Variety Dogs

For the past couple of weeks, I've been dealing with dogs, specifically painting them and turning them into logos.

An example of the former is above. My cousin Jamie asked me to paint his girlfriend's dog Gator as a surprise for her upcoming birthday. While dog portraiture is not something I hope to specialize in, this ol' boy was too cute to resist, and hey, a commission's a commission. Gator's painting is small (8"x10") and took me about a day and a half to complete. On the extremely off chance that Jamie's girlfriend is reading this--and I do not even know what her name is!--please act surprised when he gives this painting to you next month, okay?

And then there were the dog logos. A friend of mine specializes in website upgrades, and she asked me to come up with a logo for the Wilmette Pet Center, whose website header used to look like this:

My assignment: come up with a better dog in the shape of a W. Client's request: keep the dog a Scottie. My friend's request: give the dog a green bow. This was all I had to go by, but...no problem!

Feeling very much like Don Draper, I came up with two logos one morning (because I'm all about options, and also because I am nice). The first one was something of my own invention, and the second one was a remake of the original dog, whose back legs and tail formed a W. Here's the first Scottie:

Cute and oddly Wu-Tang Clannish, no? The client loved it, and my pal loved it. She made an adorable header with it. (Note: the paint texture was smoothed out in the final version.)

But a few days later, the client had second thoughts, saying that my logo seemed "too high end" and "too boutique-y" for the store. He wanted something that looked more hand-drawn and kid-friendly, information that would have come in handy when I initially designed the W dogs. Luckily he seemed to like my backup logo, a scruffier dog.

Now, Jeff thought this dog's eyes looked creepy, which I can kind of see, but everybody knows that half-moon eyes mean glee. Right? Right. But the eyes were modified to make them look even more gleeful, and the green bow was changed to red, as the client decided he didn't want it to be green anymore. My tireless pal created a second new header for the website...

...which apparently the client liked for a while but has currently decided to go with a series of random animal photos in the header. My scruffy Scottie logo is on the site's sidebar for the time being. He may or may not change his mind about the sidebar. FUN!

Doesn't matter--still got paid!

So now I have two Scottie dogs, each in the convenient shape of a W, that are in need of good homes. Well, the first Wu Tang dog definitely needs a home. The scruffy one is more like a neighborhood dog that eats food somebody leaves out on a doorstep, and maybe that person will keep leaving it there, and maybe he won't.

So those were my recent adventures in dog art.

I plan to pick up the pace in terms of posting things over the next few days. Thanks for your patience and cooperation!

Comments

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Clients. They are something, aren't they? For me there is a honeymoon stage where I do my first design and everything is ok. It looks great even. They come back with some changes. Most of which makes it worse...but I'm still feeling it. I'm not Igor quite yet. Igor meaning I am assisting in something evil while muttering to myself. I always think I can get it finished with my feelings intact. Then the third round of revisions come in and suddenly you find yourself just doing what they want. Design experience? Not needed. At that point you are just moving pixels. I try to be emotionally absent before that happens but sometimes I just go dead inside and obsess about how I might have had a career curating old books instead.

Maybe they'll still use your logo eventually. The last stage is still good...though yeah, the eyes...have a distinct look to them. This former dog owner thinks something naughty just happened.

Posted by: Hil | October 21, 2011 at 11:01 PM