First try at an identity

I loved the brushes but I only could read "designs".
can't read the letter before "reives"

the font used for them seems so outdated.

I'm not understanding the rectangles and I also could not read the other letter of the calligraphy stroke, only the 'd'. The typography isn't close enough so it looks too disconnected. I really like how you're keeping it to black and white! Could you explain the concept behind it?

Yeah, it's supposed to be "Greives Designs. I was trying to keep it simple, yet it became a little too complicated.

Other than the legibility issue, it's pretty cool, to me.

Looks cool - doesn't read. The shadows are also way too heavy - especially under the brush stroke parts. This would work a lot better with the full words spelled out - "Grieves Design" - and the stroke thing would just be a separate mark using your two initials.

Not sure if the horizontal line is working - you might want to play with that.

have you tried a lowercased, stacked version of the interlocking

g
d

Not really a fan of the font, nor the Illustrator brush strokes. I don't understand what the black rectangle does for this either.

i definitely didn't read that as a "G." I would have guessed Krieves, not Grieves. that vertical bar confused the issue. along w/everyone else, i'm not really sure what the vertical bar or the horizontal line are bringing to the design.

i'm not a fan of the illustrator brush strokes. they're too commonly used (and usually poorly). especially since they look like default illustrator brush strokes. to me that's kind of like using arial and times new roman. in and of themselves, there's nothing wrong with either font. but since they're unbelievably common because they've been the default fonts for microsoft office for a decade or more, they do nothing to separate you from everyone else.

if you want to use brush strokes, find something a bit more unique.

what kind of "designs" are we talking about here? graphic design? interior design? landscape design? fine art? the mood is fine art, i think.

Looks like back to the drawing board.

If you are going for a brush look, how do you suggest achieving those results? I can see cutting out the vertical and horizontal lines but I'm trying to keep a brush or grungy type look for the main design. I think I would just make it an upper case G instead of trying to forge the two letters.

Makes sense. Lost my mind, forgot about paint and scanner sense getting the Cintiq. Thanks.

or, if you want to use an illustrator/photoshop brush, look for something more distinctive. those look like they're from the default brush palette of illustrator and it's really easy to pick out the repetitive elements in them.

but if you're comfortable with a real brush, leaky's suggestion is better. and you can convert the brush strokes to vector objects in illy and clean them up nicely.