Attuned Design – Thoughtfully Crafted

Deanna Franklin

I enjoy creating thoughtfully crafted logos and brand systems that truly fit the unique personalities and stories of my clients. Every project is different, because every business is different. Getting to the heart of what makes your business stand out, and crafting a brand to make that shine is what I do.

Behance Linkedin

Derek Cyrus Services Branding & Style Guide

I’ve been really excited about this project and enjoyed thoughtfully crafting the brand and branded items for DerekCyrus services. They’ve got an amazing business idea and a lot of heart behind what they do.

DerekCyrus Services leases vehicles to people at affordable rates and want to remove barriers that prevent people from being able to have their own transportation. They believe in giving everybody the opportunity to succeed, and they like to focus on the opportunities, potential, and flexibility that comes from having your own vehicle.

The brand needed to be something to convey being open, sleek, flexible, and I knew it would need to have some element of momentum to it. I got to work on the initial sketches for the logo samples, and this one rose to the top pretty quickly. It’s got everything they were looking for and more. It has a real sense of momentum with the arcs around it, which also resemble a tire or a steering wheel. It’s also very open, straightforward and flexible. The main font has a friendly and personal feel, balanced with the straight-forward and solid supporting font underneath.

The additional logo styles, including the logo mark, complement the main logo, and bring the arc into the mix on a much smaller scale. The simplified logo mark isolates the D from the logo and brings in the arcs around it.

Color scheme display for DCS that includes primarily a combination of teal and orange.

The color scheme balances vibrant blue and orange with a dark blue and is designed to use a lot of white space surrounding different design elements, which really allows the colors to pop.

Typography display showing the Dessert Script and Cronos pro fonts.

The logo and main headlines use Dessert Script, a curvaceous and bold font that brings in a hand drawn, signature-type look. The rest of the text hierarchy is built out using Cronos Pro, a font I absolutely fell in love with during this project. This font has a more subtle softness and personality to it that really complemented the Dessert Script font. Both fonts were chosen to reflect the down-to-earth, friendly and flexible nature of the brand.

Display showing the DCS business cards, letterhead, envelopes, and website header image.

Custom car graphics were made to match the brand design style, to be used on the website and in marketing materials, like their brochure (right). I used a a very open and sleek single line outline that went from thin to thick, similar to the arcs on the logo. I also brought in the logo arcs for the hubcap area on the tires.

To finish this project, an extensive brand style guide brought together all the various aspects of the brand, including everything displayed above, and shows how to use them consistently throughout the DerekCyrus Services digital and printed materials. For this client, I created an interactive PDF which serves a crucial function to help preserve the brand identity as any new designs are created for the business.

This was an amazing project that I really enjoyed. If you have a business in need of some brand identity design TLC, I’d be happy to hear from you!

Chi Commons Branding & Style Guide

This was a complex and lengthy project that posed some interesting challenges. ChiCommons has multiple branches that serve different purposes and users or clients. They needed a brand system that worked for a broad range of people and managed to work in both corporate and more relaxed settings. They also needed a style guide to bring it all together, creating a system that would help them maintain a consistent brand image across their different branches.

They initially wanted to have two separate logos, but I worked out a design that was flexible enough to be used in both settings. It still allowed for a different look for the more corporate side, but only with a slight alteration in color. This creates better consistency and brand recognition across all their different websites and digital or printed materials. In the end, we ended up with several versions of the logo, but they all work together and serve their specific purpose. Here’s a glimpse into the process that went into the creation of their brand and the accompanying style guide.

This logo was designed to resemble a propeller, the three C’s working as one to propel them forward. The different colors were used inside each of the C’s to show the diversity of the skills and the people involved. And the more organic shape and smooth edges were used to convey a more friendly, community type of feel.

The accompanying color scheme and typography followed the same idea of conveying a balance of business and community focus. I focused on finding colors that had a bit of vibrancy to them, but weren’t too bright and wild. And I found typefaces that were rounded and friendly, but not to informal or excessive in personality. Something that could fit in anywhere they would use their logos and typefaces.

And to pull it all together, I created a style guide with advice on how to consistently use all their design components across their business and create a strong brand presence. This has instructions for clear space around logos, weight, size and style of type, color use, tone, and many other smaller but still important details. Below is an abridged preview of the full style guide.

Love Your Neighbor Logo Design

Love Your Neighbor logo

The Love Your Neighbor project is a website that helps people connect and share resources. However, the focus is not on addressing typical types of need and poverty, this project wants to help neighbors who are suffering with social, emotional, or spiritual poverty. Neighborhoods that are not necessarily lacking in money, but lacking in human connection.

