VANS logo re-brand: Final Design

This is the final layout for the re-branding of "VANS". I tested some potential colour schemes for the logo as well as what the logo will look like when it is scaled back to fit on a business card or letterhead. Honestly, I've never seen the "VANS" logo in any other colour except for black and white, so developing potential colours for the logo proved to be interesting.

Warrior Girl character

I really like how the light and shadows of the skin turned out, as well as the "metal" gradient on the swords.

Flash background: Butterfly Wine Label

Initial Sketch

Messing around with the "alpha" in Flash

Changing the colours in Photoshop.

Using Hype frameworks and the butterfly assets used early, I generated a wine label using butterflies as the primary design feature. Every design I've ever done has began with a sketch, so that's exactly what I did with the wine label. I then brought the label sketch into Illustrator where I traced it out and vectorized the image. I then brought in the butterfly pictures and masked them to the shapes of the label. I brought down the opacity of the brown butterfly image in Photoshop. I chose the red butterflies because "Merlot" is a red wine, so I figured red butterflies would be a strong design choice. i chose the brown butterflies because I wanted to achieve a parchment-type colour for the other sections of the label to make the label look old and nice. After bringing the design of the label together, I then masked the label onto a 3D wine bottle built in Illustrator. Overall, I'm fairly pleased with the result.

IMMA FIRIN' MAH LAZOR!!!!!!!

More fun with hypeframe works in Flash.

The Elements of Brand Foundation - “VANS”

Core Purpose:

Providing the youth community with stylish, comfortable and innovative
skate shoes, sneakers, slip ons, boots, skateboards, snowboards and clothes. Offering
cool gear for youths interested in BMX, skateboarding, snowboarding and surfing.

Vision:
We would like to become a top designer and distributor of surf, skate and
snowboard gear to the youth community as well as a primary sponsor for extreme
sports athletes involving skateboarding, surfing, snowboarding and BMX. Weʼll know
when weʼre there when we see our brand on skateboards, shirts, shoes, bikes and other
merchandise as well as having name being sported by famous extreme sports athletes
like Bucky Lasek or Geoff Rowley.

Mission:
We like to provide our customers with the best new attractive looks especially
the young people who purchase other advertised clothing like DC, Circa and many
others that will look great with VANS merchandise. Our goal is to make our customers
happy with the way they look with their new and stylish VANS gear.

Values:
VANS footwear, apparel and accessories are created to be comfortable,
durable and stylish - traits demanded by our customers. VANS-sponsored athletes, who
are some of the most talented and colorful personalities in Extreme Sports, endorse and
help design our products, providing a bond with our customers that is strengthened by
the credibility of our athletes and the authenticity of our brand.

Position:
We provide gear that is stylish, athletic and functional. We
cater to young kids all they way to extreme sports professional athletes.
Character: We are primarily a skateboard, snowboard and surf community who are laid
back, athletic and overall friendly young people. We enjoy being with friends, looking
cool and partying.

Positioning Statement:
VANS was formed in 1966, which was well before other similar companies
like Circa, DC, Etnies and Element. So VANS is where skate gear initially started.
Theyʼre also a major sponsor of a summer music tour known as the “VANS Warped
Tour” which has become a music phenomena since it first began in 1995. VANS also
releases a CD compilation called “Off the Wall”. The CD volumes feature various punk
rock and indie bands.

Finalized rough concept for re-branding "VANS".

This is the rough logo concept our prof Jasmine approved for the re-branding of "VANS". The design was inspired by patches that people would sew on clothes. It seems fitting for "VANS" as their brand emits a punk rock, rough and edgy kind of style.

This is the final product, completed using Adobe Illustrator.

More awesome, mind-blowing butterfly backgrounds in Flash

Experimenting with the angling of the butterflies

Messing around with the alpha values

DMA455 Project001 - Project Butterfly

For this project we had to use hype frame work to build some awesome looking artwork, inspired by butterflies. Got the butterfly image from here: http://www.in.gov/dnr/parklake/images/monarch_butterfly.jpg


Not that difficult to accomplish and the outcome turned out to be quite interesting.


Check out similar work I did featuring Five Finger Death Punch and other cool images
http://graemethedigitalmediaartist.blogspot.com/2011/05/flash-generated-backgrounds.html

The end result:

Flash generated backgrounds

Created some interesting Five Finger Death Punch, My own photoshop images and Gallery 91 backgrounds using AS3.

This background reminds me of fire.

"Braveheart" meets "Star Wars"

So in DMA499 we are covering compositing and special effects for motion graphics. One of our tutorials was to give a soldier in the movie "Braveheart" a light saber. Using the Pen Tool, Layers, Masks, Gaussian Blur  and tracking in After Effects, you are able to create a light saber. In the original clip, the guy is just holding a sword, after using After Effects, he now holds a light saber.

DMA423: "Vans" logo re-branding

So the idea behind the logo is that "Vans" is a widely recognized manufacturer and distributor of skate gear such as decks and shoes, so I felt the logo should reflect that.

This is the first design I came up with for re-branding "Vans". I liked the idea of using the curl of the "s" to feed into the structure of the skateboard. Although the back end of the skateboard looks odd as the end piece is missing and the shoe is missing it's heel.

This is design builds on the first design I came up with. I like the idea of using the "Vans" text to sort of imply or close the shape of the shoe. Although the skateboard underneath the logo still looks odd and the heel of the shoe is unsupported by anything, I knew I was on the right track with this design.

This is the final product that I hope our team can use for the re-branding of "Vans". The shoe takes on the design of a "Slip On" shoe, which are fairly popular because of how comfortable they feel. The slip on shoes design is also less detailed than that of a sneaker, so a slip on shoe would be better suited for the logo as "less is more". The shoe also completes the shape of the skateboard, thus bringing unity to the logo.

"Punk Rock" girl

"Army of Two" inspired soldier

This is a character that I designed based on inspiration from "Tyson" and "Elliot", the main characters in the "Army of Two" video games. Nothing to me, is more intimidating than a big, muscular guy holding and LMG and wearing a mask, totally badass. Definitely would like to do so more work with the mask; make it look more menacing.

2 more drawings

I like these ones...

I've been drawing..... alot!

So this is pretty much what I've been doing over my break. I went back and tweaked my drawing of "Ada Wong" from Resident Evil and I found my old sketch of the military soldier (inspired by the "Army of Two" video games. Can't wait to digitize all of these after I make a few tweaks here and there. Hopefully I'll have enough time to do all that....