The Branding of Carlyn Ray Designs

February 25, 2015
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I understood that having a powerful cohesive brand to stand behind was going to be an important element in expressing the values of my company and helping me reach the clients I wanted to attract.

I was introduced to Deon Staffelbach who has a brand design firm named d30n in Portland, Oregon. We discussed my vision for a flexible logo that could be used on business cards and collateral or a stamp that could be used as a signature and pressed into glass. We also discussed creating a website that showcased my work and could be quickly updated to add projects and create blog postings.

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I sent him some images of my work and some items that inspire me, along with a few sketches I made to provide an idea of what I was thinking. At the same time, he provided me with a questionnaire to fill out in order to get a deeper understanding of my priorities and the goals I wanted to achive with my brand development.

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Deon took the information I gave him and he distilled my business needs, values and market research into a range of logo options. He worked with me over several rounds to craft a logo that expresses the energetic spirit of the studio as well as the professional dependability my clients can count on.

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The logo is based on the helical twist of a glass ribbon, and when multiplied it radiates energy like the glass furnace.

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The primary colors of my logo were chosen directly from the palettes that I love to work with in my glass pieces.

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And I was shown the logo in real-world situations to help visualize how it looks on different everyday objects.

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If you would like to learn more about the process used to develop my logo click here.

Once the logo was completed, the first piece of collateral I needed was a business card, and Deon offered several design options and suggested printing them on a letter press which is a classic form of printing usually reserved for special occasions.

We enlisted the help of Kevin Cox owner of Advantage Letterpress in Vancouver, Washington to help us with the printing.

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The letterpress allowed us to print on a heavy card stock and impress the logo into the paper, which created an extremely luxurious presentation and gives each card the feeling of a personalized invitation. From my perspective, every time I am invited by a client to make a new installation piece it’s a special occasion and I like to celebrate that relationship from the very beginning.

If you’d like to find out more about the design process for my business cards, you can learn more here.

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The next item I needed to address was to re-design my website for Carlyn Ray Designs. It needed to showcase my work and the excellent photography taken by Can Turkyilmaz, at Turk Studio in Dallas. Among other things it needed to be updated easily in order to stay current, as well as be responsive for tablet and mobile users.

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Deon created the wireframes and layouts to show me how the design would look and how the pages would interact. Then he worked directly with local Portland developers Ten Bridges to ensure the complex coding was done properly and make sure that the site was built to the highest web development standards.

If you haven’t already looked through my recent projects, please check out the wonderful residential and commercial spaces I’ve been able to transform.

If you would like to learn more about Deon, or see more of his design work, visit his website d30n.com.