This project started off already having a logo that they felt could stand to be refined or redesigned. It was a set of three squares, meant to represent the diversity of people and needs in a community. They were open to different interpretations of that idea of diversity, but it still needed to communicate the mission of the project.

I liked that the logo they had looked like a simplified view of a neighborhood in the city, with intersecting “streets” in the white space. So I wanted to work with this aspect, while bringing a little more balance and drawing more attention to the initials LYN, and bringing in a new font with clean lines and round features. Of the samples I provided, their favorite as well as mine, was this one below.

This sample featured rounder corners on the squares, giving it a bit more polished and friendly look. And on the top and bottom right squares, I made a more dramatic rounded edge on the top right corner. This gave it a fun twist, but also turned that “neighborhood” cluster of individual blocks into a heart, tying in even better with the vision of the project. This one also featured a clean sans-serif font which I modified to include some curves around the outside edges of the cluster of letters.

After some refinement, three different layouts were developed to help make this design more versatile for use across digital and printed media, depending on the space available. I also established the clear space between the shapes in the logo, as well as around the logo, to ensure proper breathing room and consistency. I used the height of the bottom limb of the L to measure space between shapes inside the logo, and used half the height of the entire L to measure clear space around the logo.

Then I worked on the color scheme. The client wanted cool colors, and was fond of the green and blue they had in their existing logo. I found a color scheme that they liked, and brought a bit more vibrancy to the look. To further tie in with the idea of bringing neighborhoods together and sharing some love, I decided to make the top and the right square one solid color, and then create a gradient in the middle that blended them together. This works well on dark or light backgrounds, but also has a supporting color scheme and lots of color application options for any of the logos. Overall, a great fit for what they were looking for and a very versatile solution with lots of potential applications.

Carrie Makeup Artistry Branding

Logo Image

I recently had a client who is running a skin care and makeup artistry business. She wanted an eye catching logo that was classy and fun to make her business stand out. She also wanted it to be pink, which fortunately happened to work for this type of business.

Sample sketch for logo design.

I pitched a few ideas, but the one that stood out to her was this design with the eye outline and swooping eyelashes. It has a lot of curves and drama to it, but with some classy elegance.

The name went through some changes, which made it necessary to do a little rearranging and redesigning to accommodate the added length. I switched things up and brought focus to her first name, bringing the full name in underneath the logo.

Then I brought in a swoopy font for the name that matched the curve of the eye and matched the aesthetic she was going for. And to pull it all together, I paired the dramatic lashes and swoopy text with a fun yet classy pink color scheme, which brought a mix of youth and sophistication that I feel compliments the design nicely.

For the business cards, I took inspiration from some of her makeup artistry to come up with this look for the cards. She has only recently started doing skincare, but has been doing makeup artistry for quite a while. The looks she creates are quite dramatic and beautiful, so I created some swoops of color on the top and bottom of the eye. I added some polka dots off to the side to add another fun pop to the design and balance things out a bit. Kind of like a touch of glitter.

These branding elements should serve as a great base as she’s building up her business, and can easily be adapted and added onto as she grows and further develops the brand.

Tacocat Graphic

Tacocat image.

This was a fun project that I created for a client who recently purchased a catamaran that was dubbed the Tacocat. The image would be used as a decal for the boat, and used on t-shirts as well as other printed items in the future. So it needed to be something that would work well on a variety of scales.

Tacocat sample sketches.

I started out with a series of rough sketches, with this one to the left coming out on top very quickly.

Tacocat graphic, based off of samples sketch.

The sketch served as the base design for the vector graphic with the request to add the crossed swords from the bottom right sample in the image above. I built out the vector graphic maintaining a mostly symmetrical appearance. The word Tacocat is a palindrome, which means it is spelled the same way backwards or forwards, so the idea there was to make a vector palindrome of sorts as well.

Tacocat text image.

For the text, the client wanted a very particular style of typeface to be used, and this one was a very close fit. The c just after the o and the a just before the last t are flipped, another fun use of the mirrored, palindrome idea, making the second half a perfect reflection of the first.

Display showing Tacocat image, all black, and all white.

Two different layout styles were created to make it a bit more versatile for use in a variety of ways. And an all-white version was created to be used on dark backgrounds. This graphic should stand out and work well for just about any use they can think of.

Piano Studio Branding

This is a logo/brand refresh for a previous client of mine that wanted some business cards done. She had been one of my first logo design clients and I had learned quite a bit since that project. To show my appreciation for her early support, I offered to refresh her brand for her before I got to work on her business cards. Here’s what that process looked like.

