Posts Tagged ‘creative process’

May 13th, 2012

JFK Poster Design for the Bigger Picture show

This was my second year to participate in the Bigger Picture Show. (Kudos to the International Film Festival and Lodge for a great show!) As usual, a crop of top Indianapolis designers were called on to contribute their reinterpretations of classic movie posters.

Bigger Picture Show 2012

Last year, I redesigned Psycho. This year, I was awarded the Oliver Stone film, JFK. The Kennedy conspiracy has always fascinated me, so it was a special treat to get to design a poster for this film.

Although JFK was released in 1991, it was obviously all about the sixties. So, in keeping with my self-imposed requirements from last year, I wanted to create something that felt like it might have been produced in the sixties as well: limited color palette, limited typography (Helvetica), and zero reliance on filters, drop shadows, or other effects. (more…)

February 1st, 2012

How to Build a Super Bowl Brand.

With Super Bowl XLVI being hosted here in Indianapolis, we’ve had some unique insight into the time and energy it takes to plan and execute the Super Bowl experience. Similar to building a Bold and effective brand strategy, Super Bowl prep is no simple task. Here are a few similarities that the two share:

1. Planning Starts Early.
Indianapolis won the bid to host the 2012 Super Bowl in May 2008. That means it has taken roughly 45+ months of preparation. Although the game is being held in Lucas Oil Stadium, there is much more that comes into play such as hotel accommodations, way finding, parking, etc. which required the city to evaluate the impact of hosting beyond just the stadium.

Whether you’re in the early phases of hiring a branding firm, building a brand intentionally or you’re maintaining a strong, existing brand, it’s important to make time to evaluate the big picture. How is our web presence impacting our brand? Is our internal culture consistent with the brand we’re trying to establish? Every decision you make has an impact on the brand to some capacity. (more…)

February 6th, 2011

Behind the Redesign: MilesDesign.com

Just before the New Year, I was thinking about all of the “little tweaks” I wanted to make to milesdesign.com. At that time, our current website design was only about eight months old. Although I didn’t intend to generally alter the look or feel of our site, I couldn’t help but see opportunities for improvement. A few hours later, those “little tweaks” turned into a full-scale redesign.

Miles Design before and after

I moved into “rapid prototyping” mode, quickly exploring grid and layout options within the existing brand identity system, landing ultimately on a new 6-column grid.

Here’s a quick rundown of many of the design changes we made, why we made them, and some of the technical improvements achieved by redesigning our own website. (more…)

December 10th, 2010

The 2010 holiday cards are here!

Happy holidays. Share the love.

The 2010 holiday cards are here! 7 cards. 7 designs. 7 chances to spread holiday cheer with friends, family, or clients. We’ve been busy elves here at Miles Design, and we’re each excited to share our finished designs and inspiration with you all. Enjoy!

Card 1 of 7 // Imagined by Brian Gray

My card was inspired by childhood memories of all the great patterns on wrapping paper. When you’re a kid, nothing is better than ripping into a perfectly wrapped present. I wanted to create a nice, wintery pattern and style it to an old-fashioned feel. The lyric I chose not only reminded me of the fun, commercial side of Christmas–but also the true reason for Christmas: the birth of Christ.
(more…)

November 30th, 2009

Give the gift of Viral:A New Twist on the Holiday Card

The Holiday Greeting card that encourages you to pass it on…

Every year, even creative types like us enjoy a love-hate relationship with Holiday greeting card design. Although we’ve designed a few award-winners in the past, that only serves to push us to a higher standard for what to do for an encore. This year we wanted to create a greeting card that the recipient was encouraged to immediately re-gift.

So this year instead of designing just one card, we had everyone from our office design their own card. We committed to a color palette, size, paper, and production restrictions (just like a client project) and had everyone work on their own concepts. We then packaged the final set of seven designs up with instructions to “share the love this Holiday.” We even created a custom rubber stamping system to embellish the corrugated mailing envelope.


Here’s a sample press sheet. All seven designs were printed using the same set of five inks, on one sheet of paper.


Here’s what the set looked like together.


We created our own custom stamp to embellish the corrugated envelopes.


And here’s another view of the complete set.

And finally, we created a website under our infamous microsite, HolidayCow.com – wherein visitors can gain further insights behind each unique design. We also have a few other pics up on our Miles Design Facebook page.

If you’ve not received a set, we still have a few left. Just send us your mailing info. In the spirit of “viral season”, pass this along to everyone you come into contact with. Happy Holidays!

We welcome your feedback…

November 12th, 2008

Designing a Unique Holiday Gift

For those of you who have enjoyed our past holiday cards and fun little excursions like HolidayCow.com, we’re excited to let you in on a little secret. This year, we’re taking a different spin on holiday gifts. We’re giving your gift to someone else.

With the roller coaster news from Wall Street this season, we thought this would be a great year to share with those less fortunate. We’re still working out the details, but we’ve decided to use the money we would have spent on you this Christmas to adopt a family in need. And don’t worry. We’re so excited about what’s ahead in this process, we’re planning to document our excursion and share in the fun here on our blog.

So stay tuned. There are more good things ahead. And in spite of what the media might have many of us thinking, we’re blessed to say, “business is good.” And we’re lucky to have friends and clients like you. If you have any ideas for our adopt-a-family project, we’d love to hear them.

August 11th, 2008

Who thinks up that stuff?

Did you by chance see the opening ceremonies of the Olympics? Did you sit there in amazement and awe as the pageantry of events unfolded. The music, the costumes, the choreography. How it all blended together seamlessly bringing traditions of old into the world of new. Spectacular.

As I was sitting there with friends watching this, I overheard one of them say, “Who thinks of this kinda of stuff anyway? It’s just mind-boggling.”

Who thinks of stuff like this? We do. Isn’t it amazing to see what happens when designers are allowed to see their vision through? How they understand the importance of conveying a message to the masses with style and grace. We might be weird at times, but trust us. We know how to push the boundaries and make things well, emotional and best of all memorable.

What was your favorite part of the opening ceremonies? Do share.