By Brian Grimmer
Ask any of my friends, I am 'that guy' among my friends. As a professional, you might think that being public about cannabis would not be a wise career choice. Admittedly, the social perspective of such a professional association, even as recently as just a few short years ago, may have held some consequential truth and wisdom. Thankfully, that idea is quickly fading away and falling to the wayside. Why wouldn't an intelligent, creative business-minded person want to identify with or participate in a multi-billion-dollar industry rich with opportunity?
Cannabis is an industry that is growing exponentially as more and more states choose to regulate and legalize cannabis. New businesses open, jobs are created for those with skills once hidden from 'authority.' Growers, processors, networking skills, marketing experience, accounting skills, and people skills once looked at with disdain are now able to gain employment as skilled laborers, leaders, and creatives.
While I have plenty of graphic design examples, the once-hidden pot leaf, infographics, and other cannabis-related marketing materials I developed in college are now professional portfolio subjects. My activism experience and collegiate reputation as 'the marijuana man' for conducting research into the cannabis culture equates to marketable skills and experience. For me personally, designing for the cannabis industry is a form of personal activism through professional marketing. I love what I do as I develop artwork and websites that support businesses and cannabis users are who are highly capable, talented, creative professionals in their chosen professions.
I'm proud to be both an artist and activist for an industry I know is creating jobs as well as entrepreneurial opportunities. Job creation is good for business as well as good politics. Activism and business opportunity combine to strip away the negative social associations and connotations with cannabis that many successful professionals have proven to be untrue.
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Brian Grimmer is a freelance graphic designer, web developer, and proprietor of Grafx.One, a freelance design studio in the Seattle area. Brian has more than thirty years of design experience in the creative arts industry. Call Grafx.One to take your business to the next level with a professionally designed logo or website.
July Specials:
Logo Design - $50
Logo / Business Card / Letterhead design - $100
Website design - $100 and up:
- monthly maintenance services available
eCommerce website - $300 and up:
- monthly maintenance services available
My professional portfolio.
Grafx.One is a veteran-owned business
This article was originally published in the blog Replica Life.
Saturday, July 15, 2017
Friday, June 23, 2017
I am listed in ProFinder on LinkedIn!
By Brian Grimmer
The marketing is paying off, I've been listed in ProFinder on LinkedIn!
The marketing is paying off, I've been listed in ProFinder on LinkedIn!
Wednesday, June 21, 2017
JHorticulture Business Identity - Logo and Business Card Design
By Brian Grimmer
John Hodge is a fellow veteran working hard to start up a gardening business in the Shoreline WA area. John wanted a professional look for his new business venture. This is what I created for him.
John Hodge is a fellow veteran working hard to start up a gardening business in the Shoreline WA area. John wanted a professional look for his new business venture. This is what I created for him.
John loved the design.
I followed up with this business card mockup, John accepted the design, he particularly enjoyed the duplication of the logo in his name. Now he is just looking for work to earn a little advertising budget to pay for website hosting. In the meantime, I will host his fledgling website in a subdomain of Grafx.One.
Tuesday, June 6, 2017
June 6, 1944 - D-Day
By Brian Grimmer
In remembrance of D-Day - June 6th, 1944. A salute to those who served in the liberation of Europe.
Created in Adobe Photoshop.
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Weaving through the flak over Normandy. |
Combining Work with Seattle Pride and a Subtle Tribute
By Brian Grimmer
Occasionally, the creative process and the universe merge in strange yet beautiful ways. Initially, I had planned to create the below graphic so that the logo was a nice warm blazing sun in celebration of the coming summer season. I had just placed the sun and was adding a gaussian blur for the glowing effect when my music service played Soundgarden's Black Hole Sun. With recent events coming to mind, I followed the creative divergence and came up with this.
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| Homage to Soundgarden and Chris Cornell. His spirit lives on. |
Monday, June 5, 2017
How to customize your Twitter page header and look great!
By Brian Grimmer
When creating a custom header image for use on Twitter, create your image to be 1500 pixels wide by 500 pixels tall. You should design your image so that the bottom area underneath the first arc of the dotted line is empty of any important information. This area will be covered by your profile image. If you don't get things just right the first time, don't fret. You can edit your image, save and easily upload the edited revision to replace the old image.
By the way, your Twitter profile image is set to display at 200 pixels x 200 pixels. Keeping Retina displays in mind, it is recommended to use a 400 x 400-pixel image and let Twitter do the resizing.
