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100s Visual Logos & Letterheads

We love inspirational design compendiums and we’re super excited to be included in one. We’ve got not one, but four logos in the book 100s Visual Logos & Letterheads, by Matt Woolman. Shouldn’t you have your very own copy?

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It’s our 25th anniversary!!

25 years ago, Donna Hughes (my mom) scooted up to the drawing table in her bedroom and started work on her first project as Hughes design|communications. It was a brochure, and the client was the father of a friend of mine down the street. I was 8 years old and only barely remember this beginning because in my childhood memories she was always sitting at a drawing table. She was a single mom and together the two of us had navigated her college years in Houston, grad school years in Basel, Switzerland, and then her first job as a designer. Now here we were, settled in a little house in Evanston, Illinois, and it was the beginning of what would become our family business. She did all design work by hand with colored pencils, markers, Plaka Black & White, ruling pens, T-squares, triangles and surgical knives. The administrative side of the business was run through my brand new Apple IIC desktop computer, a gift from my dad that I was using to teach myself DOS programming (and to play Lode Runner, of course). As her business grew and her client list got bigger and more prestigious, I hovered close by, happily writing programs on my computer, drawing with my mom’s colored pencils and markers, and sticking her Letraset rub-down type anywhere I could. You could say that I’ve worked (in some capacity) at Hughes design my whole life.

It’s amazing to fast-forward 25 years and see us now, working from our super-fast Macs and running a business that has managed to gracefully weather all the storms, economic and otherwise, of the last two-plus decades. After studying graphic design in college, I moved to San Francisco to pursue my interest in web design and worked in the dot-com industry and then started my own design firm after the bust. In 2003, my husband and I decided to move back to Chicago in search of lower housing costs and to be closer to friends and family, and my mom and I made the decision to merge our two businesses. And here we are! It’s worked out beautifully. We work together but separately. In addition to continuing to create amazing and communicative print pieces for our clients (with a leaning toward medical/science-oriented businesses and organizations) and ever-so-smoothly running the administrative end of things, my mom also is an Adjunct Professor of graphic design at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the Biomedical Visualization department. I work mainly with businesses specializing in fashion, beauty and lifestyle, and while I do a lot of print work and love it, the web is my domain—I’ve been creating and developing websites for the last 11 years. We truly love and are grateful for what we do.

In honor of the event of our 25th anniversary, my mom has created a beautiful new logo, which is actually a modernized version of the very first Hughes design logo (which was drawn by hand!). The basis of the imagery for both logos is the peacock feather, which symbolizes the beauty of communication. This is hugely important to us, as our sole purpose as designers is to create effective and creative communications for our clients. 

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Perfect, right?

We’d like to thank all of our clients, big and small and old and new, for being a part of Hughes design|communications, and for making it possible for us to do what we love with such success. 

-Courtney

1.6.10 Design Book in the Final Stages

I just got word that the design book, to be called Symbol and published by Laurence King Publishers, a small creative arts publisher, is in it’s final stages. We are so excited to see these logos in print, and so proud that they’ve been chosen. I’ll post again when the book actually publishes, but in the meantime, here are the three chosen logos…

-Courtney

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1.1.10 Happy New Year!

2009 was, despite the economy, a great year for us here at Hughes Design. We worked on many exciting projects with clients both new and old. Most of those projects are up, but we’ve got several that have just been completed that we’ll be posting as soon as the holiday dust settles. 2010 looks to be bringing us many more opportunities to do more of the work that we love with clients that we love. We couldn’t be more thankful. We’d like to wish everyone a happy and prosperous New Year!

-Courtney

10.16.09 Logos to Be Published in Design Book

Earlier this week, we got an email from an image researcher at a book publisher letting us know that three of our logos have been selected to appear in a book on logo design, which is quite an honor. We’ll let you know more when the book is published!

-Courtney