Archive for the 'Clients' Category



Shiny New Logos for AFREMSO — InitialResponders.org

Thursday, August 31st, 2006 by Richard Nichols

AFREMSO logo rough draft

Recently we began work on a major fund-raising web project involving e-Commerce and CMS (content management systems) for American Fire & Rescue and EMS Organization, Inc, a new nationally-focused non-profit organization. Their mission is to procure funds to bolster the nation’s infrastructure by providing equipment, supplies and training for initial responders to emergency situations throughout the United States.

The logo rough draft on the right was provided to us by Mr. Guy Scull, president and evangelizer for the charitable foundation. It was designed by Lieutenant Matt Holston, the Hazardous Materials Coordinator for the Alpharetta Fire and Emergency Services (AFES) headquartered in Alpharetta, GA. Matt has chosen a traditional fire service symbol, the Maltese Cross which is a "red badge of courage, honor and dedication." He has superiposed it upon the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Star of Life for his composition.

As designers and artwork producers, our job is to interpret and computerize designs like this to create a long lasting identifier that can be re-purposed in many ways. The finished logo works well rendered in black and white as well as color. It can be scaled from small to large while maintaining visual clarity. Though the individual symbols are traditional and well known, we have tried to make this particular arrangement distinctive.

AFREMSO Logo

AFREMSO Logo blue&orange

We wanted this logo to emulate a "shiny red fire engine" but also tried to contrast hard edge strength with a softer "cushion" feeling. EMS technicians often stand right beside and reassure the Fire Services personnel in the initial responder support system. They are there just as much to serve and administer aid to the firemen as they are to serve the original victims of a catastrophe.

By adding depth through embossing and lighting we turned this logo into a medallion. The computer graphics software programs used were Macromedia Freehand, Adobe Illustrator CS2, Photoshop CS2 and Irfanview.

Fire, Rescue and EMS iconography is quite interesting. For centuries, the fireman’s hook and axe have helped him enter buildings, rescue occupants and gain control over fire by depriving it of fuel while trying to hold the fire at a distance. The fireman’s horn was used in early days to sound an alarm, but today is used for ceremonial displays. Some horns had wide mouthpieces and may have served as megaphones. 

AFREMSO Fire Logo detail AFREMSO EMS Logo detail

The fire helmet is a complex and expensive piece of equipment, with ridges for strength and a brim that is usually enlongated and tapered at the back.  Perhaps this keeps debris away from the fireman’s head and allows water to flow backwards and away, keeping the fireman’s back dry and better protected from heat.  Many of today’s fire helmets have large heat-resistant visors and a variety of fittings with built-in illumination and communications systems. 

The EMS Star of Life is the symbol of Emergency Medical Technicians and Care Units. It has six prongs that symbolize the six steps of a rescue mission: Detection, Reporting, Response, On Scene Care, Care in Transit, and Transfer to Definitive Care. While the fire service protects property and people, the EMS mission is directed towards first aid, health and life care. Follow the link above to learn the story of the star. 

One last thing before we go . . .

The number 343 on the fireman’s helmet stands for the 343 brave firefighters and EMS personnel who lost their lives at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. 

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EventDrapery.com – Our first e-Commerce Web Project

Tuesday, August 29th, 2006 by Richard Nichols

Back during the Easter Season this year we were approached about creating a rental product/service catalog and e-commerce web site for a new unique service company, EventDrapery.com, guided by Marina Miller here in Atlanta. This project required the creation of a searchable database of products, an electronic forms system, a shopping cart, the usual "about us" and "FAQs" modules and many "behind the scenes" pages, documents and web tricks. A sales-oriented website can involve hundreds and even thousands of considerations. This article is a detailed case study designed to let you peer inside one of our more complex projects.

If you haven’t already tried it or want to see it again, click once or twice on the play button in the drapery video above to see the drapery set itself up from scratch. Those clip-joint drapes are actually 12 feet tall. The Macromedia Flash video you see is made up of four kinds of photographic efforts: The flame retardant drapes were shot on location with an 8 mega-pixel Minolta DimageA2 camera. I used four Dynalite 1000x professional photographic strobe units with white umbrellas to evenly light the large area of at least 144 square feet.

