For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Archie Lyons (no Archie’s not my real name but it’s my business name) and I recently helped Blake in re-branding his company into a more sophisticated and up-to-date brand. I did this voluntarily, no money involved whatsoever. You may think that’s crazy, but I did it for the love of creativity. It was January 8^th and I was off sick from work, scanning my facebook newsfeed seemed to be the most appealing thing to do at the time. I came across this post…

Well… ‘I’m not a graphic design student’ I thought, ‘I never have been’… but something clicked in my brain. Why should students be the only people who need to expand their portfolio? I work in a creative marketing agency, but why should that stop me doing extra and building on what I do in my day job? The other thing that popped into my mind is when I first came across Blake Ezra Photography about 6 or 7 years ago during a meeting at BBYO, my local Jewish youth organisation, I knew then that I wanted to re-design his logo and that desire was still there all those years later.

So I jumped at the chance to be involved. ‘Do you have to be a student?’ I first commented on the post, Blake kindly replied ‘not necessarily’. I thought about it for a few minutes and something inside of me, a gut instinct, told me to go for it. Who cares about payment – this is a brilliant opportunity!

Off I went to my first meeting with Blake (the day after the facebook post) still a bit ill and sniffly, but oh-so excited. We talked for ages about what he already had, what he needed, and it was great. We got on brilliantly. I left the meeting with a to-do list of two print items – no logo involved. Sitting at home in front of my iMac looking at everything Blake sent me, I had absolutely no desire to do anything but design a logo. A new logo would open up a lot more opportunity for future print works and general branding. It would mean sophistication, identity and a brand.

Our second meeting quickly came about. This time I was armed with print-outs, my laptop and some things that Blake wasn’t expecting. We sat down and I started defending myself before even showing him my first drafts, which are here for all to see…

‘I know you didn’t want a new logo but I just found it really hard to work with your old one’. I could see the worry in Blake’s face. He must have been thinking ‘What has this girl done? Has she gone crazy?’. I may well be crazy, or maybe it was the cold, but I showed him my logo designs, clearly pointing out my favourite and then waited. A horrible silence fell over the office, the butterflies in my stomach were in hyper mode.

“I really love it!”

The butterflies halted and I had to do a double take. He liked it?! I had to stop my jaw from dropping and all I said was ‘phew!’. I will never forget that feeling of relief. The feeling of joy from making someone happy by doing something I love. From then on we worked very hard together on various parts of Blake’s company (I can’t reveal everything just yet) and everything started to come together. There’s a lot more in the pipeline and this has encouraged me to do more with my spare time. More free work. It’s a great chance to build my portfolio, make future contacts and keep my love of graphic design going strong.

This wasn’t meant to be a long post, I’m really not a writer, but hopefully it will make you stop and think… What do you love to do, and why should you have to do it for money… do it for the love of creativity!

Archie Lyons can be found at www.archiedesign.co.uk