I’m excited to announce that I will be a guest on Debbie Weil’s upcoming Bulldog Reporter Webinar on Corporate Blogging: How to Launch Better Company Blogs in Six Easy Steps
Debbie Weil is a DC based corporate social media consultant and speaker, she’s been involved in all kinds of cool soc-med events in DC and elsewhere and authored THE CORPORATE BLOGGING BOOK in 2006. See her site for more details, debbieweil.com.
The webinar is:
Postponed and now TBA
Thursday Oct 29, 2009
1:00 – 230 PM Eastern
Should be fun! For more details, or to register, click here.
Filed under: Announcements, Probably Only Important to Me, Social Web, design | 2 Comments
Tags: blog, blogging, corporate, LinkedIn, social media, webinar
Pagelime Logo Redesign
Last night the new logo went live, so I can finally write about my redesign for the Pagelime logo. Pagelime
is a CMS that allows you to update the content, images, and documents on your web site without installing any software. All you have to do is add the ‘cms-editable’ CSS class to any part of your site, and we host the application that edits your site.
Here is the before and after:

(Click for a large .png)
Points of Improvement
When thinking about the redesign, one of the main things I considered was effective use of visual space. Since it will be used mainly on the web, I wanted it to make the best of where it was placed, be visible, draw attention and be recognizable/brandable. The previous logo used some random Japanese san-serif that came in only a view weights, it wasn’t very good reversed on black because it was so thin and could get lost on a page if the logo (we’ll call them wi-fi swooshes, swooshes for short) swooshes weren’t present with it. Spatially, the logo as it was, wasn’t really effective except in a banner or reconfigured with the swooshes underneath the type for a horizontal orientation.
The Brief…sort of.
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Since I didn’t really have much of a design brief to go off of (I was given fairly free range) when I set out to do the redesign, I formed a mini, sort of checklist/brief to organize what I wanted to accomplish. It was something like:
- Use a typeface that has a large family with good variable weights, this is so Pagelime could further be able to brand its documentation and print materials by giving them a face that could be used in multiple situations
- visual scalability, since this was mostly to be used on the web it definitely needed to work at small sizes (aka resized on iphone screens), this actually presented the biggest challenge as scaling the kerning became an issue, at small sizes a normal, kern looked correct but at larger sizes, it appeared to be a little off between the l and i due to the small descender/terminal on the lowercase L creating extra negative space in the counter between the two characters. In the end, I went with a slightly negative kerning that was just enough to create space between the two characters at small sizes. Ideally, there might be two versions, one for use at sizes greater than X pixels and one for use less than X pixels, but to simplify its use and creation, I just kerned to basically “the line of best fit.”
- have a brandable graphic element aka mark, although a strong typeface is key and can stand alone as a brand, having a graphic element was going to help add color and bring in another usable element, besides it needed a lime somehow.
- strong visual presence, basically, that means I decided early on I was going to use a heavier weight for the type, I wanted to not only give the logo more weight and presence, but distance myself from the previous logo.
- make a logo that is easily reversible, meaning, a logo that could be put on black, Pagelime has a few screens that use a black background and most of their dashboard used black in the modal boxes.
That’s kind of it, and this is what came of it.
Typography
For the type, I was definitely feeling a sans-serif, although I tried some serifs and even a few display fonts (I had some fun with FFCutout, but in the end it was too fun). To start, I’m a big fan of realist/neo-grotesque geometric/gotham-ish fonts, Gotham HTF and Interstate being two of my favorites, however I felt they weren’t playful enough to be used in this application, Gotham was a little too geometric and Interstate didn’t really work either. However, I remembered another font that I’ve started using a lot recently, FF DIN, the remake/expansion by Dutch designer Albert-Jan Pool of DIN 1451 which was largely used (early on) as a metal type on signs and trains in German/Europe and also mandated to be used in places of technology, business and traffic, sort of like a German version of Interstate. Although it shares a lot of the same realist qualities of Interstate and some lines of Gotham, it has more curves to it that make it a bit more playful and accessible. The curves also help it work with the organic shape of the lime. One place you might recognize the face from is the JetBlue wordmark.Comparison
Here is an overlay of the two logos to show use of space and weight changes. Although the vertical height is a bit larger, the horizontal density is much greater, with the heavy type weight it give a really solid look to the logo.
Meet the Family
I then adapted the logo as a full set, including single color and greyscale versions for print use. Here is the full set/mood board.

