Scottish Creeking

The process of creating a new logo for Summit Rocks.

In the beginning.

Summit Rocks, a new outdoor company selling adventures activities to schools, needed a logo. Now this saga started well over a year ago, but I have learnt so much in that time, I must thank Iain from Summit Rocks, for his patients and faith in me.

 

Round one, the first ideas.

The brief, something simple, with mountains and children. Or something like that, to be honest, it's so long ago that I can't remember the exact brief, but my first designs involved both of these so it must have been something like that.

Well this is what I came up with.  

 

surprisingly this was very like the final logo that I designed, but I had to go through a lot of other ideas first.

 

The curse of the redesign.

 

So what followed was great learning process for me and probably a source of frustration for my client as my designs got more  complicated and probably further away from the brief.

 

 

 

The last design on here nearly made it to being approved, But not quite. We then took quite a long brake from the design process and we came back to it, I decided to call round on the client and get what they really wanted there and then, before this all correspondence had been by computer. This seemed to work. As the first design that I did after the meeting got approved. 

 

Lessons I've learned.

1. Stick to the brief. My imagination started to wander a little left field.
2. Keep on learning. All through this time I was developing new techniques, learning about different theories and getting more familiar with the software I was using.
3. Communication is key. Actually meeting the client face to face and discussing our combined ideas and knowledge made a big difference.
4. Use Mobile Tech. I used Adobe Draw and Adobe Comp in my final design, this made it easy to get a design down when inspiration hits, which it did whilst watching TV.
5. Don't give up. I wasn't going to until the client told me to "bugger off, your crap", as I knew that every rejected design I was learning something new. Luckily the client was patient with me and thing finally came good.

So here it is the final design. 

 

Phew!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo shoot for Black Snow Saddles

Black snow saddles,  not only needed a logo and a website but they also needed some product shots. This was not done in a studio environment, the small items were shot in front of a white background, this made it easier  to cut the products out in photoshop. The larger products were more angular and therefore  were easier to cut out with the Pen tool,  so I didn’t a need backdrop for them. We used natural lighting on the larger products with LEDs for fill lights.  Whilst the smaller products were taken with LED lighting. This is a sample of the product shots. The rest can be seen on blacksnowsaddles.com   

Black Snow Saddle

     

New Web Design

In my last post I said that I was working on a couple of new websites, A few weeks back I finished the first one that I was working on, for a company called Black Snow Saddles. They make and sell outfitting for whitewater canoes. I also had the pleasure of working on their Logo for them too. The brief was that they wanted something simple but striking, So I went for a black,white and grey theme. On both the logo and the website. Here is the logo I came up with.

This fits well on the website, but also on other promotional merchandise here it is used on a T-Shirt.

The website itself was the first time I had tried to do a responsive design, so it took me a little longer than usual. But I was very pleased with the results. This is what the design looks like on different devices.

If you want to check out the company here's a link to their website. blacksnowsaddles.com

New look, New Logo.

I haven't blogged for a while. To be honest I've been out of the country and I've had little to say anyway. But now I've decided to get things moving with Bomb Blast Media. I've been learning lots of new stuff and I have a couple of new website on the way, one of them is hopefully my own. But in the meantime I have set up a Portfolio site on Adobe Behance, so take a look http://bombblastmedia.myportfolio.com/. Hopefully, now I'm Back I will be able to share some of the stuff I've been learning.

Cheers.

Dave.

How to Create 3D Text in Photoshop

How to Create 3D Text in Photoshop



I've started to look at my techniques of coming up with logos. So I am going to be sharing the tutorials I do and the results. This one was in Photoshop and was a little tricky to follow especially step 5, where I pressed just the ALT and down arrows to create duplicate layers as the Ctrl + Alt and down arrows basically just turned my screen upside down. Anyway this is what I created, let me know how you do.

Messing around with new logo ideas.

Every so often I like to change my logo on social media, especially as I noticed that my icon on many social media platforms was circular and my usual logo just didn't work. So I was doing a tutorial on Tutsplus and changed a few things around and came up with this, which looks great in a circle as it looks 3d. Here's the link to the tutorial, https://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/hazardous-red-background--psd-7 and here is the logo in use on my Google+ page. BB media G+ page

Practicing layer styles in Photoshop.

I find the learning process never ends with Graphic Design. Especially when it comes to Photoshop and Illustrator. But I also have to go and refresh my knowledge about subjects I already now about, so every so often I delve into the Tutsplus archive to find tutorials like this. The tutorial is about layer styles. Something I new about but I never used, after this tutorial though, that just might change. So below is my version of the tutorial and here is the link to the original.  Enjoy learning. http://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/metallic-styles-in-photoshop--psd-5

Sign Up and get freebies.

We have Launched a signup form on our blog and Facebook page today, so you can find out about our latest projects and deals. But with the Newsletters we are hoping to spread the love a little and offer you some free stuff. So just fill in the form at the top of the page.

Been a long time.

I haven't posted for a long time, reason being, that I was plaiged by Robots. Yes my lonely Blog was not being viewed by anyone except other machines. this was a little dishartning. But I have now come to the conclusion, Sod em and hopefully I may get some proper readers one day. 

