Dave Nelson | SecretPenguin Blog

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SecretPenguin Garments is excited to announce a partnership with inCOMMON Community Development!

For every shirt or accessory bought, SecretPenguin will donate a shirt to inCOMMON Community Development to provide for the homeless and near-homeless populations they serve.

Learn more about inCOMMON Community Development.

SecretPenguin Garments Store

For everyone that has already purchased a teeshirt this year, their purchase will provide another shirt for someone in need.

SecretPenguin Garments are made in small runs. Once a color is sold out, we will never make that colorway again. Everything is limited.

Last week at Blue Sushi, I had the honor to present during PechaKucha Night alongside Yinghua Zhu, Scott Drickey, Janghwan Cheon, Lisa Vitale, Nick Rebeck, Ophir Palmon, and Megan Hunt.

Invented in Tokyo, PechaKucha’s presentation format is where you show 20 images, each for 20 seconds. It was super fun!

Here’s my attempt at presenting SecretPenguin’s History with this format:

We had such a fun time working with Moylan Iceplex at Tranquility Park on their rebrand and new website!

Here’s their old logo.

For their new logo and branding, the goal was to create a style that would be Family-Friendly.

• During our research, most of the family-friendly brands we came across were either boring or too childish.
• It makes sense to have it lean on being childish, because if you go to a place as a family… it’s usually focused on the kids.
• But the problem is, what happens when the kids get a little older?
• The style needs to cross boundaries, so when high school and college aged kids come, they don’t feel dorky.

So, our goal with this is to be Family-Friendly – appeal to young kids, but also appeal to an older crowd.

At first, we did an illustrated logo with elements from different activities on ice. But they needed a general one. And they were also painting it on the side of the building – and with a hand drawn logo painted on the side of the building, it could look like the sign painting was sloppy.

So we went back to the drawing board. We started sketching figure eights and lines that were made in the ice from skates. And eventually came up with a loopy M.

I really liked the idea of incorporating ice marks into the logo to form an M. However, I soon realized this looked similar to our friend Micah Max‘s logo (above on the left). So I quickly contacted Micah, and showed him the logo and asked him if this was too similar. It had a different concept behind it, but I couldn’t deny that it had some similarities. (We’ve seen too many of our independent designer friends get ripped off by some agencies and some designers, as well as experiencing it ourselves. Even though this was a different look and idea – the last thing I wanted to do is make an amazing designer feel ripped off even in the slightest).
Here’s how he responded…

“Totally great! No worries. To tell you the truth, after I made my logo, I found like 3 or 4 other places that have similar marks. It’s just how it happens sometime :) – Micah Max

So, we had a logo – now we just needed to depend on the environment around it to create the youthful feel.
We started to illustrate things that made us think of ice to create a repeating background that will appear on the majority of Moylan’s materials, surrounding the logo.

MoylanIceplex.com
The website was built to easily share Moylan’s schedules, events, clubs, news and basic info. The hardest part was organizing it all so it’s easy to find the things you’re looking for – but that’s always the case. I think some of the best websites feel simple, even though there’s a lot going on.

I’ve been thinking about the future of SecretPenguin a lot lately.
I came up with 3 goals as we continue to grow. They may evolve as time goes on, but for now, here they are:

1.
Rid the world of misrepresented and insulting ads targeted to the youth demographic (this includes never using the word, xtreme).
(More examples in a past post about skateboarding and advertising.)

I want to give the respect that the youth demographic deserves. Not sell to them, not talk down to them, not take advantage of them or their culture/community, but create brands they can truly be proud to associate themselves with.

Hyper Martial Arts fans at the Hyper Games, an event to support and promote Martial Arts athletes. Hyper is a good example of a brand we created that people are proud of, with over 20,000 people who “like” it on Facebook in just a few short months.

2.
I want SecretPenguin to employ the best people that are submersed in their passions – skateboarding, music, biking, whatever. I’ve noticed there’s a quirky genius quality within passionate people. Sure, they may have a shaved head with a rat tail or a sunburned lightning bolt on their chest… but that type of quirkiness transfers to their work and boundaries are broken.

Jason Sawyer, SecretPenguin’s frontend developer. (Photo: Cody Peterson)

3.
I want every aspect of SecretPenguin to be honest – with our employees, our clients, and the audience we’re reaching with our design and marketing.
When everyone is honest, everything feels fair. Everyone understands their roles, expectations are met, and everyone is – in theory – happy.

