So much thought goes into creating the perfect logo for a client. Not only does it have to drive home the client’s main message, but it also has to maintain visual appeal and allow people to emotionally identify and engage with the brand.

This is just a small sampling of all the logos we’ve built, but we made an effort to display those that showcase the diversity of our clients. Every now and then it’s good to take a step back and review the branding we’ve completed for clients big and small throughout the years. We’ve been fortunate enough to work with highly innovative companies on projects that challenge, inspire and motivate.

Do you have a favorite out of this mix?

A little over a year ago, Kansas City Content Marketing Specialist Brody Dorland of Allure New Media and DivvyHQ DivvyHQ wrote a fabulous post called, “12 Things to Do After You’ve Written a Blog Post.” In it, he presents a how-to guide of what to do after writing a post that will help your content grow legs and generate more traffic, back links and conversions.

This year, Brody teamed up with BCG to produce an infographic illustrating that very post. Shout out to Micaela Clarke Micaela Clarke for her hard design work!

Since its publish date, the infographic has received 2,385 views, thousands of re-pins on Pinterest, 19 embeds on other websites and countless other mentions.

Born and Raised In

KCMO

Attended

Kansas State University

Majored In

Bachelor of Fine Arts, emphasis in Visual Communication

Why BCG?

A young Resman Googled “Graphic Design Kansas City,” and BCG was one of the top hits. Their website enticed him, so he applied. The rest is history.

Designer Gone Rogue

John began his time at BCG as a graphic design intern. The company needed a new website, so he stepped up and decided to have a go at it.

After consuming as many instructional materials as he could, John fell naturally into line with thousand-line-long CSS rules and endless HTML tags (though he now enjoys the challenge of writing styles in the least amount of lines). The modern father of web standards Jeffrey Zeldman’s books on web design resonated most with John and pushed him down the path he’s still on now.

Surprisingly enough, Resman found that in learning programming, he began to recall his days as a mechanical engineering major at K-State, which was his focus before he switched to Fine Arts. The analytical and technical elements so crucial to mechanical engineering surfaced among the back end of the websites John started developing. It came naturally to him.

Other Influences

John worked at the Beach Museum of Art for all four years he attended K-State. It was there he got his first taste of user experience design; he was responsible for displaying the artwork in such a way that guided the viewer through the exhibit in a natural progression. The goal was always for users to interact with a piece of art from all angles and to know intuitively which piece to continue onto next.

What’s in His Bookmarks

FFFFound
Non-traditional approach to design inspiration

A list apart
Places the emphasis on usability. Responsible for tracking and contributing to the evolution of front end web development.

Beyond BCG

Quite the gifted musician, John plays in two bands.

He plays bass guitar for Drunkards Dream and guitar for a surf band called The King DeVilles, who often cover popular surf musicians such as Los Straight Jackets.

John is also an avid Wiz—er—Sporting KC fan, and likes to play a little soccer himself.

Favorite Color

#272727

A Quote to Leave You With

“Take what you do very seriously, but never yourself.”

There seems to be a trend amongst young designers to rid the printed world of its ugliness and put their beautiful stamp on the industry. This isn’t a bad thing; I buy my gum based purely off of which brand has the best packaging at the checkout counter, but in this new era of Photoshop tutorials and design blogs, it can become easy to loose sight of our role as the designer.

I recently visited a grocery store in an unfamiliar part of town. After a moment of aimlessly browsing in search of spaghetti sauce, I referred to the product signs dangling above each aisle; however, they were of very little use. The thin type blended into the decorative background making it difficult to read from a distance. Visually, the color scheme and design matched the rest of the store, and it would appear that the designer had considered everything except the most important part of the piece, to show me where to find my spaghetti sauce!

Design with an idea in mind

At the most basic level, we are visual communicators developing ideas and messages and creating visual outlets for them to be delivered, but sometimes we get so caught up in styles and effects that we forget the ideas behind our design. I’ve found a quote from one of my favorite design authors that illustrates this point.