Below you’ll see what the original logo looked like on the left, and what the new and improved version looks like on the right.

Before & after image for piano studio logo

It actually didn’t take too much work to spruce up the original logo. When this logo was first created, I hadn’t come to appreciate or understand the “less is more” approach as much as I do now. So the first order of business was removing unnecessary elements, like the textured background, and the extra ring and color fill around the outside of the text.

From there it was just a matter of replacing the treble clef S with something that fit better with the rest of the logo. I’ve always preferred making things from scratch, but building a proper treble clef, with all its smooth and elegant curves, proved to be more challenging than I had thought. At the time, it seemed like drawing one by hand on my tablet and using a calligraphy brush style worked well, and the client loved it. But looking at it later, it just didn’t quite fit. So as I was redesigning the logo, I built a new treble clef S from scratch to fit the style better. This one has some varying weight, but not nearly as much as the previous version, and maintains smooth, clean lines all throughout.

Treble clef design

From there I was able to build out a branding system to complement the logo and help her maintain brand consistency. Three different logo layout styles and colors (white not shown here), allow for great flexibility of use. Supporting color scheme and typography maintain a clean, classical look, while the playful musical notes add a bit of fun to be used as a background element or decoration. The idea behind this was to try and display credibility and professionalism with a bit of a fun and modern feel.

Style guide for piano studio

And finally, all those branding elements were applied to the business cards.

Business cards for piano studio

This flexible branding system can be used across many different digital and print items with plenty of variety, while also maintaining crucial brand consistency.

IN2IT Branding

Logo Image

I’ve been part of a team developing the IN2IT project for about two years now. We only meet on Tuesday nights at ChiHackNight, working on things in our spare time, so this has been quite a long term project. But recently our project has made some significant leaps, and it was time to create a logo.

Our mission is to create a website that allows people to find civic engagement opportunities easily, so they can get involved and connected with the people in their community. This logo was created to reflect that goal of interconnectedness, and how people can come together and make something beautiful. It has soft, friendly lines and a calm but playful color scheme.

This logo is the start of a full branding project that’s in the works right now. I’m working on creating the supporting color scheme, graphic style, typography, and overall feel. And with the help of a pair of talented UX/UI designers that have joined the project this year (2020), we’re building out the website layouts as well.

I’m excited to be sharing more about that once it’s finished.

TheoGraphic Logo Design

This was a great project to work with. I created this logo during a weekend-long hack event, put on by FaithTech. TheoGraphic was designed to link data from the Bible to interactive maps which allow you to click through and explore the connections between various locations, people, and events. So they were wanting a logo that really fit with the project and the idea of linking theology and graphics together.
I took a literal approach with that idea and created chain links to link the “o” in Theo with the “g” in graphics, which I made from interlocking links as well. Paired with a font that had an air of old-world, while still being sleek and modern, it really worked together and I felt it embodied the blending of history and tradition with future and tech.

Norseman Engineering & Construction Branding

Norseman Engineering & Construction Logo

Norseman Cable Specialists decided to shift to a new name, Norseman Engineering & Construction, and with that change, decided to update their logo. Their logo had been in place for over thirty years. They loved the logo, but wanted to give it a bit of an update. Something a little more modern, but still true to the original logo’s base design and charm.

It needed to be strong, sleek, and incorporate some minor fixes and additions on the original design. The orientation of the sails was changed to be facing forward, to indicate forward movement, instead of sailing away from the viewer. And the business owner is a big family guy, so he wanted to make sure the ship had eight shields, one for each of his children.

Image of Norseman Engineering & Construction original logo next to their redesigned logo.

Image of the NEC logo in all it's color variations.

I designed it to be used as in full color, or as a single-color outline. This set of color variations makes it easy to use for any of their future designs.

Image displaying the NEC color scheme and accompanying color information.

The base color scheme has a very nautical feel to it, with the golden yellow standing out amongst the blues as a great accent color for the logo and other supporting branded designs.

The primary typeface used in the logo and in the extended branding is Adelle Condensed. This typeface had a strong, classic appeal, with a bit of a sleek modern finish. Manjari serves as a nice contrast to the Adelle and makes for easily read type in longer paragraphs and smaller subscript.

Thank you for taking a look at my work.

Thinking about building or rebuilding your own brand? Contact me using the form below.

