Commission Spotlight: Meet @Olyup's new Brand Owly the owl!

Commission spotlight! Woohoo. Totally completely new content creation!

Before I continue, I want to take a second to explain to any new followers (I have gained quite a bit in the last month) that I am MaliceRed. Graphics Designer, and Amateur Market Analyst.

This post is to show off a design that I was hired to create for @olyup

Steemit has once again become the lucrative goldmine of content and ideas. Posting and sharing creativity, innovation, and generally interesting content has become absolutely rewarding.

One of the best ways to show the world and especially the Steemit ecosystem, that your content is legitimately well done, is by displaying a brand.

For centuries, art and design have been used to illustrate and enrich content. Today, that's truer than ever before.

The last person who I worked on a blogging brand was @cryptoctopus. Now, I'm not saying his success is because of my designs, all I'm saying, is whenever I see his avatar or posts, I can't help but smile.

I know @cryptoctopus produces some damn good content, that is the lasting impression I get when I see his post. Effort and hard work has been put into those posts.

Today, I bring you Oly the owl, designed for @olyup, someone else who produces good content.

The Client

Now, if you didn't know, @olyup is a hidden gem in the community. He often curates, but most of all, he produces totally unique content.

Some of the content he writes is purely for the improvement of others. Things such as guides and how-tos. Really useful content.

I highly encourage some of you larger curators to consider looking at his content, as the stuff that he's making is actually pretty good.

Let's continue on to the brief.

The Brief

When I was first approached for this project, olyup had a very specific style he was looking for.

My style to be exact.

Well, my style is very distinctive. I always go for minimal designs. Using basic shapes to make a very clean and optimized look. It's about to be 2018, and Minimalistic designs are still trending.

For this particular project, I had to come up with:

• A Logo
• An Avatar
• A cover image
• A thumbnail image

@Olyup was looking for a very specific feeling he wanted to convey with these images.

Professional, Friendly, Simplistic.
All very good elements to incorporate with a minimalist design.

Additionally, @olyup frequently uploads tutorials and learning contents. So he did want to associate with something of a professor. A learning instructor, since that's what he'd like his followers and curators to see him as. Very respectable and fits the bill quite nicely.

So, I wanted to take @olyup's very unique username, and use it to manifest something extremely unique.

Oly sounds a lot like Owl. Which just so happened to be @olyup's favorite animal.

Sweet.

The Logo

Every logo should be simple and rememberable. Someone should be able to look once at a logo, and remember it for a long time.

I present...

Using very basic shapes, most particularly Os I'm able to create a design in which it reminds of both glasses (Which are a sign of intelligence) and a owl.

This is just another example of how less is more, and more is less.

Which brings us to the avatar.

Here is a completely original design by me.

Notice the shape of the glasses is also the same shape that we built the logo from. This adds originality to the @olyup brand. Completely personalizing this graphic for him.

We can also see, we're keeping it very minimal, using organic shapes to build a very basic owl. But at the same time, we've designed little extras for what I think should be named Owly.

This is all done using Illustrator for easy customization later. Much like all of my work.

The feeling of friendly is portrayed by using a bit of a cartoon style. But not getting too much into an illustration using shadows and highlights.

This further cements the minimalist style we were aiming for.

All in one, we were able to incorporate everything in the brief.

One other thing about this being vectors. It makes editing these graphics a breeze and interchangable with other designs. Here's an example.

Moving on to the cover image.

This was actually very easy to design. Already establishing what we're looking for, and what relates to the graphics. It's really as simple as putting 2 things together.

For the coverimage, we obviously want to incorporate what @olyup's content is about. What represents him the most, and what he wants to be known for.

Now, of course, this isn't the specified dimensions Steemit needs to set this up as a coverimage. But I did want to show off how we can use simple and minimal shapes to help illustrate key things.

We see that we're using @olyup's avatar for this design. We immediately want to associate @olyup with Owly the owl.

We also want to emphasize, "Hey this blog is for learning and other cool things" with the wallpaper and chalkboard. Illustrating a classroom helps associate that his blog is for learning things.

But we're also doing it in a very tasteful, minimalistic way. Preserving the professionalism and modern tones, without getting too childish in the illustration.

And also, like any good marketer will tell you, using Call to actions is an effective way to help drive traffic.

UPVOTE. FOLLOW. RESTEEM are quite effective at reminding the audience, hey upvote follow and resteem please. However, we're actually being very creative about it.

We're using our adorable chalkboard to help convey that message, without breaking the fourth wall. I always try to do these with cover images personally. Finding ways to incorporate these kind of things naturally.

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Well, that's all for now folks.

I hope you guys found this post pleasing and creative. Lately I haven't been blogging too much about designs or even posting much in terms of spotlights, but I assure you that I am continually using Steemit to promote my original content and ideas.

A big thank you goes out to @Olyup for hiring me on this commission. I hope that this brand serves him faithfully for many many years to come.

Another big thank you goes out to my regular supporters who help sustain me and keeping steemit a fantastic place to share ideas and partake in meaningful discussion.

You all are so great, how'd I get so lucky to have you guys currate and follow me?

And as always folks, please let me know what you guys think about these designs.

Thanks again!