“Many desperate acts of design (including gradients, drop shadows, and the gratuitous use of transparency) are perpetuated in the absence of a strong concept. A good idea provides a framework for design decisions, guiding the work.”
— Ellen Lupton

Beauty isn’t everything

If we create something without an idea of what we’re trying to say or how we’re trying to say it, what we end up with is a product that is purely decorative with no real substance or message. Personally, I don’t mind the occasional glossy web banner or eco-friendly graphic printed on unbleached, recycled paper. If the style choices help reinforce the Idea then it works, but making cosmetic changes without consideration to the message or how it’s speaking to the audience is like polishing the brass on the Titanic.

Stop and think

Occasionally, we need to take a step back from the computer and rethink our approach by first solving our problems from a conceptual level because the value of our work isn’t defined by layer styles or effects. There is no adobe plug-in for creative thought, and every great design begins with a great idea.

Client

SpotlightAR works with clients to cut through the noise of requests circling the analyst relations industry. Rick Nash and Andrew Hsu use their combined skills to communicate companies’ true value and worth to those analysts established as influential in recognizing and reporting on the company’s particular sector.

SpotlightAR focuses its efforts on building relationships with these analysts, rather than pitching them for recognition. Through comprehensive research and a thorough compilation of supporting content that well positions the client, RIck and Andrew shine light on a company’s attributes and qualities that set it apart from the competition.

It’s time for you to shine.

Scope

Branding and identity, content strategy, sales and marketing. Components include a website, business cards and other branding elements. Adaptive design in the works.

Testimonial

“We believe Brockton Creative Group is a leading agency on the forefront of branded content marketing. Their Smart Creative Strategy process is one of a kind and gets results in a straight forward manner. 

We have been working with BCG for a few months now, and are extremely happy to call them partners. The understanding shown by Brock and his team to our company’s complex messaging is as impressive as their enthusiasm to turn our collective ideas from strategy to production.

They have assembled a highly creative, friendly team with a real can-do attitude. We recently commissioned them to launch our corporate Brand and corresponding web site. The brief was demanding: it needed to be high quality, functional - to include various ways to communicate our specific message to a sophisticated buyer. And they nailed it.

We highly recommend Brockton Creative Group to anyone looking to partner with an agency who will deliver you something unique in terms of design and content from marketing literature to web sites; and complete the full solution by ensuring the web site attracts many visitors; all in a highly professional manner.”

Rick Nash
Co-Founder of SpotlightAR

If you haven’t jumped on the Pinterest bandwagon by now, you most likely call the underside of a rock “home.”

Yes, Pinterest has taken the social web by storm. With its fun and easy-to-use design, Pinterest pulls in pinners by the boatload. They embark on a treasure hunt to seek out gems worthy of adorning their Pinterest boards.

Pinterest may have have 11.7 million users as of March 2012, but let’s not forget about the Mother of all Social Media Sites—Facebook.

Facebook has more than 845 million active monthly users, and people still look to it as a great way to connect with friends, brands, causes, events and everything in between.

So, let’s marry the two. There’s a fantastic opportunity for marketers here: especially for, say, those in a visuals-driven industry such as fashion.

Adding a Pinterest tab to your Facebook brand page is a great way to build brand awareness, encourage engagement and sync your marketing efforts.

Who box? Woobox

Woobox provides you with the necessary tools to integrate your Pinterest account with your Facebook page in its new Pinterest Tab for Facebook Pages.

The app is easy to install and looks great! Just visit Woobox and click on “Install Pinterest Tab.” You will be guided through the installation process. Be sure that you’re signed in and using Facebook as yourself, not as one of your brand pages.

And, the best part? Your Pinterest boards will display beautifully AND maintain the same visual functionality as they do on Pinterest! If users want to re-pin, like or comment on a pin, they will be directed to Pinterest; however, they can view individual pins on a board from within the Facebook tab.

Other Neat Features

With this same app, you have the ability to fangate, or require that users Like your Facebook page before being granted access to view your Pinterest boards. Excellent way to gain likes for your page.

You have the option to feature only one board at a time. Think about all the marketing opportunities with this feature! You can run a Pinterest campaign, keeping it all contained to one board, and then select that board to be the featured one on your Facebook page. You can always go back into the settings and change out the featured board, too.

