MergerShark

I thought I'd add this in here, as it was the largest job I've had regarding illustration yet and is still fairly recent too. Since the summer I've been in contact with a family friend who is starting a company called MergerShark and needed a logo designed for the official website. He asked my father and I to come up with several ideas to see if he could use any of them and after about a dozen different takes on the logo, he settled on this sketch:

Even though its MergerShark, with an "R". But that's alright. I admit, I've never done logo or graphic design work before, so vector art and making things look crisp and clean is all new to me. Either way, this is one of the first tries that I did with the logo, after adding in an eye and some teeth:

It was really strange having to convert my drawing into a vector-ized design, but after a few rocky attempts I was actually fairly pleased with it. Making letters in the shapes of shark parts was equally strange, especially the head. However, we had talked and after various drafts and he decided that this wasn't working in the way he was wanting it to and desired to take the logo in a different direction, so it was back to the drawing board during my stay in Fort Collins. I ended up with three alternate designs for him to use, and this was one of them:

It was back to vectoring for me, and after several trial and error variations on the design, we ended up turning MergerShark.com into an actual logo with color, outline, and a little fish.

I've got to say that this was one of the most challenging and serious projects for me, mostly because it was all new with vectoring and digitizing an image and all. But it taught me a whole lot about the work-in-progress of a design and was great experience for applying the illustrating process that I've learned in school to something more real (with thumbnailing, comping, and editing). And it also just taught me how to communicate and work with a client as well. I'd like to try this again in the near future, which might actually happen but with t shirt designs this time (will keep you posted on that one). Stay tuned.

Rough images and designs © Chris Loge 2010. Final design © MergerShark 2010. All rights reserved.