When I design a new logo I normally start by typing the words that make up the logo into Font Book (Apple’s font management utility), then flick through all my fonts to see which ones suit the design brief the best. Once I find a good font I usually change some of the letters to make it look original and not just typed out. I have a favourite set of letters that I usually always change, and then kern (adjust the spacing between the letters) the logo by eye (a good tip for kerning is to print the logo out and look at it upside down), and that’s about it for the word based element of the design.
What I haven’t done for ages is hand draw my fonts or lettering.
The designer Roul Wouters loves hand drawn lettering, so much so he’s made a great short film all about it. Here it is below. Enjoy!
I read an interesting article on the Independent web site this weekend and wanted to share it with you. The article is about how some fashion brands are thriving because they produce clothing without a visible logo.
Mexico 1968. I love this logo. You can almost imagine the compasses and rulers that must have been used to create it.
There is a great article on the New York Times web site about the design of olympic torches, it also contains all of the olympic logos, it’s really fascinating.
I’m in shock! Heinz baked beans are having a make over - and the results are not pretty, or at all necessary!
This, as if you didn’t know, is what the Heinz baked beans can looks like.
and this is what is planned for its future!
Why oh why!
The old branding for Heinz baked beans was so good that it became part of our national heritage - what more could a brand want? Changing it to Heinz Beanz - I just can’t believe it. And why substitute the ’s’ of beans for a ‘z’!
I’m off to the shops to buy as many tins of beans with the old logo as I can. Then I will be able to say to future generations that I did not stand idly by as part of our design history was so thoughtlessly destroyed.
Please don’t even think about changing Lyons Golden Syrup or Marmite!
Watch this video, if you haven’t seen it yet, you’re in for a treat.
There are no cameras used to make this video. The action is scanned with a laser, and the collected data is used to make what you see above.
I think the result is beautiful.
I especially love the street scenes, the subtle rainbow colours as pinpoints of light on black. Watch as this creative video seeps into our visual advertising culture - it won’t take long!
I’ve just created a new category called ‘Anything Else Creative’. I did this because the whole business of logo and graphic design relies on a drip feed from the rest of the arts and the world around us. In this new category I can share some of this drip feed of inspiration.
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the contest to find a new ‘Favicon’ (the small icon in the web address bar of your browser) for Google. Well there’s no news yet of any change, but I found this image on their website of some of the ideas that they have generated.
Interesting.
I quite like the multi coloured big ‘G’s on the fourth line down, but I have a feeling that they may stick with what they already have. They’ve been using it for a while now, and it must be getting some subliminal brand recognition at least, and it would be a shame to squander that just for the sake of it.
It’s by the graphic designer James Houston, and if you are in Scotland you can go and see it as part of Glasgow School of Art’s graphic design degree final show.
I remember the ZX Spectrum well, and my first ventures into graphic design as a 12 year old boy. I spent hours making pictures with big pixels of blue, red, yellow and black, and those strange colours cyan and magenta! I always wondered why Clive Sinclair in all his wisdom picked such an odd bunch of colours for his computer.
I was also intrigued to find that these same colours mysteriously existed under the flaps of cereal boxes - very bizarre. Eventually I discovered that cyan and magenta were two of the four colours used in the printing process, and that the ZX Spectrum was built anticipating the desk top publishing revolution - amazing!
How come I’m always the last to know! You may have noticed that Google have changed their favicon (a favicon is the little icon that displays next to the web address bar in your browser). If you remember it used to be a ‘G’ in a box, but now it’s the lower case ‘g’ from their main logo. I think the new favicon looks ok.
But here’s the news - they want help designing a new one, and have launched a competition to design one! (Actually their blog says its not a competition just some “idea sharing” or something like that.)
If you want to have a go at this design, you need to get your skates on - the closing date is the 20th June! To help you they have kindly left a design brief on their website, I’ve pasted it below:
Make the shape and profile visible. We’ve found that semi-transparent graphics, specifically 32-bit alpha transparency, work best.
Incorporate some or all of the letters in “Google.”
Utilize the primary colors that are used in the Google logo. We’ve found that monochromatic designs tend to work best with blue; yellow is too light and doesn’t provide enough contrast, and red looks like an error.
Avoid being product specific. The favicon should apply well to many different Google products and devices (e.g., mobile, PC).
Be timeless. The favicon shouldn’t date itself or be time-specific. Send us a design that you think will last.
That’s a pretty tight brief, especially as this has to work in a sixteen by sixteen pixel space!
If you want to have a go at designing Google’s new favicon follow the link below.
Oh my gosh!! According to the rumours Yahoo’s logo has gone purple! Why? I’ve just checked and it’s still red - phew! It looks as if they are testing out some new branding and creating a lot of hype at the same time. Some visitors to the Yahoo home page are being greeted with the new logo then going back and it’s red. I wonder if this logo tinkering will increase visits to its web site - probably.
I quite like the old logo, and the little animations they put with it from time to time (at the moment it’s a football in Europe for the European Cup). The Yahoo type face reminds me of how a comic artist would write the word Yahoo in a speech bubble, but is that what Yahoo wants - a big shout out 1950’s comic style?
It is probably time for a make over logo wise, but the best, and cleverest thing that Yahoo could possibly try and do is own the colour purple. Lots of logos are red, but very few choose purple - (surprise surprise). If purple stuff gets so associated with Yahoo they will have achieved a master stroke in branding - I’m not sure if they’ll make it that far, or if they even want to, but I lay down a challenge, let’s have a purple Santa Claus this Christmas.