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| Creating a custom header for your Twitter page is simple once you know what the dimensions need to be. Check out the above header image on Twitter. |
Brian Grimmer is a freelance graphic designer, web developer, and proprietor of Grafx.One, a freelance design studio in the Seattle area. Brian has more than thirty years of design experience in the creative arts industry. Call Grafx.One to take your business to the next level with a professionally designed logo or website.
Sunday, June 4, 2017
Sports Car Market magazine - Cover layouts
By Brian Grimmer
Just posted some work from the past in my Behance portfolio. While serving as the art director for Keith Martin's Sports Car Market (SCM) magazine back in 2001-2002. I learned a lot about collector cars and developed an appreciation for classic automobiles during my time working with the company. Published by Keith Martin in Portland, Oregon, I transitioned SCM from Adobe PageMaker to InDesign 2.0 and significantly streamlined the production process.
Assembling the cover was always my favorite part of the monthly publication process. Using artist supplied artwork, the challenge was developing a masthead that complemented the artist's work yet still worked within the readability needs of the informational content. Today we have tools and mobile apps like Adobe Color which assist in making color selection an easy, if not enjoyable process.
Features within InDesign allowed the design process of the SCM cover to be sped up and simplified by using a template. Further revisions for the next issue only involved replacing the textual data, changing the colors, and linking to the cover artwork in the InDesign tool panel. Under the similar but more complex PageMaker publishing process, any changes to the masthead had to be applied to a separate Adobe Illustrator file and relinked.
The method of using a color flexible masthead and commissioned artwork inclusion was popular practice for publications who enjoy a strong name recognition in their particular industry and market. Wanting to expand beyond the niche though, (and likely to increase the efficiency of the overall production process as I recall the artwork selection and subsequent artist negotiations were very consuming of Keith's time) SCM has since updated their look and feel significantly to appeal to a broader audience.
Keith Martin knows his cars and Sports Car Market magazine exemplifies his vast knowledge on the subject. If you are into classic and collector cars (or are considering owning one), I invite you to check out Sports Car Market magazine before you even think about car shopping.
----
Brian Grimmer is a freelance graphic designer, web developer, and proprietor of Grafx.One, a freelance design studio in the Seattle area. Brian has more than thirty years of design experience in the creative arts industry. Call Grafx.One to take your business to the next level with a professionally designed logo or website.
July Specials:
Logo Design - $50
Logo / Business Card / Letterhead design - $100
Website design - $100 and up:
- monthly maintenance services available
eCommerce website - $300 and up:
- monthly maintenance services available
Just posted some work from the past in my Behance portfolio. While serving as the art director for Keith Martin's Sports Car Market (SCM) magazine back in 2001-2002. I learned a lot about collector cars and developed an appreciation for classic automobiles during my time working with the company. Published by Keith Martin in Portland, Oregon, I transitioned SCM from Adobe PageMaker to InDesign 2.0 and significantly streamlined the production process.
Assembling the cover was always my favorite part of the monthly publication process. Using artist supplied artwork, the challenge was developing a masthead that complemented the artist's work yet still worked within the readability needs of the informational content. Today we have tools and mobile apps like Adobe Color which assist in making color selection an easy, if not enjoyable process.
Features within InDesign allowed the design process of the SCM cover to be sped up and simplified by using a template. Further revisions for the next issue only involved replacing the textual data, changing the colors, and linking to the cover artwork in the InDesign tool panel. Under the similar but more complex PageMaker publishing process, any changes to the masthead had to be applied to a separate Adobe Illustrator file and relinked.
The method of using a color flexible masthead and commissioned artwork inclusion was popular practice for publications who enjoy a strong name recognition in their particular industry and market. Wanting to expand beyond the niche though, (and likely to increase the efficiency of the overall production process as I recall the artwork selection and subsequent artist negotiations were very consuming of Keith's time) SCM has since updated their look and feel significantly to appeal to a broader audience.
Keith Martin knows his cars and Sports Car Market magazine exemplifies his vast knowledge on the subject. If you are into classic and collector cars (or are considering owning one), I invite you to check out Sports Car Market magazine before you even think about car shopping.
 |
| Check out the magazine cover layouts created for Sports Car Market magazine using Adobe InDesign 2.0 back in the day. |
Brian Grimmer is a freelance graphic designer, web developer, and proprietor of Grafx.One, a freelance design studio in the Seattle area. Brian has more than thirty years of design experience in the creative arts industry. Call Grafx.One to take your business to the next level with a professionally designed logo or website.
