Chad Gordon
Branding to a Brander
I work as a brand designer and a brand builder, and I’m fascinated by how branding affects me as a consumer. Are the effects different than on a non-designer? Or am I like everyone else when I’m outside of my design cave? Sometimes I’m hyper aware of how branding affects me, and I make mental…
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Love What You Do, Your Brand Shines Through
When you love what you do, your brand shines through. It might seem a little touchy-feely, because for me in this case, it is. My daughter started her freshman year in college this past August. During this hectic, bittersweet transition I’ve had quite a few internal freakout moments. Did I prepare her well enough? Did…
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My Mental Health Experience
Since May is Mental Health Awareness Month, it’s a good opportunity for me to share my experience with anxiety and depression. I hope it helps someone. Or creates more awareness. Before I began writing, I asked a colleague if he thought it appropriate to write about my personal experiences with anxiety and depression in our…
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Health, Branding, and Helping Organizations that Help People
Health. Far too often we take it for granted. It’s never a problem, until it’s a problem. And when it becomes a problem it can be all consuming, hoping we can be healthy again. Nothing else matters when dealing with mortality. There comes a point when it is out of our hands. We need help.…
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You Have a New Logo. Now what?
Launching Your New Logo: Six Critical Steps After months working with your branding agency, you just approved a new logo. You are excited, and maybe a little impatient, to show it off to the world. We get it. But now is not the time to be hasty. There is more work to do. Here are…
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Brand New Inspiration
Recently, I attended the Brand New Conference in Chicago, a “two-day event on corporate and brand identity with some of today’s most active and influential practitioners from around the world.” I’ve been to countless design conferences, but it had been quite some time since my last. To me they had become tedious portfolio reviews offering little…
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What’s your favorite color? Mine is 306
What is your favorite color? Mine is 306. 306U to be exact (306C is a little too pedantic for my tastes). I know a lot of people like 300, or some like the warmer 2738. My favorite used to be 3005, but either my eyes have changed or I’ve just lost that emotional connection to…
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Chad Talks Brand Guidelines and Colors
designRoom Creative Director, Chad Gordon, talks about brand guidelines, choosing colors for a color palette, and how important they both are.
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Logo Sketches and Chad!
Tiny videos are a series of insightful shorts – quick, spontaneous, peeks into our world, our work, and our people. We caught Chad working on logo sketches, refinements, prior to a big logo presentation for a client in New Jersey.
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A Logo Refresh of Our Own
In case you haven’t noticed, designRoom recently completed a logo refresh of our own. Why? Because its easy for us! It’s what we do, when there’s a good reason for doing it. LOL Just kidding. A logo refresh was actually quite difficult for us. Why? Because it’s what we do for a living. It’s true what…
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Behind the Design: Ohio Travel Bag Logo
Ohio Travel Bag (OTB): established in 1908 as a manufacturer of traveling bags and coin collection bags. The Industrial Revolution, with its locomotives and steamships and motorcars, had opened up travel to everyday Americans. Ohio Travel Bag outfitted those travelers with their luggage. As larger manufacturers took over the market, OTB transitioned to sourcing and providing…
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Tiny Videos – Chad – On The Horizon
Chad is excited to talk about the sketching process for logo design, but not yet. We have a couple of new clients on the horizon – keep an eye out!
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Fresh Food. Fresh Logo?