 

 

First Paid Job.

I was asked by a new company to create a logo for them. The brief was it was to be similar to many open source logos, as the company will be working to install Linux onto company computer networks and to have a slight retro look, with colors that were professional but not to clinical. So to start off with I researched open source logos, followed by a few rough sketches and then finally some very rough ideas done in Photoshop, which I then sent to the client for feedback.

They said they liked the colors and the font, but they were not sure about the button with the 3 on it and the layout of the logo. So I took the elements they liked and turned it into something a little different. I experimented with the Cinema 4D plugin that comes with After Effects and then finished the Logo off in Photoshop. This has opened up whole load of new possibilities for me and luckily the client liked this final Logo and has given me some more work, so hopefully this is the start of something for me. This is what I came up with.

Soca canoe video. Another Go Pro Test.

I got to use the Go Pro for real this time, whilst I was out in Slovenia Canoeing, As you may be able to see from some of my footage in the middle of the video, I do have some fogging issues, where as my friends Go Pro at the end of the Video is fine, again the only difference is that I had mine set to Protune. The resolution set on the Go Pro was 1080, but I cropped it to 720 to match my other camera. The Camera at the end was set to 120fps at 720, to give smoother slow motion. The camera at the end was also mounted on a home made mount, that we named wobble cam, but it actually worked really well. This was made by the excellent paddler in the Shots, Jan Krause. Well we had an excellent time, now it's time to sit back and enjoy the video.

Go Pro test

Ok, ok ,I know, I have not been Blogging a lot lately, but I've been busy. I seem to of at last picked up some paid work, yay. But I will talk about that in another post. I have just bought a Go Pro Hero 3 Black, due to them going cheap with the 3+ coming out, I've had a little time to play with it and I'm very impressed with the picture quality, but I'm not impressed with the battery life, which stops you using the WiFi, as it will just kill the battery. The app on the phone is ok, but it does not preview when the camera is set to use Protune, so that's a bit of a pain. But the greatest problem I have had with it is the lens misting up. I am not quite sure why mine is misting up while people I am with are having no problems with their Go Pro's, the only difference is that I am using Protune and they are not, so whether this makes the camera heat up more I do not know, perhaps someone can answer this question in the comments below. I have tried the Go Pro Anti Fog inserts and they don't seem to work either. So I shall try it with out Protune off and see if that makes a difference. I made a little test film, to see what the different frame rates and resolutions looked like and here it is.

B&W picture of Low Force.

I don't usually do Landscapes, but I am trying all kinds of photography at the moment, as I try and improve my skills. I took this photo, not only as it is a beautiful part of the UK, but also because I have ran the falls in a canoe before, so I took it for personal reasons too.

Just spotted this on the You Tube analysis page.

Have you ever looked into the statistics on You Tube, you can find out all kinds of useful stuff, like who has embedded your video's and how many people have watched it from that source. Through the stats I found that the video I had made for Escape to Adventure had been put on a Blog called Westroke.
http://www.westroke.com/blog/2013/8/14/dynamic-active-blade-kayak-technique/
Well they did give Bomb Blast a good plug, so thank's lads and your getting the video the most viewings. so the next time your on your You Tube Channel have a look at the statistics you never know what you might find.

More B & W HDR images.

Here are some HDR images, This time outside, I love how it nearly gives the photo's a 3D effect and makes what would other wise be a flat image more dramatic. Again these were taken in Manchester at the Town Hall. They were taken on automatic bracketing and put together in Photoshop.

Photo shoot for Esquif sponsored paddler Kelvin Horner

Had a great day yesterday. I went canoeing with some great guys, on a fun little river called the Washburn. But also I was there to take some photo's for Kelvin, who had just become the latest member of Team Esquif, and he was showing off his new canoe, an Esquif L'Edge Lite. He was also showing off his skills, which ain't bad to say he dislocated his shoulder a few weeks ago, in a boating accident. Again I was not blessed with the best of light for the shoot (just seems to be my luck these days). But I still got some decent shots of the day. Here are some that I have not released anywhere else.




http://www.esquif.com/en/index/

https://www.facebook.com/kelvin.horner.9?fref=ts

B & W, HDR. Another old bloke.

This was the second shot that I attempted HDR on. Pity the JPEG does not show the depth of the original 32 bit version. Does any one know if there is a way of displaying 32 bit photo's. Again I did not use a flash.

I wonder what he is reading on his mobile.

B & W, HDR experiment.

First attempt at doing HDR in Black & White, I was quite happy with the results. I was trying this technique as I am really crap at taking photo's with a flash, something I have to learn to do. But using HDR does seem to add a lot of depth to the shot. Rather than looking flat which my photo's tend to do, when I use Flash.

A Dream I had.

When I was young, I had this dream that I witnessed a Lancaster Bomber being shot down over London, for some reason this dream as stuck with me, so I made it the subject of my first piece of photo manipulation art work. Again this is an old piece of work, but I like it, it brings back memories.