I discovered “From My Bottom Step” through the monthly Geek Dinners in London when owner Greg Fowler started attending regularly earlier this year. I was impressed with the content he was publishing, but I wasn’t with the sites design. Particularly the photograph he was using as a logo in his sites masthead.

Greg needed a proper logo and a more cohesive brand, so I approached him with some concepts at the following meet up and he was sold.

As with any logo the first step was to sketch out ideas, I’m not terribly good at drawing (as you can see) but this process helps flesh out ideas and often allows new ideas to flow much easier from revision to revision then possible on screen with a mouse. Once a handful of concepts are on paper I can then take the best of them to the computer and mock them up in Corel Draw.

The primary concept I went with was to represent the step aspect of the name in type using perspective, size and weight. However the divergence in my sketching was in deciding how to include the image of Greg as a child on his Grandparents steps, or if to include it at all.

I experimented with the figure and the various perspectives to go with it, but in the end it seemed out of place, forced even, to include it despite having so much brand equity. Rather I settled on a simple typographic logo set in Futura with varying degrees of kerning and sizes to create perspective as if looking at a set of stairs. The colour black was selected for it’s strength and versatility, giving the effect more visual impact. The website that followed used the same colour pallet to give the content more prominence and alleviate the noise often found on news websites.

I did end up finding a way to include the iconic image of Greg during the development of the new website by making it the sites favicon, as well as putting it in the footer as a logo for “Fowler Media”, a parent brand for Greg to apply to his network of sites. At launch the reaction from people was overwhelmingly positive at it’s continued inclusion, instantly being a favorite element of the new site.

Today the new From My Bottom Step launched with a brand new design and added functionality provided by Leschinski Design.

The site has already recived some attention at Dan Brown’s Cool Blog Name to Come and Pat Dryburgh’s blog where he described the new design in a word, fantastic.

From My Bottom Step (FMBS) is described as “a community activist’s online, independent, local source of news about London, Ontario” and focused on issues like pedestrian rights, accessibility, environmental concerns, public transit, and municipal politics. It was recently the subject in my review on London’s Independent Media.

Check it out at www.frommybottomstep.com

London actress and writer Sarah Langtry came to me to create some business cards for her shortly before a networking event she was attending.

With no brief to work from and a tight turn around, I created a few designs that I thought represented her character, rather then focus on a particular aspect of her career. She chose the final design above; an elegant black with a white pattern that really makes her card stand out. Being one colour it also allows her to have it printed without costing her a fortune, even though it is double sided.

Sarah also has a website comming out in the near future.

Here is a quick peak at the brand new site I’m working on for From My Bottom Step. I recently reviewed the site in my post on London’s Independent Media, and have since been working with Greg Fowler to take his site to the next level. We’re hoping to launch the site to the public mid October at his new domain www.frommybottomstep.com

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Some people collect stamps, others rare Bennie Babies, and while I’ve collected both in the past my latest collection obsession is business cards. Odd I know, but there are odder things to collect, and it seems I’m not alone. In researching for this article I found a ton of resources for collectors, from YouTube videos to a International Business Card Collectors club.

I started my collection circa 2002 while in Toronto to see the Pope with the Thunder Bay Diocese. Probably the worst trip I’ve been on, but I came home with a bunch of business cards and pinned them up on my office bulletin board. Since then I moved and they ended up scattered in several boxes for the last year that I had yet to unpack. However a few weeks ago while cleaning one the book shelves next to my desk, where new business cards collected at networking functions lately end up, and decided it was time to get the collection together again.

I got a binder and some plastic baseball trading card pages, which is the worst way to store them I found out today, and organized them alphabetically. I have have a collection of 100 through 20 pages so far but I want more. This is where you come in faithful reader!

Send me your business cards. You can hand them to me in person at any of the networking events I frequent, or slip them in an envelope addressed too 404-641 Kipps Lane, London Ontario, Canada N5Y 4R6. I have no desire to be the next Steve Patterson who’s looking to collect 1 million cards, but I’d like to fill out this binder at least which would be about 300 cards. And I’m not too picky about what I’ll accept, I’ll even take the cards you have amassed from networking and traveling about. There is a video here that talks about how to mail them, try to send a couple so I have spares in case something happens to one and to minimize damage to the cards if you can.

Thanks in advance!