Here is the finished product:

It was created in Illustrator CS4 predominately using the pen and gradient mesh tools. I hadn’t worked with the gradient mesh tool in a while and was under the impression that I hated it. Yes, it is aggravating at times, but I think I’m beginning to enjoy it.

Overall, I’m really proud of the finished product. I think the shapes are good and I love the gradients. So, contact me if you have a similar project. I’m actually looking forward to working with Illustrator’s gradient mesh again.

The new design was intended to be similar to the current design as well as easy to update for their web designer.

Here is the original design:

Here is the original logo:

In order to create this new design I had to first create a customized version of the logo. The new design would require that you see through  The mustang and lettering was traced from the original logo they provided me.

To keep the similarity of the current design I continued with the same basic layout for the website – a three column layout with a header. I also kept the blue/red color scheme but added a lighter blue color to better highlight the main navigation.

To update the website I moved the navigation to beneath the header (identified by the lighter blue color), added a scrolling image/headline area and important links to the left column. I kept the center of the page for the most important information and used colored headers to better highlight each topic. I also moved the secondary phone numbers from the header to a footer.

Here is the new design:

What do you think? Is this a better design? Is it easier to use?

Topic: Craving
Date: June 5, 2009

It’s not a perfect illustration but I didn’t have a lot of time to spend on it. In the future I’ll go back and round out the chocolate and caramel so that it looks more realistic.

Anyway, what do you think? Good concept? Good illustration? Let me know.

About a month ago I ran across a website called Illustration Friday. I started looking around and discovered that it wasn’t just a blog website but a creative challenge website. Every Friday the website presents a new topic. The challenge is to design something that interprets the topic. I thought it was a great idea. I also thought that it would be a great way for me to practice both my illustration and conceptualization. I decided that I would try to participate at least once a month. So, without further ado…

Topic: Hierarchy
Date: May 5, 2009

As soon as I saw this topic I thought of a King and Queen. What conveys a hierarchy better then royalty? I liked this concept so I stayed with the general idea but began to explore it further. The next thing I saw where chess pieces, specifically the king and queen pieces. Then I thought about the king and queen on a deck of cards and that idea stuck. It did evolve some though. Originally I was going to show just the king and queen cards but then I decided to included the other face cards and somehow it transformed into a Royal Flush in poker.

I thought that a Royal Flush would be great because it shows the hierarchy of the cards from the Ace, to the King, the Queen, then the Jack and finally the 10. In fact, the great thing about this graphic is that it not only shows the hierarchy in the cards but in the hand. In poker you can’t be a Royal Flush. So it’s obviously the highest hand in the game. I think this was a great concept and am a bit surprised at how easily it came to me. It was literally a matter of minutes.

What do you think? Good concept? Good illustration? Let me know.

The Logo
I spent about a month revising the logo before I began working on the website design. I wanted to adapt it to further help project Uniq Sites as a professional yet approachable small business website design company. I think the revised logo defiantly conveys that message. I’m very happy with the way the that S and the E came out.

Here’s the old logo:

And the revised one:

Was it really an improvement? Comment below to let me know what you think.

The Website
It took me almost another month after finalizing the logo to finalize the website design and then to develop it. I had the same goals for the new website design as I did for the logo. I think the new design suites the direction of the website much better.

And here’s the old website design:

And the new one:

How about this? Is it better?

The Blog
Since I decided to start freelancing I’ve wanted to add a blog to Uniq Sites. Now that I think about it, I’m not really sure why I haven’t until now. And to be honest, I decided at the last minute to include it in this new version of Uniq Sites. My obvious lack of planning accounts for the unincorporated design for the blog portion of the website. Right now it is just he default WordPress theme with a few minor changes. I promise in the future I will theme the blog to match the rest of Uniq Sites.

The End
Well, I guess that concludes my first official blog post for Uniq Sites. There will definitely be more in the future so please subscribe to the RSS feed.