all that print design.

Why? Because I love the tangible feel and look of a superb design on printed paper. Because I enjoy finding aesthetically pleasing solutions to your tactile and printed problems. Because it lets me rant on to you about all the fantastic 100% post-consumer recycled paper out there these days. Because Oliver Jeffers wrote The Great Paper Caper and it’s been obsessing my life ever since.

logo & identity design.

What, did someone say branding? I know what you’re thinking. This “brand” word that everyone tosses around like a Harry Potter charm – what is all this hocus-pocus? Seriously.

Branding is not just What Your Company is All About, but it’s WHO your company is: a brand is your company’s identity, which is why it is sometimes called “Identity Design”. Just like you know at a glance if that’s your best friend Bob walking across the street towards you or Godzilla, your Brand lets people know who you are and what your company is all about at a glance, or through a single experience. Wow. See, maybe it IS magic like Harry Potter.

And a Logo, you ask? A Brand generally utilizes an exquisite yet simple image (the logo) to act as an immediate identifier. If your Brand is your Company’s identity, think of your Logo as your Company’s face. It’s everywhere, you can’t hide from it, and that’s why you want your logo to be a Really Great Face.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery once said, “Perfection is not when there is no more to add, but no more to take away.” I feel like that should be the Great Commandment for creating logos, because they are one of those things where you add even a single tiny flourish – the color pink Just Because You Like Pink, a bit of barbed wire because you have a matching tattoo on your left buttock, little grass stem here, the tiniest unicorn there – that doesn’t need to be part of the logo – that is, doesn’t speak directly and specifically to your company’s Brand – and you’re just CLUTTERING UP THE PICTURE so that people can’t focus on the actually important parts. Like cluttering up your Perfect Face with tattoos and sticky notes. The Perfect Logo says no more and no less than it needs to say. Obviously your Perfect Logo would be different from anyone else’s Perfect Logo, and that’s why graphic designers like myself are still in business today.

While we’re on the topic of Godzilla, he’s a great example of the strength and consistency that you want your Brand to have, although having Godzilla’s weaknesses (general path-of-destruction habits, picking-up-helpless-women-in-the-street traits, etc.) would probably not fare so well in the modern day business world. In case any of you were wondering.

specialty book layout & cover design.

I put the “specialty” in there because it’s MUCH more fun to design something special. Like a 4-foot-long book that’s only an inch wide. Or a book cover that has two round eye holes cut through it so that you can be voyeuristic and literary at the same time. So much more fun. Ask anyone.

advertising design.

Ads! Billboards! Promos! Running around in a hot dog suit!

package design.

Presentation is everything to the educated consumer eye, and packaging is the essence of presentation. Don’t fight it, it’s design science.

web design.

For websites and other Peter Parker-related projects, I work in collaboration with web programmers and developers. In other words, I design the rad looking front-end that your viewers are going to love, and let the techno whiz kids do what they do best.

illustration.

Including posters, editorial illustration, book covers, web illustration, children’s books, instructional how-tos, portraits, caricatures, fashion, live figure-studies, hand-lettering and any other possible creative imaginative use you could think of. Really, try me.

MY RATES:

Please contact me if you would like to receive a PDF with more info on my rates and general business-stuff. Thanks!

Questions? I thought you might.

Feel free to contact me with any questions you might have about my services and rates at sarah@sarahjackson.ca.

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