As I teased in my social post, I have some thoughts on Aldi’s fresh logo. First, let me tell you my impressions of Aldi and their old logo. For a long time, I had driven by Aldi’s and had no idea what they were. It sounded and looked vaguely automotive. When I finally heard it…
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Build Brand Belief Amid Alternative Facts
Brand belief is important. Belief leads to brand loyalty, which leads to sustained brand success. I believe it’s being threatened. A while back I wrote a blog about how a healthy relationship equals a healthy brand. I stated that the number one tenet of a healthy client/agency relationship was “belief”: “Simply put, you have to…
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Free 2017 Calendar Download
How about a free 2017 calendar featuring original photography? It seems nobody does calendars anymore, which is why I created a free download for anyone who wants it! This is the first year I can remember that I didn’t get a calendar to hang in my office. I guess I’m a little old school, but…
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Brand Guidelines: The Gift That Keeps on Giving
Tis the season for a little song about the gift of brand guidelines: On the twelfth day of branding, the sales and marketing guy sent to me: Twelve colors clashing Eleven photos blurring Ten fonts a fighting Nine voices shouting Eight files crashing Seven typos grinning Six sub brands missing Five bro-ken links… Four mission statements…
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The Ins and Outs of Falling Up
Here are some of the ins and outs of falling up in our studio. It’s been been almost two hours and I’m getting hangry. The room feels stuffy, like a closet. The black dry-erase marker died, we had to switch to blue, and my OCD is on alert. The white board was full an hour ago and…
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The Cube Logo Design: The National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers
Here’s a rare peek behind how I create a logo design — in this case, the new logo design for The National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers (NAATP). The process began with our typical assessment. We interviewed key stakeholders, board members, vendors and members, and learned about NAATP’s history and their competitive environment. You can read more…
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Wine and Gold Winners
Something wine and gold happened to me while trying to figure out what to write in my color blog. Something wine-believable. Something unfor-goldable. Something impossible that I need to share. Sunday, June 19, 2016 It’s getting late and I’m stuck at my baseball game because the umps showed up forty minutes late. I’m happy to be playing ball…
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A Logo Refresh can Refresh your Brand!
Signs you need a logo refresh: Tired of wearing that tattered company polo with the old logo and the coffee stain? Embarrassed by your Brady Bunch brand colors? Done with using that nineteen-eighties typeface that smells like a musty basement? Frustrated with not being able to find the one digital copy of your logo file that gets passed…
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The Leap from Words to Images
I’m often asked how we come up with logo designs from thin air. My answer? It’s never from thin air. It’s a process and it actually starts with words. Words? Don’t you just Google images and look through fancy designer swatchbooks to come up with ideas? Or doodle until something happens? Assessment Makes for a…
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The World in Infrared
I absolutely love what I do. Being a creative director and designer at dRC has fulfilled my desire to create and solve problems and it never gets old. But as some of you may know, I have another creative outlet that I am just as passionate about: Infrared Landscape Photography. When I am out shooting, I…
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Healthy Relationship = Healthy Brand
Whether creating a new brand or refreshing an old brand the ultimate success does not begin with research, interviews or focus groups. The foundation isn’t built in a brainstorming session or when pencil hits paper. The magic to building a healthy brand starts with the health of the relationship between the client and the branding…
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Need to Know Production: Image Resolution
Image reproduction is pretty important to our work here at dRC. We work with images every day—creating, manipulating, color correcting, scaling, placing, printing, zipping and emailing. We receive images from clients almost daily — logos, illustrations and photographs. Image resolution is critical to successful reproduction. If the image you want on your billboard is a…
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Need to Know Production: Color Matters
Understanding your corporate colors is one of the more confusing and overlooked aspects of brand management. Here are some steps to help you along the way: 1. Yes, color is a big deal. “Color increases brand recognition by 80%.” (Source: University of Loyola, Maryland study). Choose your colors wisely. Color is critical to identifying your…
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Designer Job Applicants: I Am Concerned
“To whom it may concern…” As soon as I read that salutation in a job applicant’s cover letter, I’m out. If you don’t have the time to find out the name of the person that will be hiring you, then I don’t have the time for you. But I am concerned. And frustrated and appalled.…
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20+ Years of dRC Holiday Cards. Which is your favorite?
Here is a fun look back at all of the designRoom Creative Holiday cards. Let us know which one is your favorite. Bonus points if you can guess the designers (no cheating past dRC designers). Hint: I try as hard as I can to get out of doing the card every year, but some of…
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Random Wacky Image Search Results
I believe, as the result of many an internet image search, our world is becoming more random. And wacky. If you have a teenager, you’ll know what I mean by random. And wacky. Just check out this video. My daughter thought it was hilarious. When she showed it to me, I just stood there dumbfounded…
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“You’re playing me out of position!”
This is a true story about learning to play the right position. Much like many businesses need to do. I was a mediocre basketball player in high school. Oh, I thought I was good. I thought I could do it all; pass, shoot, rebound, defend, block shots and on my way to being the best…
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My Top 7 Resources for Color Inspiration
I spend less than two minutes picking paint colors from that massive swatch kiosk at Home Depot. I go with my gut. But I really only have myself to please. It’s different in my design work. There are so many factors that go into developing a color palette for a brand, a campaign or even…
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