St. Johns banners finally see the light of day

I've always enjoyed creating designs for businesses, nonprofit organizations and events in my own North Portland neighborhood. Back in early 2002 I designed a series of banners for the volunteer organization Destination St. Johns. The banners were to be displayed on utility poles in the business district of St. Johns, less than a five minute drive from my home studio.

And then nothing happened with the designs and the banners never appeared in public.

In an October 2009 article in the late, great neighborhood newspaper The Sentinel (a past identity design client of mine), Meg Farra, one of the founders of Destination St. Johns, explained, “It was a group we put together to do some projects within St. Johns. For example, we planted native plants in the tree wells through downtown and organized some cleanups before the parade for a few years."

As reported in The Sentinel, "The group decided to create banners for downtown and applied for a grant from the North Portland Trust Fund [the Portland International Raceway noise mitigation funded.] They received $4000 along with support and in-kind donations from many businesses and other groups in St. Johns and North Portland."

I didn't realize that the banners had ever been produced - but instead of adding high-flying color over downtown St. Johns, the banners and all hardware were stored in the basement of the historic Kenton Firehouse.

According to The Sentinel: "...the set of 20 or so vinyl banners were never hung due to political squabbling and the high cost of insurance."

"When the banners were ready to hang, bureaucratic difficulties and a policy change at Portland General Electric entered the game. Partway through negotiations about the banners, PGE changed its insurance requirements. Instead of $1 million, groups now had to carry $2 million in insurance before PGE would allow them to use its poles. PGE also asked Destination St. Johns to coordinate with the St. Johns Boosters, who had a long-standing arrangement with PGE to use certain light poles at Christmastime. A rift developed between some of the leaders involved and for over a year the groups were unable to negotiate a compromise.

"At that point, according to Tom Griffin-Valade of the Office of Neighborhood Involvement, the banners were rolled up and stored in the basement of the Office of Neighborhood Involvement at the Kenton Firehouse. Seven years passed."

The mystery of the missing banners had always intrigued Sentinel publisher Cornelius Swart. With a little detective work, he learned that the banners were in the Kenton Firehouse all along. Swart presented the banners to members of the St. Johns Neighborhood Association in May 2009. At the time of the October 2009 Sentinel article, efforts to hang the banners were being driven by members of the St. Johns Boosters and the St Johns Main Street Coalition, which have representatives from both neighborhood associations, businesses, and individual residents.

I'm not sure what transpired over the past year in regards to insurance issues and neighborhood politics. However, My partner Ed and I recently decided to make a Saturday morning visit to the St. Johns Farmer's Market - and were very surprised to see the banners lining the streets and the farmer's market venue, St. Johns Plaza.

On a recent sunny afternoon, I went to St. Johns to photograph the banners in place (above). I popped into St. Johns Booksellers, the location of my 2007 book signing for Identity Crisis!, to say "hi" to co-owner Nena Rawdah and explain why I was wandering the business district with my camera. She told me that upon learning that the banners were actually going to be installed, she requested a red and yellow one for installation in front of her store (above center).

"I didn't know who was responsible for the design of the banners," added Nena, "but, I'm certainly not surprised."

© 2010 Jeff Fisher LogoMotives.

Jeff Fisher judges 'American Graphic Design & Advertising 25' - and is featured in AGDA25 book

One year ago this week Jeff Fisher, the Engineer of Creative Identity for the firm Jeff Fisher LogoMotives, was asked to be a judge for American Graphic Design and Advertising 25. Formerly known as the American Corporate Identity Awards, the competition was expanded in its 25th year to include a much greater selection of graphic design work. Fisher, with over 30 years of identity design experience, was chosen to judge the logo design portion of the competition.

David E. Carter and Suzanna MW Stephens compiled the resulting annual publication, American Graphic Design and Advertising 25. The book was recently released by Collins Design, an imprint of HarperCollins.

A biography of Fisher and several examples of his own favorite work are included in the volume. The representative logo designs include:

• Jeff Fisher LogoMotives - The designer's own identity was a ten-year process. The image is featured in Letterhead and Logo Design 5, American Corporate Identity/14, New Logo & Trademark Design (Japan), PRINT's Regional Design Annual, The New Big Book of Logos, PRINT’s Best Logos & Symbols 6, Logo Design for Small Business 2, The Big Book of Business Cards, Logos from North to South America (Spain), New Logo & Trademark Collection (Japan), and The Savvy Designer’s Guide to Success.

• Holocaust Remembrance Project - One of a series of logos created for the Holland & Knight Charitable Foundation, this logo gives a graphic identity to the annual Holocaust remembrance essay contest for high school students. The triangle elements are used in a positive manner to take ownership of the negative image of the concentration camp uniform identification patches from the past. The design received a 2008 American Graphic Design Award and is showcased in the book 100s Visual Logos & Letterheads (UK).