3 simple goals. I believe we have done a pretty good job so far. However, there are still way too many insulting ads out there…

I like having creativity be such a big part of our business. But it’s kinda scary at times… What if we lose our creativity? What if we can’t come up with anything next time?

It’s strange to have such a big part of our business rely on these things.

But we know how important it is, and we do everything we can to keep things fresh.

Experience new things.
I’ve found it to be limiting to be in front of the computer 24 hours a day. New experiences create new inspiration.

Cody Peterson (art + interactive director) is working remotely from Canada for the next 2 months. We all stay in contact through iChat and nobody loses a step. Cody is experiencing new things and enjoying new scenery and becoming more inspired because of it.

Work with people you respect and trust.
I respect and appreciate everyone at SecretPenguin. The things they do bring each job to a higher level. When everyone has the same goal to constantly better the projects, it makes it fun and easy to bounce creative ideas off each other.

And lastly, have fun.
We like to skateboard, do a little archery, ride bikes, and whatever else we think of that might be fun.

Bryan Findell (Visual Effects Editor + Producer) and I playing a game of S.K.A.T.E. Rematch next week. Bryan was sitting all day, and didn’t get a chance to warm up!

Matt Helt (account director) likes to balance things on his chin.

Jason Sawyer (Developer) and Cody Peterson shooting arrows.

No more archery indoors though…

We have a simple policy at SecretPenguin – It doesn’t matter what your creative process is, as long as the work is high quality and gets done on time! …and no more windows break.

Skateboarders are truly my favorite artists.
There’s a reason that everyone at SecretPenguin has backgrounds in skateboarding. I originally met Cody Peterson (Art Director), Jason Sawyer (Developer), Bryan Findell (Visual Effects Producer) and our intern Eric Baughman all through skateboarding.

I constantly see amazing creativity among skateboarders.
I think from always looking at their landscape differently to find new creative ways to skateboard, it trains their brains to look at everything a bit differently.

Last Year, SecretPenguin and BBB Skateshop put on a show titled,
“NE Skateboard Artists“.

We had artists from all across Nebraska show their work…

Brant VanBoening from Silo, Scott Blake from Barcode Art, Derek Pressnall from Tilly and The Wall, Steve Walsh, Kevin Wilkins from The Skateboard Mag, Steve Andel’s Photography, David Giesbrecht (local skateboard photographer), Kevin Harris, a few graffiti and street artists, and a ton more. Conchance performed at the end of the night (I used to take him and his friends to skate spots when he was 11!).

Most of these guys, like myself, have always produced artwork, but have rarely shown their work in shows or galleries. I really enjoyed seeing it all in one place.

Steve Andel has some more photos from the event on his Facebook.

Skateboarders are truly my favorite artists.

We had a great time working with the city on Mayor Suttle’s new website. Here’s a little bit of our thought process behind the project…

THE GOALS OF THE WEBSITE:

• Bridge communication between the Mayor’s office and the community.
• Help organize all of the content in a visual way for users to find information.

ORGANIZATION:
News Categories
We created categories that address the different issues that Mayor Suttle talked about during his campaign that link up to the relating posts… Public Safety, Green Initiatives, Economic Development, etc.

Slideshow
A slideshow is on the homepage that features important posts. This will help keep the needed news from being pushed to the bottom by new posts.

CONNECTING:
Mayor’s Hotline

Mayor’s Hotline is always available as a tab on each page on the left for easy communication.

Links to Social Media and other sites
Links to Mayor Suttle’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube as well as other city related sites throughout the pages.

Twitter Feed

Mayor Suttle’s Twitter Feed is pulled in directly at the top of each page.

USER-INTERFACE:
Visual Indicators

Drop downs replaced with whole section dropping down to reveal all of the links. Once you visit one, a visual indicator checks off of where you’ve been. Links to PDFs are shown with a PDF icon next to it that turns gray if you’ve already been there. Little arrows are also next to links that take you away from the site.

Some of the pages are so long, so as soon as you scroll down a bit, a TOP button appears in the bottom right corner that can scroll you back up to the top. We utilized scrolling, rather than jumping so users can have a visual for where they’re going.

UPDATABLE

The site will always be evolving, so we built it to have dynamic content with the ability to update on the backend by Suttle’s administration.

We had a great time working on this project with the administration, DotComm and everyone else involved. We love Omaha, and we are so proud to work with the city!

HDR and The City of Omaha put on a few planning events to get the public’s input for Downtown Omaha’s 30 Year Master Plan.

