I’ve been getting really into children’s illustration and childrens graphics recently, with a lot of focus in vector work. I’ve been getting a lot better and really loving the style. However, I was annoyed with the limited amount of kid/logo friendly fonts when I’ve been putting artwork together. So I decided to make my own that was completely customizable and worked well with textures, since the majority of my designs focus on texture.

So here it is! Blockobet! It’s a fun typeface, and I love being able to apply different layer styles to the different blocks in each letter. Check out the typeface in it’s entirety and an example of how to use it after the jump.

Blockobet- Click Here to Download

And, here it is in action!

So, it occured to me yesterday that as of April/May 2010 my little freelance adventure has turned 2 years old. I started by making my Dad some business cards and realized ‘Hey, I could really use some extra work’. 1 month later I was putting together marketing materials for The Path Christian Church and branding Bare Apparel. I’ve had an amazing two years and have met and worked with so many amazing people. The best part about not doing my freelance work full-time is that I can be extremely selective with what work I take on, so I can honestly say I love ALL of my customers and enjoy all the work that I do.

To celebrate turning two I wanted to post up all my most memorable moments in the past two years. Check it out after the jump:

Featured Designer:

I wanted to post up some links where I was featured elsewhere on the web. I went through a couple of pages on Google and chose some of my favorites.

Layers Magazine- I was brought on as a featured designer for Design Makeover. I was featured on both the website and the May/June issue last year.

JustCreativeDesign- Featured as ‘Designer in the Spotlight’ on one of my favorite design blogs. It was early in the DS run, but it’s cool to look back on the interview and see how much has changed, and how much hasn’t.

JustCreativeDesign- Featured on the post ‘Advice for Design Students’ along with many other great designers.

Featured Artwork:

These are some links of my favorite exhibits I took part in. My favorite of all was 2009’s Phoenix Design Week where I was a featured designer at Santy for a week. There wasn’t much coverage of the event other than twitter/facebook, but I did make a post of some photos from it here.

Abduzeedo- Featured an MSCED print in a wallpaper contest

PowerToThePoster- This was an AMAZING project, or I should say IS an amazing project. Regardless of your beliefs or what your stance is they asked several designers to create a poster that showed the designers voice. When I created mine I was number 16 on the page, now there are 157! So happy to have been a part of it, and even better my poster was featured at the Power to the Poster exhibit in Lincoln, Nebraska.

PhxDW09- I also created a poster for Phoenix Design Week that was displayed all throughout Santy both in print in digital form.

Favorite Posts:

All of you that read Dunlap Studios know that my posting is pretty speratic, however I’ve put up some great reviews and tutorials in the past two years that I’m extremely proud of. Hopefully the quality of posts would make up for the lack of posting… eh? eh? Here are my posts that received the RT’s on twitter and that I received the most feedback on.

Relation:Ships- My most popular post by far. A review of client/designer relations and what is needed to have a working relationship. The post features artwork from the children’s book “Relation:Ships” I wrote for my daughter.

Designing on a Budget- A tutorial of a logo design put together on an extremely tight budget for Washington hip-hop lable True Vision.

Design Fail: Wedding Bros- My first and only negative design post. I posted up a cover from the movie Wedding Bros and gave my input on what needed changed. To my surprise the producer of the movie commented on the post!

Behance Action Method- A little review of my beloved Behance, this review was posted all over the web, even on the Behance website.

Orgivation Magazine: Breathe Carolina- I LOVE doing illustrations for Origivation. They literally let me do whatever I want, and I’m so proud of the ones I’ve done. Here is an in depth tutorial of how I created my first illustration for Origivation.

Creative’s Christmas- Some tips on cheap creative ways to wrap your gifts. I’m the king at custom wrapping.

My Outlook on Spec Work- I hate it, sorry to spoil the ending for you. But I hate it. I wrote it over a year ago, and I wish it was longer and angrier. The post includes some weird illustrations, I don’t really remember why but they’re pretty funny.

Dwight Shirt- I made a shirt of Dwight Schrute and posted it on Design by Humans. The weird thing is it was posted ALL over the internet, but it didn’t get many votes.

What Can Twitter Do for You?- My first real post on DS, and it actually was all over Twitter. Kind of funny because I’m rarely on twitter… I guess I’m just not very social anymore

Thanks everyone for such an awesome 2 years! Customers, blog readers and anyone who has ever supported me, I appreciate it so much and I’m excited for more to come!