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An 80 ft. wide x 14 ft. tall Mural for Microsoft’s MGX2006

Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006 by Richard Nichols

Microsoft Global Exchange Mural

Together, Norma and I created this huge mural for Microsoft last month, for their Global Business Exchange tradeshow held for 15,000 attendees from all over the world in Orlando?during late?July. If you would like to see the people up close and personal, click on the mural and it will open into a panoramic window in our gallery section. To give you an idea of the scale of the final piece, the lettering is over 7 feet high.

MGX2006?is an internal Microsoft global sales and software evangelist conference. The theme this year for Microsoft was and is “People_Ready!” Microsoft is preparing its?employees and associates?to embrace the next 12 years of business life in the computer field by trying to create and support software that empowers “people-ready” businesses.

Successful businesses succeed based upon the quality and performance of their people. Successful businesses make a practice of trying to hire the very best, the very brightest in all jobs inside their companies. The best businesses work very hard to facilitate their peoples’ success.

–?Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, in a speech before the MGX 2006 audience

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Portrait of Inda

Saturday, April 29th, 2006 by Richard Nichols

?Portrait of Inda

Inda is a project manager at Mind’s Eye, Incorporated in downtown Atlanta. Mind’s Eye is a special event design and production company– never a dull moment over there! About two weeks ago Inda coordinated a photo shoot and invited us to photograph the staff of Mind’s Eye on a theatrical set they created in their staging area.  Luckily, the staff?are all very good looking people so the challenges were mostly technical 😀

This was the first time I have used my Dynalite strobe lights in over 12 years, so it was more than a little challenging to remember how to work with?flash heads, umbrellas, flash meters, portrait lighting, posing models etc.

The "painterly" look of Inda’s image was achieved by applying Gertrudis graphic enhancement software to the digital photograph. Gertrudis is available on the Windows platform and is coded by a guru in Argentina named Enrique Nieloud. Gertrudis quickly produces some exceptional brushed and color-enhanced effects to photos.

The program knows some important secrets – Enrique has programmed it to analyze the colors and directions of objects and lines in a photograph.  Then it interprets the vectors in such a way that the brush strokes and colors it creates follow those directions, creating painterly illusions in just a few minutes.  Areas can be painted in, then refined or made more coarse with a few simple settings.  There is no need to undo any part of an effect– one simply chooses a different setting and the?program erases the past effect as it creates the new one.

This has to be the best and simplest inexpensive digital painting program we’ve ever found. Combined with Photoshop, Gertrudis is an addictive image enhancement tool.? We are spoiled forever.?

Now, about the background– Inda was photographed against a brightly lit white slide screen to make it easy to separate her out and replace the background in Photoshop.  The background is created using a Photoshop plug-in called AlienSkin EyeCandy 5 Textures-Stone Wall-Patio.

The procedure we use with Gertrudis involves opening the original photo in Photoshop to correct the composition, color and contrast. Then we open the corrected image in Gertrudis to make it a painting.  Sometimes it goes back to Photoshop for further enhancements (such as embossing) and then back to Gertrudis, until the image is just the way we like it.  With some practice, a digital photo can evolve from an original to a finished painting very quickly.

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Meet the Meeting Planners

Sunday, February 5th, 2006 by Richard Nichols

In the photo below, you see our friend Ms. Kaaren McNulty with Mr. John Patton. Kaaren and John are icons within the meeting planning spectrum of the corporate world here in Atlanta. Kaaren has been a client and friend of ours since 1989. In May of 2005, she married Mr. Dave Ehlert of Atlanta in a beautiful chapel at Callaway Gardens near Columbus, Georgia. Dave is the president of The Idea Exchange, Inc., a company that conducts Customer Satisfaction Surveys and Market Research nationwide. Dave has become a good friend to us since the first day we met.

Kaaren and John
Kaaren and John successfully created, managed, produced and directed a 14,000 person meeting in Las Vegas for NAPA recently. Here we find them in celebration mode, inside one of the hoops they had to jump through. The meeting planning business can surely put people through some changes . . .

😛 😯 😥 :mrgreen: 😎 😀

Kaaren McNulty is the Director of Marketing Services for NAPA (National Automotive Parts Association). NAPA is headquartered here in Atlanta.

John Patton is one of the principals at Atlanta-based Event Architecture, Inc. He is a CMP (Certified Meeting Planner) with many years of experience in producing shows, concerts and events.

(photo illustration by Richard Nichols)

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