Make sure to click through, for some reason the way this image is being resized makes all the colors look off.
And that’s really it, I’d love to know what you think of the redesign or if you have any questions or other comments.
Let me know in the comments or reply to me on twitter here.
Filed under: Announcements, design | 1 Comment
Tags: adobe illustrator, brand, cms, computers, dc, design, LinkedIn, logo, mark, pagelime, redesign, technology, vector, website
From Mom: Why Parents Drink
So I usually don’t read fowarded or chain emails, but this was actually amusing. I hope I have a kid as clever and badass as this some day.
A father passing by his son’s bedroom was astonished to see that his bed was nicely made and everything was picked up. Then he saw an
Envelope, propped up prominently on the pillow that was addressed to ‘Dad.’With the worst premonition he opened the envelope
with trembling hands and read the letter.Dear Dad:
It is with great regret and sorrow that I’m writing you. I had to elope with my new girlfriend because I wanted to avoid a scene with Mom and you.
I have been finding real passion with Stacy and she is so nice.
But I knew you would not approve of her because of all her piercing, tattoos, tight motorcycle clothes and the fact that she is much older than I am. But it’ s not only the passion…Dad she’s pregnant.
Stacy said that we will be very happy.
She owns a trailer in the woods and has a stack of firewood for the whole winter. We share a dream of having many more children.
Stacy has opened my eyes to the fact that marijuana doesn’t really hurt anyone.
We’ll be growing it for ourselves and trading it with the other people that live nearby for cocaine and ecstasy.In the meantime we will pray that science will find a cure for AIDS so
Stacy can get better. She deserves it.Don’t worry Dad. I’m 15 and I know how to take care of myself.
Someday I’m sure that we will be back to visit so that you can
get to know your grandchildren.
Love, Your Son John
PS. Dad, none of the above is true. I’m over at Tommy’s house.
I Just wanted to remind you that there are worse things in life than a Report card That’s in my center desk drawer.
I love you.
Call me when it’s safe to come home.
Filed under: Amusement | Leave a Comment
Tags: email, joke, kids, spoof

Alright, so today has been a good day (and I didn’t even seen 3 red cars in a row).
It’s a gorgeous day weatherwise, I busted out some sweet designs, made a pretty decent lunch. The place I work is going to pick up some really sick clients, so that means I’ll be working on some really awesome projects AND I just found out two of my images were chosen to show in Pingyao, China for the 2009 International Photography Festival. Which is apparently the “oldest and largest photography exhibition in China,” according to this tourism site. (Here are some cool pictures from last years show on a blog I found via google.)
So, if you happen to be around Pingyao between September 19th—26th, take some pictures for me, I’d love to see the show and my work there!
Oh, and here are the two images that were chosen (out of 450, of 100 others):
Filed under: Announcements, Tshirts, photography | 1 Comment
Tags: awesome, good, green, international, photos, t-shirt, tshirt
Delicious Links == Off
So I felt that, although I want to share my delicious links with you, having them post everyday like that was watering down my blog and pushing more “real” content out, so I turned them off. If you are really going to miss them that much, then subscribe to my delicious RSS feed or check out my profile: http://delicious.com/dex110
Ciao
Filed under: Announcements, Probably Only Important to Me | Leave a Comment
Tags: bookmarks, delicious, internet
links for 2009-06-23
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A friend told me about this, pretty cool. The alerts are key.
Filed under: This is Delicious | Leave a Comment
links for 2009-06-22
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Cool live map in the background. Site by Use All Five, Inc.
Filed under: This is Delicious | Leave a Comment
Recent Entries
- Debbie Weil’s guest on Bulldog Reporter Webinar
- Pagelime Logo Redesign
- Awesome Interview with Guy from The Red Chord
- From Mom: Why Parents Drink
- My photos are going to China! Sweet.
- Delicious Links == Off
- links for 2009-06-23
- links for 2009-06-22
- links for 2009-06-21
- links for 2009-06-19
- links for 2009-06-18
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