I just posted up a gallery of the MSCED prints that are currently available. Check out the link HERE, or in the side pane, and follow the greedy little directions.

This is an illustration I did last night of the band Buckcherry for Origivation Magazine. It is the feature review of the November issue, which also features my editorial illustration for the band Breathe Carolina. The tutorial I did on that illustration can be seen here.

Origivation is a fantastic magazine to do work for, they’re open to anything and really let me push my creativity. I asked them if they had anything specific they wanted me to do for the illustration and they just said “go nuts”.

Check out the illustration after the jump…

Check out the high res version by clicking the image or clicking here.

So, I’ve started literally the biggest project I’ve ever undertaken. It requires five logos/branding, print material and a possible website. Each of the logos requires research, references, customer communication and a to-do list. I’ve started my design process on one logo and started research on another, and that material alone was to much to keep organized. I have sheets of notebook paper absolutely filled as well as link after link saved in my e-mail. I knew I had to do something to get organized, not just with this project but to ensure that my other workflow won’t suffer because of this project.

Enter: The Behance Action Method….

I started looking for a project management tool that could help me keep all of my project information in one place, as well as help me manage multiple projects at one time. Before I took the plunge to digital, I’ve been using the Behance Action Book, which has an area for customer info, project info, action steps, backburner ideas and a dotted grid to sketch out any rough ideas. It has worked fantastic for me, in fact all of my logo projects from 2008 and 2009 were managed by the Action Method.

What is the Action Method?

It’s a really organized system created to manage your project steps, thoughts and processes. You can arrange your steps by color to mark the importance of each one. The backburner is a place for you to record ideas you currently have but don’t have the time to pursue… which I have way too many of. If I’m working on a project and have a great idea for it, but I know the customer won’t dig it I’ll place it on the backburner to be used at a later date… which I’ve done and it saved a lot of time and research. You can view the actual process HERE.

If the Action Book works, why go digital?

Simple, my page in the action book transferred over to multiple notebook pages and e-mails, I was still able to use the system but there was just too much for the system to handle accurately. So when I began to research project management systems, my first though was to head to Behance. Lucky for me, they’ve transferred the entire process into a website and even more lucky for me, it’s FREE. I’m not sure what the limitations are between the free one and the membership, as of right now it seems fully functional. If I do run into any issues, I will surely upgrade.

How does the site work?

You create your project, you can include any customer information needed. Once your project is in place, then you start adding action steps. You can assign a color to each step to mark the importance.

When you click on an action step you have the choice to change the color, delegate the duty by e-mail (great if your working on a team), set a due date, and track time. Once you’ve completed the step, you mark the checkbox and it goes to your completed box.

One of my favorite features is the references and discussion tabs, in which I’ve been utilizing to the fullest extent for this project. I’ve filled each logo design with links from sites, anything that went with my idea or inspired me, just so I could keep for inspiration or as a reference for later on. In the discussion tab I’ve been copying in the customer directions or key points that have to do with the design. Both tabs help me keep on track and keep me from searching through the web or e-mails to find my references.

And if you want to view all of your links and info together, just head over to the “Project View” tab. In which you can easily access all needed areas of the site for your project, and best of all organize your actual projects using the Behance Energy Line system, which color coordinates your projects according to importance. Which is great for me because I have trouble sometimes differentiating between urgent and important.

The Cons:

I’m writing this because of my own freewill, so not only will I give it praise but I’m happy to say where it falls short. One of the biggest things about this site is the fact that you can download an iPhone application that is a complete function replicate. Having all of this info with you accessible on a phone is a huge thing, especially if you’re getting inspiration or backburner ideas when you’re away from your computer. I was bummed to see that they didn’t have a Blackberry app, but me being me, I e-mailed them to see if there was one in the works. Sure enough I was sent a beta. I know it’s just a beta right now, but it’s almost unusable there are so many bugs, and the interface is extremely dull, not to mention I can’t even type horizontally on the Storm. So, accessing it on my phone is pretty much out of the question for me as of now, I just hope the iPhone users are happy with their version and aren’t experiencing any of the same issues.

Secondly, I was hard at work on it last night adding in several new projects and I kept getting an error saying that the ’site could not connect, please check your Internet connection’… but I was on many other working websites at the same time. The good this is, I submitted it as a bug and I’ve been in contact with tech support today trying to get it figured out… tech support for a free program? Pretty cool.

Overall, I’m extremely happy with it and I would suggest it to anyone. Not just designers or marketing people, but to anyone with too much on their plate and in some need of some organization.

