Cobalt Design & Marketing

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08/21/2025

A few examples of animated logos I've created.

Over the years, I've played around with animating various logos I've created. While a good static logo is always needed to help a consumer identify your brand, it can be even more engaging to see it in motion in the right circumstances.

Towards the end of my time at The Lodge at Cloudcroft, I created an animated logo that could be used in social media posts (in fact it made it a Christmas 2023 post) and hopefully someday in commercials. Like the redesign, I tried to keep it simple, panning away from the central tower to reveal the emblem border. The cursive nature of the word Lodge begged to have a handwritten entrance and was quite fun to figure out. Of course, this was not my first foray into such animation. Indeed, I had done it twice before in two personal projects as pictured in this post.

For "Search for Heiwa," which is set in a war-torn Asian-like setting, I decided to reveal the Japanese text through the use of fire and the English text with a metallic gleam. With Quest for Eden (set in a related setting) I wanted to evoke a history vs advancement theme. To that end, the stone base flies into position, as neon text flashes in and digs its way into the base by the use of circuitry.

As you'll note, each is timed to the music (retroactively in the case of The Lodge) as that creates more visual impact.

"Puttin' on The Ritz" composed by Irving Berlin
"In Search Of... (The Main Theme of Search for Heiwa)" composed by Timothy Welch
"Lost in Thoughts All Alone" composed by Hiroki Morish*ta, arranged by Masato Coda, & performed by AmaLee

08/21/2025

A title sequence for a text-based role-play called The Game.

In 2019, I began work on a title sequence for a long-running text-based role-play that my friends and I ran in the 14th RP Network known as The Game. The plot, as devised by "Tuusan T'lyrander," involves people from Earth of the near future being transported to a medieval world called Talour via electronic headsets. The RP started in April 2016 and ran until 2020.

My goals with the title sequence were to show key areas from the plot, represent the players using the shining stars that are dragged from Earth to Taour and fade out as they go into battle, and effectively convey the tone of the RP.

08/20/2025

Animated "splash screen" videos for my personal video game collection.

Through the use of a program called Playnite, I keep track of all the games I own and can launch most of them on my computer. As a feature of this program, one can set an image or video to display just before a game is loaded, commonly referred to as a "splash screen". This emulates a similar function most video game consoles use when launching various games.

I wasn't merely content with a static image, however. I decided to recreate various logo & graphic animations used in official marketing for these games, or in the games themselves. I also recreated the animated logos for various game consoles (barring the Sega Iris logo, which is a custom animation for a non-existent console) and placed them in the corner for identification of the game's original platform. I limited each to 7 seconds so as not to overstay their welcome.

In the case of Chrono Trigger, a friend was so impressed with my splash screen that recreates the opening title animation for the game, that he asked for a full recreation, which is presented here.

Disney's Epic Mickey: Rebrushed © 2024 Disney
Final Fantasy VI © 1994 Square Enix
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past © 1991 Nintendo
Chrono Trigger © 1995 Square Enix
Super Nintendo Entertainment System logo is a trademark of Nintendo of America Inc.
Sega Iris Logo inspired by the Sega family of systems

Banners and logos for personal projects.When not creating graphics professionally, I tend to create graphics personally ...
08/20/2025

Banners and logos for personal projects.

When not creating graphics professionally, I tend to create graphics personally as well. These are few examples of banners & logos I created for some original text-based role-playing games. All the settings are original to the 14th RP Network.

Examples of the regular posts for The Lodge at CloudcroftOne of the things that was most important for any marketing s...
08/20/2025

Examples of the regular posts for The Lodge at Cloudcroft

One of the things that was most important for any marketing strategy at The Lodge was to leverage its century-long history. To that end, I began researching and writing weekly posts to document various aspects of that history. These posts proved to be immensely popular with the guests, Cloudcroft locals, and the hotel's ownership, who specifically requested physical copies. This not only enhanced the hotel's historical reputation and taught our history to new guests, but also served to improve relations with the village, which had begun to deteriorate over several years.

08/20/2025

Weekly posts for NMSU Journalism & Media Studies during the height of COVID in 2020.

When I began working at the Journalism Department, it was readily clear that a different approach was required to maintain engagement. The prior approach was to include photos of students and document student accomplishments. As this was exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, due to quarantine, I took the approach I used in CMI and started daily posts.

Each day would adhere to a theme such as which shared quotes on journalism, or in which students answered questions about Journalism using Instagram stories. Mixed in would be spontaneous posts such as one marking Friday the 13th. All posts would be cross-posted on the Journalism Department's page to leverage viewership there as well.

The approach paid off, not only maintaining pre-COVID engagement levels, but exceeding them by roughly 50%. As such, a similar approach was used when I worked at The Lodge at Cloudcroft giving rise to the immensely popular posts as documented in another post.

A Social Media Banner created for Creative Media Institute at New Mexico State University in 2019.The idea was to make t...
08/20/2025

A Social Media Banner created for Creative Media Institute at New Mexico State University in 2019.

The idea was to make the banner more uniform with the rest of the university's marketing while still retaining CMI's distinct brand identity. To that end, the CMI logo was changed from RGB colors to solid white. Surrounding it are two rings, comprising a "camera lens" shape, with a roll of film running through them. Rather than use a solid crimson background, which proved uninteresting, an image of one of the CMI labs with a Gaussian blur was superimposed over it.

The majority of CMI social media marketing from 2019 to 2021 was based on this banner, forming the basis for the social media brand identity. It still remains in use for their page today!

A promotional flyer created for the November 17-18 2023 Murder Mystery at The Lodge at Cloudcroft. The mission patch for...
08/20/2025

A promotional flyer created for the November 17-18 2023 Murder Mystery at The Lodge at Cloudcroft. The mission patch for the Marsflower Pilgrim 1 was graciously provided by the Cloudcroft Light Opera Company as part of their materials for the event.

In 2022, I was tasked with updating the logo for The Lodge at Cloudcroft, which was originally commissioned by then owne...
08/20/2025

In 2022, I was tasked with updating the logo for The Lodge at Cloudcroft, which was originally commissioned by then owner Jerry Sanders in 1983. The logo had fallen out of use by the 2000s, but was still remembered fondly by locals and current owners Joe & Lanna Duncan.

The changes were inspired by the updates to the hotel taking place at the same time. The emphasis on Victorian decor was replaced with a more rustic, if elegant, approach evocative of the 1920s, and the red and blues that were in use were replaced with a forest green and gold/copper trim. Consequently, the revised logo changes the logo from a wooden Victorian sign with French fleurs to an emerald emblem or medallion. Some touches from the 2000s logo were maintained, such as the iron gate flourishes on either side of "Since 1899", the tagline "Cloudcroft, NM, It's Charmed" and revised sub-fonts for it's 2021 update that were cursive and sans-serif.

As the original logo had no set color-scheme and resulted in branding being unstandardized, special attention was made to create one that would facilitate a set brand identity for the hotel that evoked the western nostalgia ownership was looking for. The emerald and gold were chosen out of several presented options by the Sales Manager, Jon Mancillas.

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