July Specials:
Logo Design - $50
Logo / Business Card / Letterhead design - $100
Website design - $100 and up:
- monthly maintenance services available
eCommerce website - $300 and up:
- monthly maintenance services available
Saturday, June 3, 2017
Turning a mistake into portfolio gem
By Brian Grimmer
Earlier today I found an ancient 16 MB USB thumb drive (yes, they made them that small) in a little tin I've had since the 1990s. Within a folder on the drive, I found an old portfolio of mine with the associated image files. Looking through I found an image I had used successfully in my portfolio for a few years even though it had a glaring error on it. The error was pre-acknowledged in the presentation and highlighted in the portfolio to show that even with the best efforts, Murphy and his law will pay a visit at some point.
The image below is a screenshot of a website I built overnight for a client back in the early 2000s. Back then people thought web developers and graphic designers were technological witch doctors that magically made websites and artwork appear on computers. Visual-based web-builders of the era were clunky and produced horrible code, it was a talent to code visually and understand early versions of HTML & CSS. With such reverence, it wasn't long before a prima donna personality set in thanks to the constant ego feed via adulation from satisfied clients.
Designers need to have an ego in order to be assertive and courageous enough to think outside the box to provide the "in-the-box" solutions clients expect. For talented designers, it was often an accepted behavior. Like Patton and Montgomery, two World War Two generals who were known as prima donnas, the ego allowed them to push the limits and think outside the box to defeat their nemesis Rommel in combat. The success of these generals in combat depended greatly upon their ego and allowed them to surmount the challenges they faced.
Designers pushing the edges of the norm is what got us from that "video-game console-era web design like above to the amazingly interactive websites we have today. The ego provides a designer the necessary backbone to say "Hey, I need that content tomorrow or the deadline is toast." Like the Enterprize's "Scottie," the designer has padded the time estimate by a few hours for themselves to seemingly pull a miracle out of the hat.
So the client finally gets you the new content at 10:00 pm the night before the site is scheduled to launch. An all-nighter later and miracle made... However, as the image below clearly shows the blue box outline, an element of the button was incorrectly coded... Ooops!!! Miracle now imperfect...
Embarrassingly, typos are the gremlins of code and can slip into the code easily and at any time as shown in this "Turn of the Century" website build proof that was sent to the client after an all-nighter coding session.
There's no need to feel bad about such "human" errors though ... One missed " />" tag in your HTML code and a professional design (for the time) becomes a moment of humility with the client. The designer still is the hero of the day in the client's eyes as they recognize that the designer spent all night entering new changes to and performing last minute edits to content. A quick-fix and we're done...
A missing closing tag, after all, takes only a few minutes to fix, and he got it done overnight... Wow! I successfully used this image as part of my portfolio to show I am human too and won't cop an attitude as I know how easily such simple mistakes can be overlooked and fixed.
What has your experience been with regard to past mistakes? Respond below your comments and discussion.
Earlier today I found an ancient 16 MB USB thumb drive (yes, they made them that small) in a little tin I've had since the 1990s. Within a folder on the drive, I found an old portfolio of mine with the associated image files. Looking through I found an image I had used successfully in my portfolio for a few years even though it had a glaring error on it. The error was pre-acknowledged in the presentation and highlighted in the portfolio to show that even with the best efforts, Murphy and his law will pay a visit at some point.
The image below is a screenshot of a website I built overnight for a client back in the early 2000s. Back then people thought web developers and graphic designers were technological witch doctors that magically made websites and artwork appear on computers. Visual-based web-builders of the era were clunky and produced horrible code, it was a talent to code visually and understand early versions of HTML & CSS. With such reverence, it wasn't long before a prima donna personality set in thanks to the constant ego feed via adulation from satisfied clients.
 |
| A website screenshot from the early 2000s used successfully in a portfolio despite containing an error, |
Designers need to have an ego in order to be assertive and courageous enough to think outside the box to provide the "in-the-box" solutions clients expect. For talented designers, it was often an accepted behavior. Like Patton and Montgomery, two World War Two generals who were known as prima donnas, the ego allowed them to push the limits and think outside the box to defeat their nemesis Rommel in combat. The success of these generals in combat depended greatly upon their ego and allowed them to surmount the challenges they faced.
Designers pushing the edges of the norm is what got us from that "video-game console-era web design like above to the amazingly interactive websites we have today. The ego provides a designer the necessary backbone to say "Hey, I need that content tomorrow or the deadline is toast." Like the Enterprize's "Scottie," the designer has padded the time estimate by a few hours for themselves to seemingly pull a miracle out of the hat.
So the client finally gets you the new content at 10:00 pm the night before the site is scheduled to launch. An all-nighter later and miracle made... However, as the image below clearly shows the blue box outline, an element of the button was incorrectly coded... Ooops!!! Miracle now imperfect...