I’m going to be featured in the May/June issue of Layers Magazine, participating in the ‘Design Makeover’ section along with two other designers. Keep an eye out for it and I’ll post up images of the actual magazine as soon as I receive it.

Here is part 3, the final part of my recent work series. This showcase contains some apparel designs I’ve done over the last month or two. Some of them are commissioned and in use, others are templates created for a future business venture of mine. So, check them out and let me know what you think.

HI-FI Clothing

Huard’s MMA

Apollo Creed

I Am Dead But The Dead Aren’t Like This

Shirt Template

Shirt Template

Here is part 2 of my recent work series. These are some of my favorite small and large format print designs that I’ve created in the past month or so.

Large Format

Camp John Knox-

FBC Jacksonville-

Ralleypoint- 15′x7′

Arizona Car Source-

Small Format

Josh Kelly – Gig Poster

These Are Stories- Album

The Left And The Leaving- Album

Suffer The Loss- Album

At The End Of Underground Cities- Gig Poster

Stay tuned for part 3, Apparel Design.

So I’ve been away from the blog from awhile. I’ve been trying to throw up some music videos and what-not to keep it somewhat interesting, but I haven’t really been posting much work up, the reason? I’ve been working. I have a break tonight so I’m posting up a 3 part series of my recent work. The parts are going to be split into: Part 1- Branding, Part 2- Print and Part 3- Apparel.

So without further due, here are my favorite branding and re-branding projects from Feb/March.

Xtreme Talent Co.

This is where working on personal projects pays off. A couple months back I worked on a personal portfolio that I never ended up using. Several months later I came across Xtreme Talent Company who happened to be looking for a classy and elegant rebranding. I shot them a proof using my past artwork and they accepted immediatly. The benefit for them: they didn’t have to pay me to experiment with styles until I find the right fit. The benefit for me: I got to use some awesome artwork that I didn’t think would see the light of day.

Logo:

Flyer:

Website Background:

Indie Web Studio:

Indie Web Studio is a partnership between MyNameIsVince and I. It’s still in the beginning stages, and I don’t want to reveal much, but I did want to show off the branding for the project because it’s one I’m most proud of. I’ll just throw up a couple images here, but there are a lot more to come.

Logo:

Business Card:

Website:

Natural Plantations

I didn’t create the logo or packaging design for this company, just the print collateral. They wanted a fresh, colorful look that included fruits and/or vegetables.

Flyer:

Business Card:

AfterShock Ministries

This is a project that I just took up today at my full-time. They don’t have a logo, they just had the title and tagline. They we’re open to whatever I’d put out as long as it conveyed “aftershock” and appeals to teens. I’m waiting on their input, as of right now I love it and hope they do as well.

Postcard:

Business Card:

Keep a look out for parts 2 and 3!

As I stated in one of my past posts, it doesn’t look very good to be a logo designer without a logo. Finally after weeks of throwing around ideas I’ve finally came up with one that stuck. I’ve put a lot of time and effort into developing the Dunlap Studios brand, and I’ve tried to make sure that nothing is out of place. I needed a logo to represent me, my brand, my work and my style and I think that I succeeded.

First take a look at my new logo, and then I’ll explain the process.

My first focus with designing my new site was to focus on my illustration skills and my design style. My preffered illustration style is the sketched look, kind of messy and personal. My design style is raw but also sleak and stylish at times. You’d think that the messy and raw couldn’t go with the sleak and stylish, but I think this logo pulls it off.

I knew I wanted the ‘d’ and the ’s’, I just didn’t know how. I played with it for weeks both in my sketchbook and in Photoshop, never coming up with anything I liked. Finally I placed the text together in Photoshop and it just clicked. I knew I wanted the letters inverted but I didn’t know how I should do it.

With a little more experimentation I found the right layout, but it still wasn’t fitting. I then decided to sketch the area rather than fill and when it was completed I was very happy. I knew right then that I had found the match.

I then played with some type layout and after I found it the way I wanted it I traced over it in Photoshop to keep the raw sketch look going. Once I was happy with all of it, I exported the logo into Illustrator and then vectorized it.

The, raw, sketched looked is by far my favorite part about the logo, but I also love the way the text interacts with eachother.

Notice how the ‘a’, and ‘p’ match up almost perfectly with the ‘d’ and ‘i’. The distance between the breaks in the letters are the exact same just reversed. I love that! I wish I could say it was planned but I can’t.

What do you guys think?