News

Happy 2012!

It’s a new year! We love the excitement and sense of renewal and possibility that comes with a new year. Resolutions are made, things are put in order, and we see everything with new, hopeful eyes. A new year is a great time to reevaluate your message, create a new identity or website, or to polish up an existing one. It’s also a fantastic time to review your marketing plan for the year. Identities, website designs and redesigns, and marketing initiatives are what we’re all about, so if you’re looking for a strategic design partner to jump in and take the reins on any new projects, give us a call. We’re booking up fast, but man do we love to work (really!).

All the best to you and yours in this new year,
Courtney and Donna.

Spring Has Sprung!

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Hughes Design takes on the Grand Canyon


After a crazy busy winter and early spring, we took off for a little relaxation and adventure, flying to Phoenix and then taking a scenic 2-hour road trip to beautiful Sedona. We missed out on the vortex tour (but we’ll definitely do that next time, as we’re dying of curiosity!), but we packed in a ton of experiences. We hiked, ate, slept, explored the town, slept some more, swam, got massaged, slept (I’m a little obsessed with sleeping, due to my one-year-old who likes to wake up in the middle of the night to party) and took a day-long guided tour to the Grand Canyon, which more than lives up to its name. Have you seen the Grand Canyon? It’s unfathomable. We tried to photograph it, took a video of it, tried to lock it’s vastness into our minds, but it’s so big that it’s impossible to comprehend. Even standing at the top, looking down and telling myself that the tiny ribbon at the bottom was actually an acre-wide river, I just couldn’t get my mind around it. In comparison, life’s little worries (crap, the laundry STILL hasn’t been put away) seem pretty silly. Nothing like a little perspective!

So now we’re back and psyched to pick back up with work, and we have some great projects in the hopper. Happy spring to you all!

—Courtney

Happy New Year!

2010 was a great year for Hughes design|communications and, ever the optimists, we’re betting that 2011 will be even better. We’re taking the opportunity provided by the advent of the new year to set some new goals for our business, for our work, and for ourselves. I, for one, would like to start drawing and creating with my hands more. (I’d also like to stop slouching at my desk, but that may be a lost cause.) We’re also donning our marketing hats this month to connect with prospective clients and bring in some new projects to keep things exciting. Are you in need of some fresh, communicative design? Got a web or print project that needs doing? Let us know! We’re here to help.

–– Courtney

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?

Psst!

Want to know what goes on here at Hughes Design? Follow us on Twitter @hughes_design and have our bons mots delivered straight to your desktop (or laptop, or phone, or iPad, as the case may be).

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