Client Work: AMTA Logo Design Process

I recently designed a logo for the American Massage Therapy Association's new online education program. The title of the program is called "Bolster Your Practice" and they were looking for a logo that was "light and fun" and would "convey the idea of using multiple tools to accomplish the same goal- business management, development and expansion."

Also there were a couple of guidlines:

The logo should incorporate massage bolsters - a type of pillow that comes in various shapes used to raise the patients body and assisst the therapist. 

And, the logo should work next to the existing "Continuing Education" logo. 

Here is were I started.  A page full of shapes and ideas.  Most are embarassing to show and I left some out, but they are all part of the process.

When designing a logo - or anything for that matter - it really helps to get even the simplest ideas on paper because you never know where it might lead.

I selected a few that I thought had promise (I'll let you guess which ones) and I sent a PDF to the client. After a couple fairly painless rounds of revisions the client picked the one below.  It's pictured (right) next to the existing "sister" logo. 

And huzzah! Logo!

If you happen to have a need to "Bolster Your Practice" visit the AMTA website and check out their offerings.

Faces at the Coffeeshop

Challengers Assembled: Cosplay

I went to C2E2 this past weekend.  It was a blast.  I love seeing the creativity and hard work people put into their costumes.  I saw two guys dressed as Rhino and Scorpion from Spiderman and I laugh thinking about them struggling to walk through the crowd and flipping through boxes of half price trades.

This week for Challengers Assembled the theme is "Cosplay".  However you interpret that.  So here is my interpretation.  I wasn't happy with any of the captions/word bubbles I came up with so feel free to leave your own in the comments!

If you would like to purchase the original art please e-mail Jason at Castilloillustration dot com.

iPad ProCreate painting: Ang

I gotta say ProCreate is in the running for my favorite iPad painting/drawing app so far.  I took my iPad to my favorite coffee shop; Ipsento (get the Cardamom Rose...mmm) and decided to paint Ang from Avatar: The Last Airbender one the best TV shows ever. 

Procreate gets mad props for the intuitive interface. I never felt like I had to search for anything. It never gets in the way of your artboard when you don't want it to.  The adjustments most people need easily accessable; opacity, brush size, undo and redo are right off to the side (1).  They are always there and they only take up a tiny amount of space on the side or bottom depending on the iPad orientation. 

1) Adjustments are easily accessible 2) The Brush palette

The brush library itself is full of useful presets.  The types of brushes include sketching, inking, painting, airbrushing, textures, and abstract (2).  For this Ang painting I primarily stuck to the wet brushes.  The flow of the paint and the way the colors blend on screen feels natural and smooth.  There is little to no lag on my iPad 2 - even when working in HD mode. You can also control many settings like spacing, scatter, wetness and shape of any brush. 

A cool feature I have yet to try is the brush editor.  It appears that you can import brushes and textures from photos and something called "Pro Library".  It seems very similar to the way you construct custom brushes in Photoshop. 

Also like Photoshop, Procreate has a layer palette that comes in handy (3). I used one layer to get a quick sketch down and set it to multiply to start painting on another layer underneath.  I also used a layers for the mountains and was able to adjust the transparency for the ones in the distant background.

3) The layers palette

My only complaint is that the app froze when I was about an hour into painting. I tried to save the image earlier but could not find a save option.  This is only a minor complaint because the app seems to have an auto-save feature!  When I relaunched the app my painting was saved from the exact spot that I left off.  So, my complaint was solved before I even knew it.

Ang: the Last Airbender

So yah. This app pretty much rocks and is only $4.99 on the app store.  Stay tuned - I think I'm going to continue this iPad painting app review with a new app next week.

iPad ArtStudio drawing

I made this little squid alien dude in ArtStudio on my iPad 2.   It was the first time I really used the iPad as a drawing tool and I will definitely be doing it again.  I also used a stylus I got on Amazon for 5 bucks. I'd really like a stylus with a "sharp" point as opposed to the nub I see on most.  If anyone knows of one let me know in the comments.

The character is part of some concepting for a kid friendly comic I'm making.