Sword + Dagger Logo Design

February 10, 2015April 5, 2015 | Erika Schnatz

I was recently contacted by two lovely graduates of my publishing program — they had combined forces to start a publishing services company called Sword and Dagger. They had a super cool name and some fabulous design inspiration to go along with it. It didn’t take me much time at all to create some logo ideas:

They liked number 9 best, and wanted to make sure the sword and dagger were represented in the design, and they wanted to see how the design would look on a black background. So I put together the following:

The final designs are below. It was a fun project that was a nice break from what I normally do, and I can’t wait to see how the designs look in print!

You can check out their website here: http://swordanddagger.wix.com/publishingservices

Jazzy T-Shirt

January 29, 2015April 5, 2015 | Erika Schnatz

Let’s get this sketch blog back up and running!

Here’s a t-shirt design I drew for a jazz-related project at Ooligan Press:

It was deemed a little too folksy for a jazz t-shirt, and the style wasn’t quite right for the target demographic, but it’s a nice little composition. Someone brought up Michael Cera when talking about the design, which is a compliment of the highest order for me. I loved Juno. :)

The black and white drawing is below:

Dam Good Books

July 1, 2014April 5, 2015 | Erika Schnatz

Here’s another little thing I whipped up for Ooligan Press:

I offered a beaver-less option if the press wanted to be a bit more high-brow, but I’m happy to see the little guy made the cut.

Ooligan Press is putting together “Dam Book Bundles” – basically a collection of 3 titles that our press has published. The titles are offered at a discount because you’re buying multiple books. It’s a pretty sweet deal, and you can check it out here if you want to buy some excellent titles from a student-run independent press. Check it out for the puns alone!

MAPS Re-branding

June 12, 2014April 5, 2015 | Erika Schnatz

Ooligan is not the only rebranding I’ve worked on this term. I wound up reworking one of my own designs for the MAPS team, a group of peer mentors that I am responsible for organizing. Conveniently, this means I can change the look of our brand whenever I want, because I have the power (please read that in a He-Man voice because I think he says that).

Anyway, long story short, I had to update the logo to make it digital-friendly. It lost a bit of it’s character, but it’s sleek-looking! Also, I learned what kerning was.

Original:

Revamped:

A fancy button I made that connects to a fancy webform:

All of the revised work fits with Portland State University’s visual branding guidelines, which is probably important if this mentor group is going to have any longevity. Hooray for learning graphic design things!

Ooligan Press Blog Branding

June 10, 2014April 5, 2015 | Erika Schnatz

I’ve completed my first year of grad school. Crazy! The next few months are going to be relatively light, responsibility-wise, so expect to see new material pop up in your news feeds on a regular basis. Unless I get really lazy this summer…

Anyway, what follows are some blog badges I created for the student-run publisher I work for, Ooligan Press. We’re working on rebranding the Press and changing up the website, and my silly little doodles are part of it all.

First time around I created everything in Adobe Illustrator, which made everything graphic and clean, but these were missing the hand-drawn/human element that is an integral part of the press’ identity.

These initial badges aren’t bad, but our digital and social media department lead was looking for something that is obviously made by the human hand. So I went back to the drawing board (literally), and came up with these:

You may notice I was roped into creating a few more badges. This is not the last you’ll see of the Ooligan-related work I did this term.

MAPS Logo Design

August 17, 2012April 5, 2015 | Erika Schnatz

At the beginning of August I began my new AmeriCorps position at Portland State University. My official title is Retention Project Program Assistant (fancy, I know) and it comes with perks. Like my own office. There’s also this amazing copier that can scan in documents and send them as e-mail attachments, which blew my mind. It’s also how I got all of the images for this post onto my computer.

Anyway, the program I’m working with was initiated last year and is in a bit of a transition period this year. Someone made a logo for the program last year, which looked like this:

I didn’t hate it, but I thought it looked a bit amateur, especially for a university program that does important, good work. I kept the basic idea of the compass and found some reference material:

I drew one thumbnail and went with it. I know that’s frowned upon with logo design, but since I was tweaking a design and not inventing it, I thought that was enough brainstorming. So here’s how it turned out:

I like how it turned out. Plus now I feel like I’ve done something productive (I’ve done a lot of reading at work but not much else). It’s always fun when I can use my art skills for good.

Quick note: there is a rose in the center of the compass because one of Portland’s nicknames is “Rose City”. Knowledge is power!

Materials used: Micron pens, Photoshop/Illustrator