Chat Clussman

Austin, TX

Dad, husband, reader, geek, rower, and freelance creative director for hire.

art direction, branding, creative direction, design for conversion, problem solving, web design

Green Energy Exchange Hero — Landing page hero for Green Energy Exchange. Fun fact: I chuckled on the call when my client suggested he wanted wind turbines with kids in front of them for imagery. Turns out that's, like, a whole category on Adobe Stock. There are a LOT of them. Another fun fact: if the turbine blades have red on them, those are European turbines and American energy clients won't be super fond of using th...
Logo Cards — Logo cards showing a few different versions of the GEX lockup, icons, and acronym. Custom icons at smaller sizes have fewer lines. When I build logos, I try to build out everything the client will ever need. This brand had a few extras because the long name led to several versions: one long line, stacked, and acronym, icon left and icon top. There were also the custom small size versions, the ...
GEX Logo — Quite an evolution from round one to this, the final approved mark for the brand. This hits the, ahem, mark for how the brand wants to position itself, which is friendly but also modern and rebellious. They want to stand apart from other energy companies and even other green energy companies. Green Energy Exchange is cutting out layers of middlemen and markups to connect suppliers and buyers. ...
Logo Explorations — In the first round I pushed a mark that I thought was versatile, would represent the company well, and stand out from their competitors. The problem was that it had a classic feel to it and the client is a startup that wants to position itself as modern and rebellious — which I knew from the brand sprint. Round two opened up the exploration quite a bit and I wanted to share some of the selects...
GEX Logo — Round 1 — Work underway for a new energy brand. This is the first round mark which would set the company well apart from its competition in terms of shape, color, and typography. It's friendly, classic, and works equally well for a small startup or a huge multinational. And hey, startups have big dreams.
Data Acquisition — So simple, so dumb, and yet so brilliant. I'll never create a better visual pun.
Impact Dyslexia Homepage — Homepage for Impact Dyslexia. You can read an overview of the branding elements post. Short version: this non-profit is here to kick ass and chew bubblegum, but they're all out of bubblegum. Ass-kicking is in service of a cause — getting dyslexics, particularly children, the help they desperately need to be successful.
Impact Dyslexia Brand Elements — Some brand elements and applications that came out of branding work for Impact Dyslexia. My son has dysgraphia so this brand is near and dear to me but, beyond that, they're super interesting from a branding perspective. They have two very different audiences and they want to address those audiences in very different ways and with a different tone, but with one brand and one voice. One audien...
Impact Dyslexia — New branding project. Impact Dyslexia is a non-profit dedicated to creating a world in which a dignified education is accessible to everyone. And they plan to make some noise about it.
Bonsai Explorations — Thought I'd circle back to this and post more unused stuff. Some of the explorations and rejected ideas, mostly centered around the bonsai tree.
Pitch Deck — Part of a pitch deck.
Kungfu.AI Website — Homepage for Kungfu.ai.
Kungfu.AI Logo — A few more examples of the Kungfu logo, with and without mesh backgrounds. Full project: http://clussman.com/portfolio/kungfu-ai/
Kungfu.AI Lockup — One color, dark and light logo variants for Kungfu AI, an artificial intelligence startup in Austin, TX. Full project: http://clussman.com/portfolio/kungfu-ai/
Kungfu.AI Logo — Logomark for Kungfu AI, an artificial intelligence startup in Austin, TX. The logo can stand alone or be paired with various animated or static mesh backgrounds.
Bonsai — Unused Branding Exploration — Part of an unused branding exploration for Bonsai, the company powering search for a lot of other companies. At the rate I post, I'll show the direction we ended up going sometime around 2038. :)
Flag Heart — Working on something else I accidentally made a flag heart and yesterday was the 4th of July so... here you go.
They said it would be fun. — Logos should be simple they said. Then everyone has a good time they said. My superpower is making things that look like other things. Like a tree-brain-torch-tennis-ball-cyclist. One of these is an early round logo for one of my clients. Bonus points if you can guess which one.
A10 Partners Logo — One more shot to 'show the paint', part of the branding system. A10 Partners is a marketing agency in Austin, TX focused on marketing sales support and go-to-market strategies for companies of all sizes. They needed a logo that reflected their birds-eye view of marketing and the fly-high success they deliver to their clients.
A10 Partners Logo — Second shot to show the logomark as a container for other imagery. A10 Partners is a marketing agency in Austin, TX focused on marketing sales support and go-to-market strategies for companies of all sizes. They needed a logo that reflected their birds-eye view of marketing and the fly-high success they deliver to their clients.
A10 Partners — A10 Partners is a marketing agency in Austin, TX focused on marketing sales support and go-to-market strategies for companies of all sizes. They needed a logo that reflected their birds-eye view of marketing and the fly-high success they deliver to their clients.
Bonsai App Diagrams — Bonsai provides hosted search for other startups and tech companies. This is a diagram showing front-end clients on the right, a three-node search cluster in the middle, and the Bonsai admin console on the left.
Bonsai's Pingboard Case Study — The first in a series of case studies showing how Bonsai's hosted Elasticsearch has helped other startups be successful. This one was fun because I did the copywriting as well as the design.
Feature Icons — Getting better (and faster) at animations in Principle. I like how these turned out except for the aliasing on the edges. Icons are smaller on the page where I built the animations so I used the scale feature. Scaling the artwork works, just not perfectly.

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