Niall Donoghue asked me to come up with a logo for his multimedia consulting company that could also be used for a suite of e-learning guides. The company specialises in eLearning, website design and podcast production.

I wanted to create a strong, bold logo that would suggest human/computer interaction.

• Red represents life and passion / Grey represents cold and analytical systems
• Circle represents a human user / Square represents computer or screen. It’s not too much a stretch of the imagination to imagine the O as head and the Cs as arms on a keyboard or microphone in front of a screen (the square)
• Pattern in circle represents a brain / Pattern in square represents a maze – this addresses the e-learning aspect of the company as the human gradually understands the maze.

The circle component is similar to the RSS icon and the colour and shape of a record button, while the square is the colour and shape of typical stop buttons (in audio gear).

Additionally the company letters are spelled out in the circle and square. They drill out of the “brain” part of the logo as in OCC goes from inside to outside, and again out of the “computer” part as UMO, which represents harnessing the power of the mind and the power of the machine. Even without knowing this, the O is obvious and the other shapes invite further exploration.

The distance between the lines are the same as the thickness of the lines. This is to give visual impact in the repetition of the corners of the square and in the target shape of the circles. This impact is lost at other variations of thickness between negative and positive space.

Finally, I chose a font (Avant Garde) with strong geometrical construction, mimiking the O and C of the logo.

Obviously most people won’t see a lot of these subtleties but the client knows! These details also give some meaning and magic to the logo. When people see it they feel like the company has shared a secret with them – for example, have you seen the arrow in the FedEx logo?

This is a very solid logo, based on basic shapes and does not rely on fashions or gimicks for its strength, guaranteeing longevity and versatility well into the future.

When presented to Niall, he said “I love it. Good work on this Alan, thanks for knocking it out of the park!”

Logo for Average Film Reviews, and how it appears on the website

I did a nice little logo for Nicola Timmins, a great photographer and film reviewer. I met Nicola when we were both studying Online Marketing with Advertising and PR. She posts her film reviews on Average Film Reviews, and asked me to design a new logo for what was just simple text before. I liked the idea of 3 out of 5 stars is average, so I worked on ways to get three stars into the logo. One of the first ideas I had was making the A a star, so with a bit of adjustment to Coffee Service I managed to make the A look like a star, and the stars look like As. After that it was a case of setting some Futura underneath to anchor the script. I presented a few colour choices to Nicola and she liked the yellow and red option best.

Here’s a few of the alternative options we examined:

ALternative logo designs for Average Film Reviews

For the last few months I have been working on this small zine for Electric Picnic.

Myself and Luke decided to put together a collective of festival experiences as a retrospective. We outlined our ideas and initially the plan was for Luke to write a couple of articles and I would illustrate them with some of my photos and do up the layout. We would print 30 copies on my home printer and hand them out at Electric Picnic to friends.

Our goal was to attempt to put our finger on the excitement and fun of festival-going, try to answer the question of why it’s so enjoyable and why we return year after year.

We attempted to keep a lid on it but pretty soon people started hearing about the project and wanted to contribute. The next thing I knew I had seven writers, two illustrators, a comic artist and a photographer. I was on the phone to printers negotiating rates for printing. I was rapidly running out of space, cutting content, dropping things that didn’t make the grade and editing articles down. In the end, I managed to cram in some great festival experiences, cartoons, illustrations, photography and a few fun surprises.

Originally we intended it to be a friends only kinda deal, but as more people contributed, the more sense it made to keep it accessible to everyone. Forgive us if you find the odd in-joke popping up here and there!

So after all the long months, the e-mails, all the hard work by everyone, I present the FESTIVAL zine, and, well, we hope you enjoy it. If you don’t we’ll give you your money back!

Read the zine here or I have a few limited edition printed copies left that you can buy for 7 euros.

Behind the scenes and making-of photos available at this flickr set.

Geeky graphic design stuff:

Set in Caslon 7pt, Headings set in AlternateGotNo1D, Chunk Five, and a little Coffee Service thrown in for good measure. Excellently printed and bound by Jaycee, Temple Bar. Limited to 50 hand-numbered copies.  32pp saddle stiched 140gsm gloss.

The owners of Ballybeag Cottages, a small holiday home company in Ventry, approached Waltzer Design to design their logo, website and a simple booking system.

The new site allows the owners to easily update their site and take bookings over email, while users of the site can view photos of the houses and of Ventry, find their way using Google Maps and contact the manager directly to confirm bookings and availability.

In terms of style I used Bolivar for the logo – it has a nice rustic feel to it while still being elegant, and the tag line is the serif font Garamond, which adds a bit of class and elevates it from Georgia or Times New Roman.

Overall I’m very pleased with the results and it was a pleasure working on it.

Boulevard Café approached me to make them a new website. The website is to raise awareness, sharpen the image and encourage on-line booking and browsing of the Boulevard Café Restaurant.

I had a few meetings with Fintan, the owner, and we decided how the site should feel and nailed down the technical requirements.

The style takes its cues from the interior of the restaurant: the colours, the atmosphere and the food.

With an easy Content Management System for updating the menus, a simple booking form and integration into Google Maps, this site will be easy to update and maintain for the guys in Boulevard, with minimal help from me.

This was a nice one to work on because we had some good photography to choose from and the colours of the restaurant lent themselves to a rich, warm website. For fonts I used Futura and Alternate Gothic No. 2. With a bit of Trajan and Coffee Service thrown in to add class and casualness, respectively.

All in all, I think I created an elegant but modern restaurant website.

We announced the new website with an ad in the local Metro newspaper.

I’ll be launching a new line of T-Shirts very soon so I’m very excited about that, there’s a particular Irish one that will be out just in time for Paddy’s day I hope.

Over the next few days I’m going to start adding to the portfolio page with some new and old stuff from the folio. The previous one here was so old, I mean it was out of date 3 years ago when I started my current 9 to 5.

Finally I’m going to start getting into this whole Word Press thing in a big way, seems like a good way to do content management for induviduals and small companies, which tend to be most of my clients. So here goes, hope you like what’s coming!