Visitor Analytics

That’s right, you can track the traffic to your Pinterest account from the app. The metrics even break the visitors into categories such as, “Non-Fan visitors who viewed again as a Fan,” (if you have a fangate set up) or “Fan or Non-Fan on first daily visit.”

What a fabulous way to see your marketing efforts pay off. It’s also a great method for tailoring the content you push. What about your Pinterest boards entices Facebook fans enough to click and spend some time on the site?

If this was useful, let us know! Paste a link to your newly connected FB/Pinterest page in the comments so we can like it.

For a fabulous step-by-step guide to installing the app, check out Louise Myer’s blog post.

Welcome to a small preview of Bryan’s sketchbook. This is where the magic happens. Well, at least the preliminary magic.

One of the best ways to get your design ideas out of your head and into production mode is to sketch them. Don’t worry about perfection or detail—you can work that stuff out later.

This is just a few examples of early-stage character development for various projects that required illustration, animation or mascot development.

Free-flowing concept creation. Keep it simple, have fun and don’t be afraid to bend your brain a bit.

Client

Wil Jenny’s

Scope

Poster designed to promote Wil Jenny’s 6th Annual Crème Brulee Music Festival honoring the late musician Kerry Layton. Hand-illustrated typeface for title.

Wil Jenny’s 6th Annual Creme Brulee Music Festival
Sunday, May 6, 2012
2-5 p.m.
6700 W 135th Street
Overland Park, KS

Client

Juntos Center for Advancing Latino Health

Scope

Website, logo, promotional materials

Headquartered on the University of Kansas Medical Center campus, Juntos is focused on building community-based participatory research (CBPR) programs that translate research findings toward the elimination of health disparities and building healthier communities.

BCG had the pleasure of attending SXSW Interactive this year.

Aside from copious amounts of networking with the rock stars of the digital sphere, we had a chance to preview some great new innovative mobile apps and learn more about the world of startups here in the Midwest and the rest of the globe.

The networking never ended. You wouldn’t believe the amount of business cards collected during the five days we were there. One of our favorite meeting spots was the lobby of the Driskill Hotel. It’s quite the swanky getup.

We spent a good amount of time here. Of course, all the restaurants and bars in Austin were packed full of people of every flavor—from big-name celebrities to passionate CEOs of startups. We even got to have lunch with Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos…well, not exactly, but he was at the same restaurant as us…that counts, right?

People and Places

We met up with fellow Midwesterners Silicon Prairie at their decked-out cereal bar. Over bowls of cornflakes, we discussed some of the latest and greatest apps making a big splash at SXSW 2012.

Highlight

The gist of this app is to be able to find out more about people around you. If someone nearby has the Highlight app installed, their profile will show up on your phone. It’s an interesting way to discover your surroundings and connect with others that share common interests and friends.

Zaarly

So, we wanted to attend the super-cool, exclusive Mashable party…but we didn’t want to wait in line. I used Zaarly for the first time ever in what I feel was a great application: to ask if someone would pick up my offer of $30 to wait in line for us while we dined across the street. Someone took the bait and we finished dinner just in time to cruise on in to the party. Success!

LiveOn

Let’s hear it for a KC startup! LiveOn is a neat new way to share your family’s story. The online application allows you to create multi-media projects that chronicle generations of your family’s history. The best part? The content is saved online and can be shared with generations to come.

AgLocal

And yet another shout-out to a Midwestern startup and really great team! Launching soon, AgLocal provides users with a platform from which they can buy and sell locally raised meats.

Biltboard

This Midwestern startup takes documentation to the next level. With Biltboard, users can document every step of the process leading up to their finished product. From home-improvement projects to DIY arts and crafts, Biltboard offers a solution to trying to remember back to that one time you did that one thing for some place somewhere.

With a head full of knowledge, names and interactive news, we returned home to hit the hay and recover from the whirlwind of activity and innovation that was SXSW. Overall, it was an incredibly productive, fun and creative experience. We will definitely be heading back next year.