• Vista House - This logo was created for the Friends of Vista House, Oregon State Parks Trust, and Oregon Parks and Recreation Department. The designer's sister, Sue Fisher, was Creative Director for the effort. Vista House was built in 1916-1918 as a memorial to Oregon pioneers and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The identity appears in the books Typography, Graphis Logo 6, Logos from North to South America (Spain) and 100s Visual Logos & Letterheads (UK).

• The Sentinel - A logo redesign for a monthly North Portland neighborhood newspaper involved combining letterforms from two typefaces, Boca Raton and Rockwell, to create a unique type treatment of the word "Sentinel." A third typeface, Helvetica Neue, was introduced for the line of location text.

• Cat Adoption Team - In an "aha" moment this rough concept came together. With the acronym C.A.T., there was a desire to create a graphic image that would clearly identify the organization without the need to spell out the name in all uses. The design won a Silver Award in the Summit Creative Awards. It is featured in the books Killed Ideas, Vol. 1, Letterhead & Logo Design 11, Designing for the Greater Good, LogoLounge Master Library Vol. 2, and the upcoming Logo Nest 01 (Australia)

Jeff Fisher LogoMotives has been the recipient of 27 American Corporate Identity Awards in the past.

© 2010 Jeff Fisher LogoMotives

Re-Design: The Sentinel

Yesterday the result of my latest identity redesign project arrived in the mail - the July issue of my local neighborhood monthly newspaper, The Sentinel.

A few weeks ago "scrappy" (Note: admittedly an inside joke reference) Managing Editor and Publisher Cornelius Swart contacted me in regards to possibly redesigning the paper's identity and assisting in the establishment of a color palette for the news vehicle. Swart, who I originally met several years ago when he was working with the Portsmouth Community Development Corporation - another local identity re-design client, was familiar with my wide variety of past North Portland logo design clients. In addition, over the past 30 years I have designed identities for several publications.

The Sentinel was going through a total redesign, including a change in page size as a cost-saving measure and to allow for greater unfolded newspaper rack placement in local businesses. Art Director Colleen Froehlich was creating the still evolving page format. St. Johns web designer Andy Nelson was - and is - working on the yet to be unveiled new web presence for the paper.

In meeting with all the players, in person and via email, I got a good sense of the direction in which they hoped the public persona of the publication would go. There was a desire to have "the look" be unique, fresher and bolder, while maintaining some elements of the common appearance of a newspaper or tabloid publication. The current image seemed to be fairly traditional to me (above top).

Initially I presented type treatments of The Sentinel, with an image of an eye replacing the dot over the letterform "i" and revamped sun rays as a background, making use of the fonts Unicorn, Boca Raton Solid, Blue Blate Special and Rockwell Extra Bold. I also toyed with adding some emphasis to the "n" and "ne" letters in "Sentinel," as references to "north" and "northeast" Portland, with overly complicated results. I maintained the placement of "THE" as a element of continuity, and historical perspective, to the existing identity.

Swart and his staff narrowed the type selection to the Boca Raton and Rockwell treatments. They liked the "sexiness" of Boca Raton, but thought it might be a little too "magazine-like." Those providing input felt that Rockwell conveyed the "seriousness" needed for a newspaper, but the uppercase "S" letterform was too heavy, "clunky" and distracting. I was asked to finesse - or change - the "S" in the Rockwell treatment, to tweak the eye imagery, and play with "i" letterform a bit to make it possibly more lighthouse or "sentinel-like."

In literally going back to the drawing table, I worked on the "S" element for quite some time. I kept returning to the fact that everyone involved liked the "S" letterform from the Boca Raton font a great deal. In what was a bit of an "a-ha" moment I simply took the "S" from Boca Raton and dropped it in front of the Rockwell treatment of the remaining letters in the word "Sentinel." It seemed to work beautifully - and the newspaper crew agreed.

With some emails back and forth, in tweaking the eye element in my logo concept, the final new identity was approved (above bottom). The rays of light coming from the eye imagery seemed to become less and less important as the project progressed and eventually disappeared.

One of the things I really appreciated about working with the individuals involved in this project is that they really knew their "stuff." The design process for The Sentinel was much more of an actual collaboration than efforts with most of my clientele.

In our first meeting, Swart arrived with his copy of the Jim Krause book Color Index. Numerous Post-It notes marked color combinations he liked and was considering as possible palettes for future use in the newspaper. Once the logo design was finalized in black and white, Swart, art director Froehlich and I met to discuss the pros and cons of the various color options. From our discussion the suggested colors to be used were determined (above). While a blue and orange-ish color combination had been used previously, the new selections were richer and more intense. If used, the added suggested color options of the green and purple will give the paper an even greater visual richness.

It was great to receive the newly formatted paper (old design above left; new design above right) in the mail just days after completing the identity design. I appreciate Swart's column, and blog, mention that, "Thanks to local logo guru Jeff Fisher, The Sentinel has a spiffy new brand identity and logo."

(Note: My book, Identity Crisis!: 50 Redesigns That Transformed Stale Identities Into Successful Brands, contains case studies from 35 designers and firms located around the world. Learn more about the book on the Identity Crisis! blog.)

© 2008 Jeff Fisher LogoMotives