In celebration of the City’s 50th anniversary, the City of Mentor (Ohio) is reinventing it’s summer festival with a new name and new brand identity. Mentor CityFest is the largest community event put on by the City and will taking over the entire grounds of Civic Center Park for two fun packed days. The City’s Parks and Recreation Department has taken the best from previous festivals and added community focused components to the event by featuring local restaurants, businesses and organizations.

Since DCD’s home base is in Mentor, we were thrilled to be called on to design and develop the new logo and brand identity. A fun and engaging typographic treatment gives life and energy to the logo, while a bold color palette speaks to the diversity of activities taking place within the two-day event.

An alternate version of the logo was designed along with graphic icons that will serve as identifiers on banners and other signage.

Additional marking pieces were designed including rack cards and posters that will be distributed and displayed in area businesses.

Special Sports, Inc, is non-profit located in Mentor, Ohio that provides adaptive sports programs to children with special needs. They focus on sport specific skills and conditioning while encouraging healthy lifestyles.

Participation in sports can offer many therapeutic benefits to the child athlete, including strengthening and balance, hand-eye coordination, and gross motor skills. Special Sports also encourages team work and socialization with peers.

“We believe that success in sports promotes success in life.  At Special Sports, we are committed to changing the lives of special needs children one sport at a time.”

DCD donated our services to give this great organization the rightful logo and brand identity it deserves. We developed an “All-American” concept that is reminiscent of today’s sports teams logos. This simplified design will reproduce well online, in print, and when screen printed or embroidered on uniforms and merchandise.

The uniform concept capitalizes on the reproductive qualities of the logo. A team can choose whatever color scheme they want and the integrity of the design remains intact when applied.

The Official University Pocket Guide is a handy piece designed for Case Western University’s Information Technology Services division. It serves as a tool for incoming freshmen to connect and to stay connected to the University network. The Guide has simple steps to get connected and safely work (and play) within the University’s network.

This piece was entered into the Northeast Ohio’s Chapter of the Society for Technical Communications. It won Best of Show in this competition and moved on to the International competition where it won First Place there too.

Founded in 1936, the Urban Land Institute now has more than 30,000 members worldwide representing the entire spectrum of land use and real estate development disciplines, working in private enterprise and public service. As the preeminent, multidisciplinary real estate forum, ULI facilitates the open exchange of ideas, information and experience among local, national and international industry leaders and policy makers dedicated to creating better places.

The Cleveland Chapter came to DCD to design a simple vehicle that would communicate their message to local professionals and spread the word that ULI Cleveland is the place where  local leaders come to grow professionally and personally through sharing, mentoring, and problem solving.

For the second year in a row, DCD volunteered our design services to help promote GardenWalk Cleveland – a free, self- guided tour of gardens, urban farms, vineyards and orchards in ten neighborhoods of Cleveland, Ohio. This year the client sought the talents of local artist Lisa Hartmann to provide the main artwork for the marketing material. Her painting, Urban Farming in Cleveland, was the perfect choice for this year’s GardenWalk.

Along with the poster shown here, we also designed postcards and various ads to help with the marketing of this great event.

GardenWalk Cleveland – July 21 & 22, 11am – 5pm

Tour at your own pace in each of the ten designated Cleveland neighborhoods between 11am and 5pm on Saturday, July 21st and Sunday, July 22nd, 2012. Each neighborhood on the Walk has a headquarters where you’ll find car parking, bike parking, restrooms, water and maps.

See the website for maps www.gardenwalkcleveland.org/guide

The Weapons of Mass Creation Fest is the premier art, design, and music event in the Midwest. Now in its third year, 1,000+ attendees will descend upon Cleveland for three days in June to see 20 speakers, 20 designers, and nearly 30 bands. Creative professionals, entrepreneurs, musicians, artists, students, and fans will gather to learn, get inspired, collaborate, network, and celebrate together.

DCD has been a Silver Sponsor for the past 2 years and this year we will be giving away 1 (one) All Access 3-Day Pass to the event. To enter, simply comment below (you can write anything) before 12:00 pm EST on Thursday, June 7th. We’ll choose a winner on Thursday afternoon and notify you via email. Hope to see you there!

