jayroop

having known brendan for a number of years, getting the chance to work with him on his new identity was a really exciting chance for me to put my skills to use in a really practical way – by helping a friend promote their own artwork.

that being said, the only thing harder than working for yourself is working for a friend. it seems to me that the reasoning stems from the amount of personal investment you put into any given project. for brendan, i was highly invested, wanting to see the project become a success less for my own interest and more for his own well being.

the approach i took towards developing the identity was to include him in the process during each step. my rationale was that the more i could get him involved, the more likely we were to come out with something that truly represented him and that he also understood and liked – identities are develish things, sometimes the most appropriate design can be one that the client completely hates. fortunately, brendan ended up really happy with the outcome of his logo and then the business cards i put together for him as the only printed extension of the identity.

while the logo was a key piece, the main goal was to put together a portfolio website that allowed visitors to immediately view projects as well as be able to view his process and contact information. if you’ve ever maintained a portfolio or website of your own, you will know that the hardest thing is keeping on top of updates. to ease this pain, i worked with my friend + developer nick palmigiano to implement a custom cms, storing all metadata about his work in a database and embedding videos from vimeo. so far, the response has been really positive and i hope to continue to work with my friends and artists in the future.