Pray for UPGs Branding

The idea behind this project was to help people learn more about people groups in need of prayer and what their specific needs or concerns are. The heart of the project is showing love and compassion through prayer. The tricky part was that these types of projects are often conveyed with praying hands and/or hearts, as they naturally convey the message in a very direct way. Which would mean that if either or both were to be present, they needed to be presented or included in a creative way that would stand out from other logos out there. So I wanted to create a more abstract and simplified representation of praying hands, which lead to these rough sketches to send to the client.

The triangles were the most abstract representation of praying hands, conveying a sense of mountainous strength in prayer or the power of prayer to move mountains. The other samples were variations of two different base ideas of using a silhouette of hands, and using the p and the r in pray to look like a person bowing their head over hands together in prayer.

The client ended up going with the silhouette version, which had a pair of crossed thumbs in the middle, forming a heart. And the outside edges curl around and form a circle around the hands, representing the idea of praying for people all over the world.

As I created the actual vector graphic, a few adjustments were made to make the hands stand out a bit more, giving them just a bit more definition.
At the same time a color scheme was chosen, and a gradient was used to convey outward motion and glowing warmth. The color scheme was a little tricky, because the client wanted something that was soft, warm, and inviting, but also wanted to convey energy and passion. So a balanced collection of semi-muted warm and cool colors was chosen to fit that atmosphere.

In this image, you can see all the different brand design elements come together. The color scheme is versatile, and looks great when used with the logo in solid or gradient form. It has a very cheery vibe to it and has a nice balance of cool and warm colors. The typography was built on a single font family, Rooney Sans, which has nice rounded features and a warm, relaxed feel to it. And the favicon, which was built from a simplified version of the logo mark, works nicely on light or dark backgrounds with the help of a white circular background. This branding kit, if used consistently, will serve as a good design foundation for Pray for UPGs.

Pray for UPGs Branding

Dokto is an organization focusing on providing affordable healthcare to people who may not have access to good healthcare or medical insurance. Their website helps people get in touch with doctors over the internet or in person, and get them the care they need.

They have a lot of heart behind what they do, and want to focus on doing healthcare differently, with more warmth and a vibrant atmosphere. With all that in mind, this brand was designed to highlight that.

The client wanted to see if a stethoscope could be integrated in with the name somehow. I created several samples, and this was the version they ended up choosing. The stethoscope was built in replacing the first O with a heart-shaped top, and adding a circle to the middle of the second O to make the bottom. The font created a bold and crisp look that was solid and professional, but I also included rounded corners and a purple gradient to make it a little more fun and friendly.

The supporting typography captures those same characteristics with a combination of light personality from Cronos Pro, and solid support from Rubik.

The main color scheme uses a small selection of vibrant colors, with plenty of white and light background accents to balance things out and keep pages from feeling too overwhelming or cluttered. The supporting color scheme ads some extra variety into the mix and offers lighter shades of the main color scheme to add versatility.

You’ll also see the logo mark here, which is built from the heart of the logo, in the first O. This was a natural choice, given that it’s the most distinctive part of the main logo and carries a lot of meaning in the logo. Additional logo and logo mark styles include a version that doesn’t include the gradient, and a one color version in purple, white, or black.

The style guide lays out how to use the brand, to help them maintain a consistent look across their digital and printed materials. This guide included pages on logo use, minimum heights, clear space, color usage, and a full typography hierarchy with samples.

This was a fun project to work on, and I was happy to help Dokto bring their new brand to life.

Mitto Logo Design

This logo was designed for a real estate business. The simplicity of the design gives it a clean, modern and minimally styled look. I started with the name, choosing a suitable font, and then built a roof over the M with a line thickness that matched. Some alterations to the font allowed me to mirror the roof shape above the M, and rounding out the sharp corners gave it a softer, smoother look.

Working with Deanna was so easy! Her demonstrated expertise in brand design gave me a lot of peace working with her. She did a great job of listening to what I was looking for in our logo design and incorporating that into a professional looking logo and brand kit. She also went above and beyond by creating multiple color schemes and layouts. I couldn’t be happier!

Brett V

Pray for UPGs

It was a pleasure to work with Attuned Design’s Deanna Franklin in

developing our brand presence from scratch. She provided us creative

guidance and execution in navigating a multi-stakeholder, iterative

process in a patient and professional manner. We would recommend her

highly for design and graphics services.

Design Team Lead

ChiCommons

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If you’re interested in building or rebuilding your own brand, please fill out the form below to help me better understand your design needs. And if you’re not sure where to start or what you might need, don’t worry, I’d be happy to help you figure it out during your free consultation.

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