One I’d like to shout about is my involvement in Adaptive Themes a hot new place to get commerical/premium Drupal themes.  Now, theme shops are springing up all over the place, Wordpress alone has a nearly swamped market for themes (always room for more eh), but Drupal has suffered in the CMS battles on all counts design.

Adaptive is aiming to change this, by providing a platform where experienced Drupal developers and great designers can come together and create themes for possibly the greatest open source (and I mean free) content management systems out there today.

I’ve been really excited to watch this project take life and to actually be an “early adopter” and contributor.  So far I have 3 designs being worked on by hardcore Drupal taskmasters (I mean, professionals), and another ready to go. All this while creating some themes of my own, as time allows!

“Now, wait a minute, this is supposed to be about logo design!”, the blog critics call out – and it is….

In amongst all the busyness, I’ve completed 3 new logo designs. Firstly there’s the Adaptive Themes logo itself, yep, the one that’s powering all the commercial themes mentioned above! Then we have a logo for it’s sister theme ‘Genesis’, this was a great project to create.

A little Genesis background. The creator of both the Adaptive Theme and the Genesis theme are the one and only Jeff Burns. Jeff is a Kiwi guy now living in Sweden, you can read a small bio of him over HERE
His themes are feature packed and the only thing missing from Genesis was a cool logo (enter the Dreamleaf Mojo!).
His design brief included a request to feature a Maori symbol, and include it within the text of the logo… well, after some extensive research, it was obvious that the mark to be used would be the ‘Koro’ or ‘Koru’, which means ‘beginnings of life’ – now if that doesn’t scream Genesis I’ll eat my own leg.

And now, for the final installment of Logo a GO GO, we have a rather special preview of a logo not yet unleashed on the world. In fact I’m not even sure the world is ready to receive the majesty that is ‘The All New Dreamleaf Media Logo’.

To the untrained eye, and that of my 7 year old, it’s a reindeer. But without going into a long expose of the origins and meaning behind the logo, I will just state that it has the codename “The Stag with 2 Brains”, thank you Steve Martin!

And that is the logo a go go roundup. Another successful time in the life of a guy trapped behind a keyboard, there will be more new news soon that I’m holding off saying right now.. but stay tuned!

Till Next Time….

I’ve been trying out a few techniques this week using a mixture of blurs, lighting effects and different exposures of the same image – this is the work in-progress.

Most interestingly though is the thought process that goes on while I’m clicking the buttons and laying out different elements.  It strikes me that all of us sighted people are pretty damned ungrateful, we don’t always realise what a complete visual gastronomy of wonder is out there waiting to be devoured.

An American Poet said,

People only see what they are prepared to see

Someone else once said,

We are limited not by our abilities, but by our vision

Interesting that both quotes are probably talking about vision in the sense of seeing outcomes, of plans and goals. But if you translated them to actual sight, the vision from our eyes it takes on a whole different meaning.

I can’t help but wonder how much we take for granted, I for one sit inside for a lot of my time making things look good for someone else to sit inside and appreciate.  Now I am experiencing a slight revelation which actually makes me feel slightly stupid!

There is a big wide world full of STUFF! Stuff I’ve never seen, stuff I’ve never even imagined. And I don’t mean in far off countries where the sun only sets on Tuesdays (sometimes), I mean right here – outside my door. The places I go every single day, the people I pass, the textures on the wall, the patterns of a chain link fence… the list could go on forever.

Imagine a world where the small things are noticed, the details where we now see a void, can you imagine it? I nearly can!

A challenge to all of us is to open our eyes to the hidden treasures and to feed that into our world. Let our creativity be spurred by a reality that is all around us, a whole world of colours, patterns and experience that is otherwise ignored. I don’t think I’ve said something new or particularly beneficial, but it’s my revelation and I am revelling in it, just for a little while – just until I get back to planet earth.

If ever there was a reason to move to the US, the music has to be the main one!

Not only is there a sheer abundance of diversity out there, but there is also a culture that fosters music, artistic creativity and performance.

It would appear that these factors have turned out another great talent in Laura Allen.  I’ve just downloaded her new EP from iTunes, it’s called ‘Walk With Me’, it’s got a great authenticity about it – and I guess that’s the appeal.

So, I’ve given you the heads up – now skip on over to iTunes and download it!

My daughter was just heading out to a friends birthday party and I noticed how ‘classic’ she looked in her outfit. So out came the camera and I nearly made her late with an ‘off the cuff’ photoshoot. A further 30 minutes tracking in Photoshop and behold, a haunting piece of art.

When I do this kind of imagery I always try to convey a sense of emotion, after all every photograph taken captures an essence of a time. What is interesting here is an implied undercurrent.. can you tell what that is?