What this blog is about....

Although I studied painting, sculpture and some other fine arts, I absolutely consider myself a graphic designer. I've worked in probably about 100 businesses, either as a full-timer or freelancer. One of my passions is corporate identity design. I suppose it all started at the School of Visual Arts on 23rd Street in New York City when I was enrolled in a Corporate Identity Development course. This was probably around 20 years ago or so. We had to develop a fictitious company, design a logo and then create an entire corporate identity guidelines manual. Mine was for a travel company that did more "off the beaten path" types of tours. I named it "Adventure Quest Tours". Not quite the best name, but for a fictitious company, but it would have to do. The instructor, Jose, was an experienced designer with his own graphic design firm and had done some amazing work including work for the Olympic Games in Mexico. After he showed us some of his graphic guidelines, I was hooked. I'm a bit of a control freak so designing a logo and stating how it should and should not be used appealed to both the artist and neurotic in me. I didn't finish my guidelines before the class ended but then went to see him and all I remember him saying that it was one of the best student corporate guidelines books he had seen. He even kept it to show future classes.

Something else I remember from SVA is that in one of my classes, we got to sit in on a lecture by the typography master, Ed Benguiat. Now you want to talk about legends, this is the guy that has designed over 600 typefaces (including the self-titled Benguiat font) and has designed/redesigned some incredible logotypes including Esquire, McCall's, Reader's Digest, Estee Lauder, etc. I was already a typography geek, so meeting someone of his caliber was like meeting a movie star.

Flash-forward nearly two decades and I find myself a Zazzle designer. I have designed on just about every product Zazzle has to offer (ok, not skateboards) but I still find myself drawn to business cards and related corporate identity products. I'm a business design/typography geek at heart which is why I  started this blog to showcase some of the incredible work being done by my fellow artists and designers. I will also discuss the designs and the artist's overall style.

This blog is not just going to be about business cards, because successful corporate identity design needs to translate to related products, eg: letterhead, envelopes, hats, shirts, flyers, etc. So all the better if I can showcase an entire business line.

Thanks for stopping by and hopefully you'll enjoy seeing some wonderful designs and better yet, patronize those shops.