Crowe About It - Self Branding.

Matthew Crowe

Matthew Crowe

New Member
Hello, I am new to the forum so may be getting this a bit wrong so I apologise.

I have recently attempted to rebrand myself and would like your input. My name is Matthew Crowe so decided to play of my last name and the phrase, 'to crow about it' adapted to 'Crowe About It' and 'Something To Crowe About'. To show people croweing about my work I used a speech bubble with a creative, designed font inside. I have chosen five colours to differentiate each promotional material, for example each letter head a client received could have a different coloured logo on, accompanied by a different colour business etc. You get the idea. I did this to spice up the design a bit.

This is my current logo design, although I will adapt it to suit certain needs, ie, CD cover would say 'Something to Crowe About Inside'.



For business cards I decided to take the entire shape of the speech bubble. Although it would cost more, the initial cost of the die cut will only be a one of payment.



Any thoughts and criticisms will be very much appreciated, I do not want to commit to a design and then realise I have made mistakes or could improve it.
Thanks in advance. I hope to fit in nicely in your community.
 
Me likey. Wow, two feedback posts and no negatives? That's a rarity on this constrictively critical forum!
 
I've blown the business card up to the right size and without my glasses on I can't read it very well (I can read books/newspapers at this range). For me, the contrast/font size has to change.

EDIT: Forgot to say, love the brand concept and top image. Nice work, I'm just in auto-find-a-problem mode.
 
Hi Matthew
The concept is nice, there's a lot of fun applications for it out there, but I think it might be a good idea if you spent a little more time on it to try and inject a bit of individualism into it.

The speech bubble 'thing' is used a lot in point of sale/product promotional materials, I think there might be a slight issue that your brand might be mistaken for something lesser than it is.
If this wasn't a 'design' forum, from your top logo, I wouldn't have any idea what you do or what you're selling.

I'd also be interested to hear your rationale behind the distressed text. I'm not sure it adds anything to the idea, especially when it's set against the clean lines of the bubble.

This is an excellent idea to extend a brand and apply it to a wide range of promotional material. I'm just not quite sure if you're putting the cart before the horse. What is your most basic logo? Be cool if it was just an empty speech bubble in various colours, but you'd have to be brave to go with that I guess.

Don't mean to be overly negative. Just think you might have to refine the basic idea before overextending it.
 
Alex L said:
I've blown the business card up to the right size and without my glasses on I can't read it very well (I can read books/newspapers at this range). For me, the contrast/font size has to change.

EDIT: Forgot to say, love the brand concept and top image. Nice work, I'm just in auto-find-a-problem mode.
Click to expand...

That's odd, the font is pt size 8 which is larger than general sized business cards. May have to look into that one. Thanks for your comment.

Krey20 said:
Hi Matthew
The concept is nice, there's a lot of fun applications for it out there, but I think it might be a good idea if you spent a little more time on it to try and inject a bit of individualism into it.

The speech bubble 'thing' is used a lot in point of sale/product promotional materials, I think there might be a slight issue that your brand might be mistaken for something lesser than it is.
If this wasn't a 'design' forum, from your top logo, I wouldn't have any idea what you do or what you're selling.

I'd also be interested to hear your rationale behind the distressed text. I'm not sure it adds anything to the idea, especially when it's set against the clean lines of the bubble.

This is an excellent idea to extend a brand and apply it to a wide range of promotional material. I'm just not quite sure if you're putting the cart before the horse. What is your most basic logo? Be cool if it was just an empty speech bubble in various colours, but you'd have to be brave to go with that I guess.

Don't mean to be overly negative. Just think you might have to refine the basic idea before overextending it.
Click to expand...

Do you therefore think I should somehow send the message of 'I'm a designer' on the business card etc? I wouldn't say I have a set logo which is where I may be going wrong, I have ideas and designs for promotional material such as the business card, cd packaging, for example the top image of 'Something to crowe about' could become large stickers placed around buildings, bus stops etc on current posters suggesting that the content(people) are Croweing about it - sort of a promotional campaign. Is a logo explicitly necessary for what I require it for or could I adapt the idea and concept I have?

As for the colours they are these ones:

Five colours for business cards, posters, letterheads etc to spice up and add originality to the design.

The reason I chose the distressed or grungy text was to try a bit more of a design point of view(if that makes sense) I tried using a straight font and it looked weird and was ignored where as this one seems to stand out greater. But I do agree that it could use work.

Thank you for your input everyone.
 
Same here, call me crazy. I know designery-types aren't meant to like distressed at the moment but come on, it works. Plus, it implies effort in the crowing. Maybe.
 
Matthew Crowe said:
That's odd, the font is pt size 8 which is larger than general sized business cards. May have to look into that one. Thanks for your comment.
Click to expand...

My dads are that size but are dark blue and white, but with the contrast it was difficult. Obviously, many people wear their glasses whilst reading, however, as I'm short sighted, not long sighted, it may be more of a problem for others.
 
Greg said:
Hi Matthew,

Like the thinking of using your surname in this way, but 'Crowe about it' isn't really a phrase I know personally? Where as 'something to Crowe about' is one I've heard of. What will your company name be out of interest?

Not a fan of the distressed type, simply for the reason the typeface just looks like a free one off of dafont, have you tried distressing a font yourself, or more options with clean type as Ken suggested?
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply Greg. I think the main phrase is, crowing about it or to crow about something, meaning to talk about it. It isn't extremely well known which is why I would say it works well. Currently I have a WIP website of croweaboutit.com.

I will have to experiment by distressing the text myself, I have tried some standard bold fonts as shown on page one lower down but they did not really do it for me.

Thanks again.
 
Hello!

I need to kick start this project off again, it's coming up to the time I need to send off a direct mailer to potential employers requesting a 2 week work placement in a design agency. I am currently still using the 'crowe about it' and 'something to crowe about' phrases. I have a logo(kind of, can be altered to suit different situations) and business cards as shown before, I have updated them all with the 'newer font' as the grungy one had no relevance to my work or style.

I have a concept of sending stickers out where the client can stick them onto various newspaper articles, magazines etc they find interesting, they are crowing about it, suggesting they are enjoying the piece, as a small bit of fun but I am not 100% sure where to take this concept to next. I thought about replacing the phrase 'read all about it' used by market traders when selling newspapers etc with 'crowe all about it' or a similar phrase. I would then design a newspaper which would in effect be my portfolio and could possibly incorporate the sticker idea to then be used on my newspaper.

These are my current designs, I like bright colours and these are just a few to show. They represent my style of work as I generally like to use a nice selection of colours.












Any criticisms or ideas would be greatly appreciated.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top