yes I am a graphic designer and lead web designer for Ohio State's undergrad department.

 

I'm impressed and thrilled! You know I was wondering if there was a graphics person in the group... I'm kind-of a hack my friend when it comes to graphics.... you could be a big help... that is... if you want to help and have the time?

I have a request that might cause some controversy... but I was thinking that if we had a Club Logo, I don't think I've seen one, I looked on the actual site and don't think I saw one.... But if we had one... we could eliminate a potential run-in with BMW/MINI by replacing the MINI Logos on the Headers and Footers with Club Logos... several people have raised concerns in regards to the MINI Logos... I guess they have me a little gun-shy I was thinking about just taking a MINI Logo and sticking MOM on it... but that's a little weak... do you [or anyone else] have any thoughts in that direction?

 

we have a badge that a few of us have on our cars that I always sorta thought as our logo. It's not gonna work well with your color pallet but I'm sure you could work it in some way. I'm not sure who is keeper of that art file or the general feeling the group has on it.

If you look deep we have a few "designy" people in our little group. I'm pretty sure Aaron designed all the graphics on the outmotoring site (which are great IMO) and don't let Matt (ImagoX) fool you when he says he can't make a web page, I've seen some of his graphics stuff and it's very nice and clean. I'm sure there are a few more people also that I don't know about.

I thought about making a page for this group in the past but after doing this sorta thing for 8 hours a day the last thing I find myself wanting to do when I get home is be creative (plus that would eat into my video game time). What you have going is a good start, i'll let you take the ball and run with it. But i'm happy to put in my 2 cents IF you want it.

Dan

 

Thanks Dan,
Yes I want it! I appreciate your critiques! And I understand the whole work/life balance thing too... We're implementing SAP at work... so believe it or not this web work is kind-of therapy for me... it's nice to get an immediate reward for something... you know.

I should have asked about the Logo Saturday... I looked at the current site and made an assumption there was none.... As far as the colors go.. I'm really flexible, the orange thing came from the gage needles on the front page image... I liked the contrast of that color against all the black & white. To tell you the truth I don't think anyone has said anything about the orange... but if they did or if we wanted to change direction it's really just a matter of changing the color of two rectangles... I'd like to see that logo.
Thanks,
Terry

 

 

Well Hell!!! I really like that!! Can we use that?

 

We are at the tail end of a 3 year SAP implementation and I'm so ready for it to be over!

 

This SAP deal will continue till I retire... $100 mil a year for 7 years...

I hope this site doesn't take that long Check out the "About Us" Page... I used the club logo and went with the red in the logo blocks... I kind of like it... it may need a little resizing but this may be a good direction to go?!?!?

 

I know a guy in the IT dept. at cardinal Health, and he drives his wifes MINI almost every day.... small world.

I like the look of the red in the about us page. If you're going to go that way stick with just the red, because we don't want to get too red white and bluey. Also the logo in the bars looks good, I wouldn't go any smaller than that across all the pages because it may get a little muddy if you shrink it too much.

now that sound effect.... heh

Dan

 

Yep Dan, I really like that red that's in your logo's flag... it's not real, real red... it pops.... I've been playing with the header and changed it up again.... I kind of missed the MINI logo... so I added the Club logo to the left and put the MINI Logo back where it was, I made the header slightly taller and per your advice I added hot-spots across the header all going to the right places... I don't think it looks to terribly busy... The table now has grayer lines too... tomorrow night I'll work on the footer... with roll-over... I've been playing with some ideas there... I'll probably turn the About Page into a Template and apply that to the other pages... so this is time well spent... BTW I sped up the typing on your favorite site feature it's been Turbocharged!

 

nice, watch the thickness of the red lines on the header.

Dan


side note. I didn't make the logo, I'm not sure who did, but I'd like a version in gray scale for my car. Whoever has the vector art (hoping it's not all photoshop) can we get the file so we can scale it without the nasty pixelization

 

Hi Dan,
I sliced and diced my footer image last night before going to bed and added it and a little roll-over action to the AU page... this morning I see [my old eyes get tired by midnight] a little black line under the header and that I also need to adjust the method used to come here to open a new window... but other than that, I think this might be the way we need to go... If we can get the club logo's vector art I can easily stick a new image on both the header and footer cleaning up it's current jagged edges... That all done.. I'll use the AU Page as a template for the rest of the pages, add some text css info etc... that effort should add consistency throughout the site and make it easier to maintain.

Again I appreciate your and everyone else's advice, suggestions and art work... I also think that allowing everyone to watch this site's development process, in this very open forum, is a great thing for this club... it gives all the members ownership of the end product and gives everyone the opportunity to see exactly what goes into an effort like this.... I like it!
Thanks,
Terry

 

Well... my friends... I think if we had some content... we could lunch this site whenever you all are ready... it can grow from here, but I think at this point it compares well enough to most the other MINI Club sites that it's something we can all be proud of... check it if you haven't looked at it today.
Thanks,
Terry

 

We should be able to - I finalized the design and Aaron had it made into grille badges, so it IS the "official" club insignia. it's not like we're slapping it on t-shirts (yet).

PS - can we add this to the calendar? At least it has a firm date:

 

Sure... I'm working from home today... so I've been playing with the site a bit between work duties this morning... I updated the current calendar... which isn't the calendar I see being there going forward... I've been looking at some pretty cool freeware widgets that might play well there... but am a little apprehensive to go there till this site has an actual home... potential Sever Technology issues etc.

I did add a little "M" Icon to our address this morning, silly little things but I kind of like them... and late last night I had to make a change to the code going to the message board... odd thing my method would open a window in Foxfire... but not the latest IE... so for now that button leaves the site to come here.

I had no idea there were so many graphics folks in the club... I really like the Club Logo... can you make me a smaller, clearer version to replace the one I have there now?

Additionally, what do you think of this latest iteration of the site? Is it okay?

 

I have a high-res raster copy that I use for our banner and such - what size do you need?

 

It's about 82x82 with a black background... can you save it as a gif or jpeg? I'm not sure about rasters, vectors, or anything else and Fireworks ... I'm pretty grafix weak actually, self taught, can get by... but when I have had the opportunity in the past I'll rely on the pros.

 

Raster = pixels (think JPG, PNG, GIF)

Vector = image made from mathematical algorithms. used for scalable images used for t-shirts and such. Illustrator is a well-known vector-based graphics app.

I know rasters, but I'm very weak on vectors. I can save the image in any format you need - let me whip a few things up.

 

Matt, you nerd is showing.

 

the problem with raster images is the text looks iffy when you scale them. But if it's small like you want I wouldn't think it will show. Guessing the whole logo was made in photoshop then and not illustrator?

 

I have no idea... I provided design feedback but I did not mock up the final version. I actually assumed that it had been done in Illustrator as a vector-based file...

EDIT: I found the original file I was sent from Aaron's printer - it's an EPS file. Here's an 82-square JPG on black:



And the same image with a touch of unsharp mask applied:

 

EPS! nice. that means we can scale it for shirts if we ever wanted.

 

Yep.

 

I liked the bottom one... text is a little clearer... they're on there now... Thanks!!!

 

OK, this is nit-picky, but what if we tint the main page cockpit image a bit bluer? We have plenty of red and white in there, so having a bit of blue will complete the Ohio-themed/USA color thing: