The website has a subtle noise background to offer more content contrast. The blue and yellow colour scheme really helps users scan pages with a lot of content.

With a simple left vertical navigation which would organize the species into categories and sub-categories. Users can than view the species within their tree families. Potters Road also wanted to show off their beautiful nursery in an easy to use photo gallery.

The strongest message with the site is shown through the background image slideshow. When viewing any page, images will fade in and out so users can really get a grasp for the industry and environments Natures Choice works in. The site content is laid out for users to easily access, and scan.

Projekt19 Goals

• Launch an iOS app – Whether it’s on the iPhone, iPad, or both.
• Launch a web app – Again, not saying what language or whether it might have an mobile app as a companion.
• Creative outlets – This is what I call Inspiredology – it’s a creative project that was created for fun, and then enjoy maintaining. This year I would love to launch another one or two.
• Writing – Projekt19 blog isn’t a huge area of content at this point, but there is a bunch of post titles waiting to be written, nothing is holding them back now!
• Client Work – 2010 was a fantastic year for Projekt19, the chance to work with some really great clients was a pleasure. I hope to wrap up some of our projects from 2010 in the next month or so and continue looking ahead with new diverse clients.
• Business – Turn Projekt19 into a more organized, sustainable company that overlooks multiple creative outlets.

There it is, what are your 2011 goals personal or work related?

A bittersweet update this morning, Andrew has decided to part ways from Projekt19. I wish Andrew all the best, he has taken an opportunity to work with Carbon Ads created by our friends at Fuel. With that being said, Andrew will still be posting on Inspiredology.

We are finally wrapping up a handful of projects which is why we haven’t been able to post much in our work or blog section. Some projects, can take a few weeks, and others a few months.

Going into the new year we are happy that we are closing out some of our projects, and looking forward to working with some great new clients.

Take a peak

If anyone is interested in seeing our work before it launches, be sure to follow us on dribbble, and check back here for some early concepts that we post. As cliche as this sounds, we are going to try to make the Projekt19 blog more active, and keep you updated.

The background is a replica of the wallpaper prominently displayed in the store. While the large chandelier and framed images add a sense of femininity that the site required.

The Brief

Projekt19 is a creative and dynamic design company offering website design and social media services and strategies. The company is small and works from remote offices currently in Ontario, the business plan is to access peers and customers through the internet. The company is targeting creative individuals and companies that want to have an online presence.

Supporting Words: Creative, Streamlined, Dynamic, Remote, Fresh

Ideas and concepts

Projekt19 has been an idea for over 2 years, and the logo design was the first thought, and it was one of the last things to be finalized. So these concepts span over a year of ideas, then sitting on them and then getting back into it. Usually our starting process starts with pen and paper, in this case that is true but I was unable to find our original sketches to show you.

First concepts were playing with the type treatments. We were unsure on how we were going to layout the type Projekt9teen, Projekt nineteen and finally Projekt19. With everything, brainstorming and discussion must happen to get the best end product. I think in the end we made the right decision going with the shortest possible wording.

After the first set of concepts we weren’t happy with the direction of the long name, so as mentioned above we shortened it to Projekt19. We made a simple type treatment, and started playing with symbols and colours.

Again, with every set of changes and concepts there should be something you have learned, and possibly liked enough to bring along to the next set of concepts. The type treatment was something we liked, and thought with a few more details we could make it work. But the symbol we created was just a symbol, had no value and just felt like a distraction.

We introduced the comment bubble and the integration of the number 19, we liked the idea, so we tried different placements and colour schemes. We also added a second symbol – the small little swoosh on the “o”. We thought this might help balance it out as it seemed weighted to the right. We really wanted to use blue but didn’t want to have blue be as powerful as it is with a lot of logos. We needed a strong secondary colour that could go toe to toe with the blue.

Final Versions

We decided on the blue and orange colour scheme, and we liked the idea of the comment 19 to sit on the baseline and have the same vertical height. The number needed to be as important as the word. What we thought was the final version, we decided to get some extra feedback. We uploaded the logo design to concept feedback, hoping to get some critical feedback to really push the logo as far as we could get it.

We received some great feedback and ended up with a slightly different logo. You will notice there are very small changes, the main one being the deletion of the swoosh, and the kerning or our type. We also altered the “1″ we thought it was distinct enough and could be misinterpreted as a single line.

When we started thinking of the Projekt19 brand, we went through numerous logo ideas, colour schemes, symbols and etc… Once we finally fell on the right brand we wanted a way to display all our brand elements. When companies ask for a logo design, they often overlook that it’s not just a logo that you need, but it’s an entire brand identity. Logo design is the starting point, but add in letterheads, envelopes, business cards, and you now have a handful of different design elements.

Take into consideration where your logo will be presented, most likely you will use it on your business cards at 3″x2.5″, possibly store signage which could be 6′x12′, and as we are surrounded by digital life, our logo will be used all over the internet.

Creating a Styleguide will help keep your brand aligned. If you run a small business or a large business it will help keep your team up to date on how your brand should be used. A lot of big corporate companies like Pepsi, Coke, ESPN and Starbucks all have big 100 page styleguides, you don’t need something that big, just something that outlines the most important brand guidelines.

When we designed our logo, we also needed a secondary  logo, business cards, font treatment, CMYK and RGB numbers. While we were designing all these elements, it felt unorganized going from file to file without being able to reference back to a document which outlined colours, spaces and etc…

We then set up a simple six page styleguide that had all the necessary documentation of our brand.  Our styleguide consists of the following;

Logo

Simple page displaying our logo as we want it to be displayed.

Tagline Placement

Displayed our tagline in it’s different states. As well, displayed the tagline placement to the logo, where it would appear corresponding to the logo.

Colours & Logo Inverted

Page outlines our colour values (CMYK, RGB, Hex) as well as shows our logo inverted on a dark colour.

Typography

Displays the font we have chosen for our brand, the font will be used for our web copy, advertising copy and business card copy.

Business Card Design

A sample business card layout and design. This page is very useful when looking for a business card sample if we add new team members.

There are multiple benefits for having a styleguide for your business.

• If you are in need of any design services. All designers will appreciate this file, and you will appreciate not having 20 emails asking for the right logo.
• Sending any files to a printer accompanied by this file – again your printer will appreciate your business much more.
• Your sales team are trying to sell the brand, if they don’t have the proper materials, your brand can be affected.

Other things to include in your Styleguide

• PowerPoint Templates and guidelines
• Letter head, Envelopes and other Stationary Templates
• Vehicle Graphics

Here you can download the Projekt19 Styleguide to get a head start of what yours could look like.

A Fascinating Look At The Numbers Behind Social Media

Download

• 1024×768
• 1280×1024
• 1440×900
• 1680×1050
• 1900×1200
• iPhone
• iPad