Yet another case of a blogger outgrowing a pre-canned WordPress theme.

Irene Seah is a sweet, funny, spiritual woman who (with occasional assistance from her two young daughters) has been writing a blog as part of her micro-business for a year or two.

It had become obvious to Irene that even though her generic blog looked nice, it didn’t really reflect her personality or that of her business. She was ready to take steps to remodel her digital digs — and that’s where I came in.

Because her business is so much about her, we decided to have an illustration of Irene interact with the shiny new logotype in the header graphic — to bring her literally right into the picture.

Simple, clean, calming and cool … we added stars, drenched everything in shades of blue (a colour with powerful spiritual significance for her) and created custom RSS, Email, and Twitter icons for the sidebar.

Irene loves her new online home, and even more satisfying — her daughters are delighted!

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A fantastic and quirky guitar maker, tucked into an unassuming Sacramento Valley town — who’da thunk it? Well, I’ve seen his shop and played those gorgeous guitars … and it’s all true. Joe Dragony is a hidden treasure.

We’d worked on a logo together many years before, but you know the story — to connect with the world of potential customers, to come out from hiding, Joe needed a website.

Not just any website, but something that reflected his personality, his ascetic no-B.S. aesthetic — and a site he could make changes to whenever he needed.

For the design aspect of the project, I just did that thing that I do. For the technical development of the website, I suggested that building a WordPress site for him would be ideal, and what the heck — I threw in a blog, too. Take a peek and you’ll see why!

He loved it. I love it.

Please visit Joe and commission one of these guitars for yourself!

Or a ukulele. He won’t mind.

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When a charming, potty-mouthed marketing genius emails me with the subject “Make me into a sexy logo, please”, I pay attention.

And get busy (see above).

The lovely Naomi Dunford of IttyBiz.com is a fountain of all manner of brilliant and, erm, “non-traditional” advice, support, and the occasional harangue for those plugging away at own very small home businesses.

Avoid her blog at your peril — I mean, that camo skirt was her idea.

This pinup was designed to work on posters, billboards, T-shirts, cruise ships, what-have-you (I’m talkin’ “HIGH-resolution”, internet people), so I’ve enlarged a piece below for luxuriously-detailed full effect.

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The “Town Crush” is a fundraiser for the Old Town School for Boys, an independent K-8 school in San Francisco. The black-tie event is held annually at the conclusion of the wine “crush” season (thus the name), and sells out ever year.

This year, it’s being held at the fabulously gangster-swanky Bimbo’s 365 Club in North Beach, and thus — when the red Emergency Logo Phone started ringin’ off the hook — themes of “Old Las Vegas” and Franke Sinatra came wafting through our heads.

The crisp little logo (pictured above) features silhouettes of Frankie and (for good measure) Marilyn Monroe, loitering fabulously around a vintage electric marquee.

I may have had almost as much fun pillaging through the galaxy of vintage Las Vegas neon signs as I did actually working up the mark, so I’ve included a few of the sketches that didn’t make the final cut. I do like the version that the organizers selected, but man, I was kind of looking forward to cranking up the neon!

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The “Dissolve-O-Matic” is the latest in the series of illustrations created for Havi Brooks’ self-work products, in the quirky style semi-officially dubbed “Steampunk meets Yellow Submarine.”

As I wrote about the first of these machines, they communicate a sort of alternate-reality functionality in a completely non-threatening way. This aligns beautifully with Havi’s brilliant copywriting and whimsically approachable brand, in both style and attitude.

This one is the metaphorical representation of a product designed to dissolve procrastination. You can almost hear the rattle and roar of this happy contraption at work … and if your curiousity is piqued by the rubber duckie, visit her other website.

I was pleased as punch when an old friend, after years of mulling, finally decided to throw open the doors to his own guitar repair establishment: Chicago Fret Works.

Guitar repair is a tricky business, bringing into play the same questions of competency and trust that you find in the waiting room of a hospital. Musicians treat their instruments like family members, and need to feel that the folks about to perform surgery care for them too — and know exactly what they’re doing.

Though the budget for was small, we were able to put together a logo, signs, business papers and easy-edit WordPress website that perfectly fit this scenario. Steve and his partner Dan are both musicians and artisans, so their brand was constructed to evoke reassuringly been-there-forever master craftsmanship — and a sense of authentic connection with this century’s working musicians.

They’re right down the street from Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music, so if you and your stringed instrument of choice are in the neighborhood, drop in and say hello.

Spicy SinSations is a Portland, Oregon-based business specializing in — how shall I put this — “marital aids”.

The existing logo was an undistinguished script typeface, and the owner realized that she needed something that said fun, friendly, and just a little bit naughty. Sales are made using the model of the friendly home Tupperware party — not a trace of the dark ages’ brown paper bag nonsense here — so her instincts were right on target.

A separate part of this ongoing re-branding project is the creation of a series of illustrated “Spicy Pinup Girls”, extending the “naughty+friendly+fun” identity. The first pinup was created especially for use on a sponsorship banner at Portland’s hip new roller derby league … click here for a peek.

The Santa Cruz Harley-Davidson dealership expanded into a second home near Watsonville in 2001. The demographics of this more working-class region called for a different look, somewhat heavier and more ruggedly “Harley” than the parent store. The Green Valley logo features the eagle wings necessary to communicate the overarching “Harley-Davidson brand, and uses a hard-edged blackletter typeface and vintage “knucklehead” engine to speak to a blue-collar audience.

It’s practically an absurdist concept — taking a winery on the road? After parting ways with an outdated property, Roshambo Winery needed a temporary home while their new digs were under construction. Voila, the “Roshambus”, Batmobile to Roshambo’s “Party Army”.

We’d already established a unique and powerful visual style for the upstart winery, which lent itself beautifully to the task of creating a red-and-black road whale that would shriek their identity. Mission accomplished. People cheer, wave, and honk their horns as the beast sails by, a true measure of the Roshambus’ — and the winery’s — populist appeal.

Milton Davis Junior of the family-owned Davis Sign Company was a great help in realizing this large-scale vinyl-wrapping project.

Havi Brooks will inform you that she’s not at all a visual person, but when digging for ways to describe her series of self-work programs, eBooks and audio products, the images that popped up were “big, crazy, friendly machines”.

My visual translation: “Steampunk meets the Yellow Submarine.”

The machines are amiable mechanical mash-ups, communicating a sort of alternate-reality functionality in a completely non-threatening way. This aligns beautifully with Havi’s brilliant copywriting and whimsically approachable brand — both in terms of style (clean lines and flat areas of bright color) and attitude (friendly and welcoming).

This particular mechanical wonder represents a product designed to calm people down so they can be productive. In Havi’s own words, “The Destuckification Station will train you to stop the paralysis in its tracks so you can go back to getting excited about what you do. And do it.”

(And if this contraption grabs you, take a look at the Dissolve-O-Matic!)

Nothing says Harley-Davidson more than the eagle which has graced its corporate logo since the turn of the century. I borrowed that eagle’s wing, a stylized version thereof, for the Santa Cruz dealership’s logo and business papers. The clean, bold statement of a paper-white wing silhouetted against a pale gold gradient background makes a strong impression, while retaining a sophisticated consumer-oriented look appropriate for high-end motorcycle customers.

There’s been a Harley-Davidson dealership in Santa Cruz since 1921, but my association began with a phone call from the then-new owner in 1996. The brief was to capitalize on the historical strength of Harley-Davidson’s evocative but somewhat dark visual identity, while capturing the light and freshness of the dealership’s beachside home.