BBB LTD Skateshop and SecretPenguin rallied together a group of skateboarders to attend each event and get involved. Huge thank you to all the skateboarders that took the time to come out. Also a huge thank you to the people at HDR for listening to us.

Not only did we get a skatepark put in the plan, we got two!

HDR put together a video of the process. Here’s a minute long recap about the skateparks:

Photo: Richard Mulder
I recently gave a presentation on branding for skateboard ministries at the 2009 International Christian Skateboard Conference in Fort Lauderdale, FL.
(Huge thanks to Mike Miller for letting me use your computer. It was great meeting you!)

Below is a recap of the talk…

Here’s a quick introduction and background on myself, and then we’ll get to the good part…

I started doing design work for BBB Skateshop, a local shop in Omaha, NE.

Manna Skateboards: Sierra Fellers, Rob Dolman, Jud Farmboy Heald, Danny Morrin, Jared Lee, Brian Hutcherson, me, Tim Byrne
After that, I started touring with Manna Skateboards (shown above), and would bring my laptop on the road with me.  Towards the end, I started doing some design work for them.

While I was in Hawaii, a hotel worker dropped my bag and cracked my laptop. It seemed to work fine when I checked it, but after a month, it died and would cost $1000 to get it fixed.
I thought about forgetting about design, and just continue skateboarding.
My parents were incredibly supportive and told me they would pay for half if I could come up with the other half. I still wasn’t 100% convinced to get it fixed, and instead was focusing on our next tour.
Out of nowhere, I got a card in the mail from Mike Ballard, a youth pastor in Omaha. He wrote, “I was praying for you, and felt led to give you this,” and there was a check for $500… the remaining amount I needed to get my laptop fixed!

I got my laptop fixed, and started to become obsessed with design and I wanted to make skateboard ministries look legit. Whether I accomplished that or not, I tried my hardest to create design and branding that could help ministries grow.

Soon after, we left Manna Skateboards and started Untitled Skateboards.

First Untitled ad. Left to Right: Me, Shawn Hale, Nate Giarratano, Jared Lee, Jay Haizlip, Jud Farmboy Heald
Jud Heald was in charge of Untitled, and he had me in charge of all the design. Right away, we started running ads in Thrasher Magazine.

Jay Haizlip was on Untitled at the time, and asked me to do work for his church called The Sanctuary and a new idea he had for a tour called The Uprising (that later became their reality tv show).

Before I knew it, I was swamped with work and helping out all my friends in skateboard ministry.

So there’s a little background, let’s get on with what you came for…

First, let’s start by defining what branding and design is, so we’re all on the same page.

Branding is the overall look + feel and reputation of your organization. Design is a strategic way of communicating. Good design can also help people relate and feel proud to be associated with a brand. For example, if someone likes the design on your teeshirt, it’s more likely they’ll wear it outside of your ministry’s functions.

However, let’s keep your priorities straight… Your first priority is not to look good, you’re first priority is your ministry.

God is still going to do great things, no matter what your ministry looks like. (Note: after I made this, I actually liked it and wouldn’t mind being apart of a ministry that looks like a My Little Pony Fanclub!)

Good design is expensive, but valuable. If you can’t afford good design, or don’t have access to a good designer on your staff, the least you can do is have good branding.

These are the very basics to branding. Develop a logo, choose colors, pick out a typeface. Then always stick with those. It’s so simple, but barely anyone does it. I think the reason for that is, people don’t realize the importance of it.

Let me explain with an example:
Your ministry is at the local skatepark cleaning up the trash or handing out waters, and you all are wearing a shirt with the same logo on it.
The next day, someone from the park sees a kid at school wearing a shirt with the same logo.
That consistency creates recognition.

He may approach the kid and ask what they are all about. Without that recognition of the shirt, they may have never talked.
Recognition creates connections.

The kid could then tell him about the group he’s a part of, and tell him the time they meet if he’d like to check it out. With no effort at all, besides having consistent branding, the kid was able to invite someone.
Connections create community.

Taking it a bit further…

This is a tip I learned from the creative director of Starbucks at an AIGA event. When you have a list, along with your colors, typeface, and logo… it will ensure more consistency across all of your materials.
Which in return will create consistency which creates recognition which creates connections that will ultimately create community. And that’s why branding is so important to your ministry.

If anyone has questions or would like to talk more, feel free to leave a comment or email me: [email protected]

Thanks!