Posts in category: Graphic Design

I’m working on revamping WatchPaper, my long neglected blog about luxury watches. Part of the work is to polish the logo and get it up to date with the latest norms in branding.

Since I own the .com domain name, there was no need to keep it in the logo, so that was the first thing I dropped. I was also uncomfortable with the symbol that initially I created as a reference to an RSS symbol turned vertically, to elude to the 10 minutes past 10 position of watches, but it looked more like a WiFi sign, so that too I had to change.

Finally I changed the camelcase for lowercase and two colors.

Next thing on my list is to change the design of the website. It’s quite dated and I should make it responsive, so that it looks good on mobile devices too.

Going trough some old files, I found this logo that I did a couple of years ago for a mobile app.

The main idea behind the app was to find an environmentally friendly solution for urban commuting by sharing taxis rides with others.

The task of designing the logo was easier than usually, since I came up with the name too and I was involved in the planning phase too. The app never made it to the App Store, but I still had a lot of fun working on the logo.

The Responsive theme is adapting to different screen sizes.

I just launched the website I designed for Pearl Dental Clinic.

The website is powered by WordPress and the theme is based on Responsive Theme, that makes the website adapt to different screen sizes.

The website is rich in information about dentistry and I really hope it’ll get many visitors and will bring new clients to the clinic.

If you’re looking for an excellent dentist with lot of patience and kindness, int he West-Island of Montreal, than you should go to dr. Shafiei.

I’m really proud that I was offered the opportunity to design the logo af a new Nigerien foundation. FONSAD, or it’s longer name, the Salou Djibo Foundation is founded by Lieutenant General Salou Djibo, known for his involvement in the 2010 Nigerien coup d’état. He deposed the former President Mamadou Tandja, who tried to hang on to power unlawfully. You can read more about it here.

In less than a year, parliamentary and presidential elections were held, after which General Djibo handed over the power to the winner of the election, former opposition leader Mahamadou Issoufou.

It was my commission by an NGO to design a logo. It was the first time that I designed anything for an African client. 

In the local culture, the dried gourd shells are used to store water and since water will be in the center of the development projects financed by the foundation, we decided to make it the logo of the foundation. The symbol of gourd is even more meaningful for Nigerien people, since it is also used in proverbs and expressions to describe plenty and abundance. The color blue also reinforces the reference to water, while also denote hope.

For the website, we went with Drupal, as it can cover all the expectations of the members of the foundation.

Now that the website is up and running, I feel good. Not just that mission accomplished kind of feel good, but that good karma feel good, as I know that I had contributed to make the world a better place, especially now, with all the turmoil happening just next door to Niger.

If I made you curios, had over to www.fonsad.org (the website is in French) and why not, make a donation. It’ll be for a good cause.

Yolo Ventures

Yolo Venture is a VC company owning several niche web portals. When I was asked to create a logo for them, I had to Google the meaning of YOLO to learn that it’s an acronyme for ” you live only once” and it’s actually a modern version of “carpe diem”. I wanted to keep the same spirit in the design, so I changed the L into a fusion between 1 and the letter L.

Pearl Dental Clinic

This is a logo I’ve designed for dr. Ali Shafiei, the most gentle and kind dentist you will ever meet. With the choice of the colors and the rounded shape of the letters, I wanted to represent visually the human values he’s bringing into his dental practice.

ClubBelievers

ClubBelievers is a website that is built as I write this post that will deal with the electronic music scene.

I remember my first encounter with this logo. It was in the early days of my arrival to Montreal, I was riding the metro and guy next to me had a lapel pin with the rosette without the text. I was wondering about the meaning of it, until later I discovered that it’s actually the logo of the city I lived in.

The more I learned about this logo, the more fascinating I found it to be.

It was designed by the graphic design firm Georges Huel et Associés Inc. and adopted in 1981. The logo is inspired by the city’s coat of arms and its flag, where each petal is formed by the letter V and M, which stands for Ville de Montréal.

Each petal of the rosette is a heart and the four petals allude to the origin of the city, founded by the four ethnic groups, the French, the English, the Scottish and the Irish.

I love this logo, because it’s a rare example of genius visual communication, a unique example of smart simplicity; every element has a meaning, without being noisy.

The same George Huel, is also the author of another logo that marked the history of this city, the logo of the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games.

Find more information about this logo here.
See more graphic design works by George Huel here.

It was back in 2008, that I was approached by a friend to make a logo and a webpage for a girl with AIDS, who wants to create a foundation. Since it was a non-profit project, that could potentially help many people, I accepted it. The name of the foundation was the Lara Roxx Foundation with the mission to spread awareness and provide proper care to people living with HIV/ AIDS.

Here are a few lines about her I reproduce from the original website:

In March of 2004 Lara Roxx took a plane to Los Angeles leaving her native Montreal in search of a quick fortune in the Adult Entertainment’s land of opportunity known on the map as San Fernando Valley.

Her plan was simple. She would first meet her agent and then embark on a busy work schedule. The more scenes, the more money, and in L.A a young woman could perform several scenes a day and easily earn as much as $10,000 to $15,000 a week depending on how open minded she was in terms of her physical boundaries.

Eager to get to work Lara Roxx performed her first scene within 24 hours of landing on American soil. What was meant to be the first of many lucrative scenes was destined to end her career before it ever got off the ground.

Here is the logo I did:

and a screenshot of the page I designed:

Fast-forward to 2011, this week I overheard a dialogue about a girl invited to Tout le monde en parle at Radio Canada, the most popular talk-show in the Francophone Canada. I asked them if it was Lara, and to my surprise I learned that there is a documentary film about her life, that just came out.  I hope the experience of participating in this documentary project helped her get back the joy of life and hope for a better future.

Here is a short trailer of Inside Lara Roxx, a documentary directed by Mia Donovan