A few of you have been curious about what kind of work we’re up to lately.
It made us realize we’re doing a really poor job of sharing our work!
In all honesty, in the early days I was a bit paranoid about competitors seeing what we were doing and trying to steal ideas or clients.
Now I realize that’s pretty foolish!
So you’ll be hearing from us a little more often when we get to. We’ll make every effort not to swing the pendulum too far on what we’re up to.
We also want to take this opportunity to introduce Vlad to you. He’s one of the newest faces of the 8 Signal team. He has amazing talent and clearly knows his craft well.
I recently made the comment to Tiffany that you hear gurus constantly preach that you should surround yourself with people that are better and smarter than you. Has definitely been the case with Vlad, and our entire team.
What no guru will touch with a 10-foot pole is the other side of that coin…
The feeling of being the dumbest member in the team! But I guess that’s more of a conversation with my shrink 🙂
And without further ado, we present to you one of our most recent projects, Desert Devil Crossfit in Las Cruces NM.
Updating the design while staying true to the client
The original logo is very unique and personal. It was custom sketched by hand by a local artist. The issue that we faced is that logos like this don’t transition well from one format to another.
The level of detail gets lost when it’s too small, or it can be overbearing in larger formats. You also want to make sure your logo can be used vertically in a square, or horizontally as a long rectangle.
In the process, we also developed a branding color palette that Desert Devil could use with their other materials. Here’s what Vlad had to say:
“Here’s a simplified sample of my creative process – a redesign of Desert Devil’s logo for 2015 and beyond. I had a lot of fun taking the core elements of the original design – the iconic lizard and the kettlebell – and bringing them together in a new direction. I think it’s important for all creatives to remember that work should always be fun and honest. Experiment, keep it simple, and remember to enjoy your job!”
Ok, so now the website.
Before our Website Design
The old website was a templated site from wordpress.com. In all fairness, free or near free services like wordpress.com, wix, or squarespace are great resources when you need to do a website design “fast” and and affordably. I say fast, because even these services:
- Have their own learning curve
- You have to create all your content with little to no guidance on what’s effective
- There’s usually no marketing support or even fast technical support to take care of unforeseen issues.
In my estimation, these type of services are the equivalent to giving me a bucket of paint, a paintbrush, and expecting me to paint my house and have it look professional with minimal effort.
That is a real life example, by the way. In the end, we asked some experienced friends to help us with the easier stuff and hired a contractor for the more difficult painting projects.
We definitely got more than what we paid for.
After 8 Signal’s Website Design
We identified our client’s preferences and goals with the initial consultation with Jeremy Hale and Juliet Ricci, the owners of Desert Devil Crossfit. We determined that a full width, banded design was more in keeping with the vision they had for the site. It also enabled us to share a lot of content on the homepage, without making the overall website design cluttered.
Vlad took on the task of transforming this to reality. In the process, we came up with a color guide for Desert Devil Crossfit and the idea for a new logo was born because the old logo didn’t really fit in with the new website design.
There you have it, a small glimpse into the life at 8 Signal. There’s more to come in the next months. We know this can give you a glimpse of what it will be like to work with the 8 Signal team.
We look forward to helping you outsmart rather than outspend your competition.
