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Email Newsletter Design

Email newsletters have become quite popular in the last few years. A quick and easy way to get your company information out to all your past and existing customers, to remind them you are still around and to showcase what you have on offer, and any new specials that may get people in for more.

Much less effort than printing out lots of letters and obtaining stamps and envelopes and posting. Very easy to keep an email database of all your potential clients.

Recently I was designing a newsletter and I received a request for setting up an email newsletter. I researched it and found that as a designer, I could set up the design and then purchase a html conversion.

So I'm now adding email newsletters to my list of design services. Feel free to contact me for a quote if you're interested.

New Yarra Trams Logo Design

Old Yarra Trams Logo







New Yarra Trams Logo


Looks like Yarra Trams will have a new logo design to coincide with the new takeover of Melbourne's public transport systems. Personally I really liked the old logo, it symbolized the tram network with the tracks forming the 'y' I always thought it was quite clever and easily recognized.

The new logo is clear and well defined and bright, but conveys little meaning. It's just words and colours. I notice they kept the green and blue and they way they meet together in the middle, but whilst that may convey a little continuity, it still looks quite pedestrian by comparison. Could be a logo for almost anything, says nothing about trams or transport. What do you think?

Single Colour Business Card Design and Printing

Traditionally the one colour business card has been the cheapest and simplest option for business card printing. These days however with such cheap prices available for cmyk full colour print it is not always the most popular option for a cheap card.

A lot of smaller offset print shops may still only have a single colour printing press though, so they would still suggest that is their cheapest option for a business card print.

In my opinion you can still get a great look with a single colour card. And as you can pick out a particular pantone ink, you can always rely on your colour printing the same with each different print run - which is not often the case with cmyk. Another advantage of spot colour printing is seen with large solid areas of colour. You will get a much cleaner and more professional finish when using a pantone or 'spot' colour.

If you have a logo in a particular colour and you want to reinforce you brand with a particular defining colour, you will definitely want to use a spot colour to achieve this.

In my business if I want someone to do spot colour printing, most often being one or two colour print, I use Jamek Printing
(I also designed their website). They are a small but very reliable printing business that achieve a great result, and I set up a lot of their artwork as well.

The 'chooko' business card as shown above is an example of a car printed single sided, single colour (pantone 485) red. This utilizes a lot of solid area so certainly best suited for a pantone spot colour.

City of Melbourne Rebranding and New Logo

The City of Melbourne has copped a bit of flack for its spending a quarter of a million dollars redesign of its logo. Some are hailing it as one of the biggest wastes of money for a logo design ever.

The new crystal inspired logo features and abstract design in the shape of an overly wide M containing what looks like a fractured crystal or an optical illusion.

Out with the old:













In with the new:
























They've thrown away a logo which showed off the city's heritage and environmental credentials for one that is futuristic, representing modernism and progressiveness. It looks a little like the architecture of Federation Square.

The council has already retrofitted their website with the new logo.

The logo is trying to be too clever and at the same time looks a little clumsy and too simple. My thought is that it may date quicker than the previous one and it won't lend itself to every format.

In any case I feel I could have designed a better logo for a small fraction of the cost.

Recruitment company business card design

This recruitment company had some clear ideas on where they wanted to go with their design. They had created a logo design and colour scheme of black and cream/gold.

The logo design was not created in vector format, so I recreated it and then added the shading or embossing effect in InDesign afterward on the 'me'.

The client had chosen the wallpaper like pattern that they liked and I found it under 'damask wallpaper' in a stock images site. The difficult part was getting it into the right colour and screen strength to suit a black background.

The problem with using a subtle screen image or pattern on a solid black background is that the black ink tends to overwhelm the subtle pattern when on the printing press, and there is a great risk that the pattern could disappear altogether in print, not looking at all like the screen proof. So I had to lighten the pattern on screen about 15% more, to accomodate for the fact it would darken in print amongst the solid background.

The back of the card was a bit easier, because on a light background, the darker coloured pattern tends to darken and show up more rather than disappear into the background.

In the end the print result was great, with a nice subtle result for the damask pattern against the black background, while still maintaining a clear image.

Life Changes Logo Design

This logo design was created with a specific target audience in mind, with a particular feel to it as requested by the client.

The client for this design has a start up business with the wonderful idea of a service to facilitate care for the elderly by consulting with the family to come up with the best possible recommendations on what type of care they should receive and where they should go to get it. Their target audience was an upper class market and the design needed to appeal to both the elderly and their families, invoking a feeling of trust, through elegance and class.

The theme was autumn, and the changing seasons and colours that autumn displays, as this seems to represent a natural change of life.

I did three original concepts, but they were thought to be a little bit feminine, so we went more with the browns, away from flowers in more focus on autumn leaves, while keeping the elegant font style from one of those initial concepts.

I created individual illustrations for autumn leaves, which eventually led to an illustration of a tree featuring those leaves with changing colours, and the leaves in motion as they fall, as they wanted an active looking illustration.