This past Wednesday, I was hit up to work on a new logo design for a magazine/website. The main idea of the magazine and website will be getting information, products, and offers into the hands of high school students. So the “reach” would go both ways… 1) Reaching students with important messages and content and coupons, and then 2) students will “reach” the site owners (and their advertisers) by using the info or by coming online to interact/register/answer survey/order school spirit items, etc..

Students will use the site and magazine information and offers to “reach” their dreams and goals. Focus will include academics, social events, sports, finances, etc. for high schoolers.

The magazine would “reach” them offline; the website would “reach” them online.

SO far, I started sketching some real rough ideas for the logo, as you can see below.

On September 9, 2005, I received an email from Jai Stone of Image Evolutions. She wanted some caricatures of herself as a cartoon. These digital images were to be in about 5 or 6 different poses, and wearing some shade of pink with gray accents.

Jai provided pictures for me to work from; since, I never met her (’cause she resides in GA) this task was a little bit harder. I am used to drawing people that I know personally — this way, I can put a bit of their personalities and eccentries into the artwork. Jai wanted me to create the images via Adobe Illustrator because she wanted to create flyers, brochures etc.

Below is a scan of my initial pencil sketch.

I took this scan and opened the file in Adobe Illustrator (AI) and after some time produced the following digital image.

After presenting the rendering to Jai, she responded with “I am just in love with this thing! I have at least one other person that is ready to move on something similar. I will pull all of the information together for her.” Boy, was I happy to see she loved it! It’s always nice to hear something positive about your creation.