Embarrassingly, typos are the gremlins of code and can slip into the code easily and at any time as shown in this "Turn of the Century" website build proof that was sent to the client after an all-nighter coding session.
There's no need to feel bad about such "human" errors though ... One missed " />" tag in your HTML code and a professional design (for the time) becomes a moment of humility with the client. The designer still is the hero of the day in the client's eyes as they recognize that the designer spent all night entering new changes to and performing last minute edits to content. A quick-fix and we're done...
A missing closing tag, after all, takes only a few minutes to fix, and he got it done overnight... Wow! I successfully used this image as part of my portfolio to show I am human too and won't cop an attitude as I know how easily such simple mistakes can be overlooked and fixed.
What has your experience been with regard to past mistakes? Respond below your comments and discussion.
Tuesday, April 25, 2017
Mainstream Media Silent As West Virginia Becomes 29th State to Legalize Medical Cannabis
By Brian Grimmer
With the exception of U.S. News, the mainstream media has been quiet about West Virginia Governor Jim Justice and his signing of Senate Bill 386. As Quinn Marie reported in Culture Magazine, SB386 the Medical Cannabis Act was signed into law on April 19, 2107. The signing of the bill made West Virginia the 29th State to legalize medical cannabis.
Searching Google, the legislation is making its way through the news feeds of the counter-culture. The only other "mainstream media" reporting anything as of the penning of this report is WSLS, an NBC affiliate in Roanoke, Virginia. Their headline "West Virginia medical marijuana legalization could cross state lines - Fear is it will carry over into more illegal use in Virginia" shows the fear-based difficulties cannabis activists still face in parts of the country.
With the exception of U.S. News, the mainstream media has been quiet about West Virginia Governor Jim Justice and his signing of Senate Bill 386. As Quinn Marie reported in Culture Magazine, SB386 the Medical Cannabis Act was signed into law on April 19, 2107. The signing of the bill made West Virginia the 29th State to legalize medical cannabis.
Searching Google, the legislation is making its way through the news feeds of the counter-culture. The only other "mainstream media" reporting anything as of the penning of this report is WSLS, an NBC affiliate in Roanoke, Virginia. Their headline "West Virginia medical marijuana legalization could cross state lines - Fear is it will carry over into more illegal use in Virginia" shows the fear-based difficulties cannabis activists still face in parts of the country.
Monday, April 24, 2017
Biteable - the World's Simplest Video Maker
By Brian Grimmer
I just can't knock free. Even in the world of graphic design, free combined with simple and straightforward makes for a hands down winner. The draw of video editing software made simple is that it only takes a few minutes to throw together a quick customized video for a potential customer.
As an example, I made a short video to promote my freelance efforts (we all gotta eat), It was actually fun making the little presentation video. Selecting from the many options, I was able to put together the test example in about 15 minutes.
While limited in application for the free version (a shareable link to a You-Tube-like video being provided instead of an actual or editable video file), the paid service provides many more options for the user and removes the watermark. The true power of Biteable is in it simplicity. What Biteable can produce can be a useful tool for almost any office scenario where a quick self-labeled light-weight video would be useful.
At $99/year, the cloud-based video service is very attractive for many situations where the heavyweight desktop apps are just too much of an investment as well as just too complicated for the typical daily needs,
Brian Grimmer - Portfolio Sample on Biteable.
About Brian Grimmer
Mr. Grimmer is a thirty-year veteran of the Graphic Design industry and the proprietor of Grafx.One, a Seattle-based graphic design and web development studio. This article was republished in Replica Life on July 12, 2017.
I just can't knock free. Even in the world of graphic design, free combined with simple and straightforward makes for a hands down winner. The draw of video editing software made simple is that it only takes a few minutes to throw together a quick customized video for a potential customer.
As an example, I made a short video to promote my freelance efforts (we all gotta eat), It was actually fun making the little presentation video. Selecting from the many options, I was able to put together the test example in about 15 minutes.
While limited in application for the free version (a shareable link to a You-Tube-like video being provided instead of an actual or editable video file), the paid service provides many more options for the user and removes the watermark. The true power of Biteable is in it simplicity. What Biteable can produce can be a useful tool for almost any office scenario where a quick self-labeled light-weight video would be useful.
At $99/year, the cloud-based video service is very attractive for many situations where the heavyweight desktop apps are just too much of an investment as well as just too complicated for the typical daily needs,
Brian Grimmer - Portfolio Sample on Biteable.
About Brian Grimmer
Mr. Grimmer is a thirty-year veteran of the Graphic Design industry and the proprietor of Grafx.One, a Seattle-based graphic design and web development studio. This article was republished in Replica Life on July 12, 2017.
Saturday, April 22, 2017
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