use of your time, so rather than watching some television switch it off, get your laptop out and start typing.

It has more benefit to your professional life than being spoon fed by a television program.

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So why should I blog on my website?

If you aren’t already blogging and you are the owner of a website I hope this blog post has given you an insight into why it is so rewarding and a no brainer to take some time to create at least one or two blog posts a week. I can promise you that you will not regret it.

Do you have any experiences of blogging you would like to share? Please comment in the box below

You may have noticed a gold symbol on my website and social media accounts, this is my logo and the start of my own brand. Designing a brand for yourself as a designer can be more difficult than designing a brand for somebody else as you have to be more self-critical and more analytical without the feedback of anyone but me, myself and I. In this post I discuss my brand name reason and the conceptual theory behind my logo design.

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Choosing the name

When I first considered what to identify myself as I remember reading Duncan Bannatynes autobiography and why he decided to brand his businesses with his own name. He decided to brand his gyms with his name because if anything went wrong it would be on his names reputation, it shows confidence in what he is able to provide and should criticism arise to correct the problem that caused the negative feeling. I  was inspired, I considered it to be a noble and great idea so borrowed the idea.

Inital Name

Considering the concept by Mr Bannatyne , my initials JAW and my profession as a specialist in communication design, I took them both and used my initials in a literal sense of “jaws” that we use to speak and communicate. This was the basis of my idea, to inco-operate a mouth into the design of the logo. My name would be “Jawz of design”…

Taking Shape

I decided to begin playing with shapes, shapes that could convey a simple modern idea but with traditional influence. I worked with several shapes but decided upon a square, a shape that is very symbolic in many countries with similar symbology of perfection.

A square can also represent accuracy, integrity and righteousness. After I delved deeper into symbolic meanings it believed that the four sides of the square represents aspects of human inspiration. Angelic, diabolic, human & divine. It has been believed these four elements underscore the potential duality in everything and encourages balance.

All of these elements combined invite us to do precisely what the square implies :

Implement a plan

Build on that plan

Manifest ideas into our reality

The square is a balanced plan that allows creativity to flow without risk or error thus the square was chosen

Drawing on the concept

Having established I wanted a mouth and to use the square I came up with some very basic sketches ( see below ).

I then chose my favourite few and developed them further. No 14, 15 & 16 where my favourites as they were less literal and quite tribal looking. I also liked the idea of the long hair/antenna like line, representing the flow of creativity coming from the square.

Considering whether the logo should be flat or a cube and whether to include teeth or not was also something I considered. After careful consideration I decided to leave the teeth out as it would have looked less professional.

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Colour Choice

Colours have psychological meaning and depending on the part of the world you are from can have greatly different values so I did some research. I wanted my logo colour to appeal to the vast majority of the world not just my country and I discovered that the colour gold had the most positive impression with the most of the world.

The colour gold is the colour of success, achievement and triumph no matter where in the world you come from. It can be associated with abundance and prosperity, luxury and quality, prestige and sophistication, value and elegance. It is also said to inspires knowledge, spirituality and a deep understanding of the self and the soul which I like to sometimes write about in my blog. To read more about the colour gold please click here.

A year later I altered my name

I felt using a z instead of an s in the JAWZ section of my brand was what creative people do who are trying too hard to be different and I didn’t want to be Jaws otherwise I would make people think of a deadly killer shark!  I decided to make it simple and called it JAWilson Design instead, my name so it still kept the idea that I borrowed from Mr Bannatyne for his brand and ending it with the word design to easily identify what the website was about ( which also works well for seo ).

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It took quite some time to develop my own identity, although a logo is small and “only” one image a client must remember that it needs to be adjusted and developed and given some time to reach its perfected state.

A good branding identity will look so effortless that those who are not from creative backgrounds will look at it, recognise it and even be influenced by it ( apple ) and believe it is “easy and simple” but the truth is the best logos MUST be developed and at least a few iterations of the original design produced before reaching its final destination.

If you require a conceptual identity please get in touch and we can discuss your requirements further.