Contest is closed. Thanks for playing!

Richard L. Bowen + Associates Inc. (Bowen) brings architecture, engineering, and construction services together to provide a comprehensive range of services. Their architects and engineers are experienced in a wide range of project types, with a reputation for quality work. They maintain the technical capabilities to explore all methods of design, from the innovative to the traditional. Their team of designers uses the most current design programs and tools available and the in-house 3D modeling and animation staff utilizes state-of-the-art multimedia technology to study everything from massing and programming concepts to strategies for the building’s orientation to its surroundings.

After a successful design and launch of their website a few years ago, Bowen came back to DCD to tackle their traditional marketing efforts. We designed a comprehensive brochure that serves as a portfolio of some of their best work while describing all that the company has to offer.

A clean and minimal approach to the design really emphasizes the photographs. The windows on the cover mimic the design feature on the home page of the website. The use of coated paper on the interior pages helps the clarity and readability of the photos and text. While a contrasting uncoated sheet was used for the cover to give the overall piece a soft and approachable quality.

Meyer and Associates (M&A) designs, sells, and manages specialty insurance programs through the sponsorship of college and university alumni associations or other professional organizations. Affinity groups are their only clients, and they’ve managed insurance programs for some of them for nearly four decades. As experienced administrators, they’ve combined decades of insurance knowledge with cutting-edge product and marketing innovations.

M&A contracted with Daniel Collins Design to redesign the user interface and user experience of their website and to simplify the functionality of their online calculators. The segmented home page and landing page designs gives the user a direct path to follow in their search for their particular insurance needs – no matter what their point of site entry is.

Various pages designs give the site a fresh feel while keeping within the M&A brand identity. A simplified online calculator design makes to easier for the user to define their insurance needs.

Along with the task of the main website design, M&A sought direction on how to handle their hundreds of affiliate sites. More than likely, the user will arrive at these landing pages from the affiliate’s main website. It was important to maintain the look and feel of the affiliate site even though the user was being directed to an M&A page.

Using the affiliates logo and colors accomplished this while preserving the integrity of the new M&A site design. This solution also made the implementation of additional affiliate sites quick and easy to set up and maintain.

“After interviewing a dozen design firms and reviewing multiple portfolios, I commissioned Daniel Collins Design to redesign our website and they definitely didn’t disappoint. They are creative, smart, and one of those brilliant firms who understands the limitations of a budget, and still pushes the envelope. They were a joy to work with and comprehended a multitude of instructions, opinions and requests into one cohesive design. DCD delivered an outstanding product with great professional attention and differentiating ingenuity. I look forward to working with them again.”

Madelene Glomsten
Business Development and Marketing Manager, Meyer and Associates

The Digifit Ecosystem is a suite of apps that track cardio, running, Spinning®, cycling, and other data from ANT+ compatible sensors. It is the first complete solution for monitoring your fitness and health data for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

The challenge was that there was no central online space that collected and displayed all the fitness and health data that the apps track.

DCD was contracted to design the user interface for My Digifit – the “home” of all the data captured from the suite of apps. This online space automatically tracks workout details and health data, or lets you enter it manually. A dashboard and calendar provide a quick overview of your activity and biometrics, while detailed workout screens give you a comprehensive picture of your exercise performance and overall health.

A clean and modular approach was taken to clearly identify each section of data. The same icons and colors that are used in the suite of apps are also used here to quickly link the app experience with the online experience.

Compelling Communications (CC) helps businesses and organizations get to the heart of their story to find out what makes people want to listen and engage. They root their work in strategy and research, making sure the client’s story is reaching the right people in the right way.

DCD designed their logo and brand identity (below) a few years back and recently was asked to design and develop their website. To keep costs down, we utilized a WordPress theme, and customized everything from color, to imagery, to typefaces in efforts to uphold the integrity of their brand guidelines.

The completed site gives CC a simple online presence while providing them the opportunity to showcase select projects.