A couple of sites to checkout

Worth1000 - This site is mostly known for all of their Photoshop contests, but under the "Jackpot" tab are contests for logo designs... and the winners are paid for their designs!

Just Creative Design - A growing graphic design company's website that not only offers logo design services, but offers aspiring logo designers valuable information on how to get jobs, the latest design trends, interviews with artists, and more! 

Reading and assignment for next Monday's class

We'll continue with the logo design through next class period -- that will be the last in-class period to work on the logo designs. The 15 versions of the logo will be due at the beginning of class next Wednesday (a week from today). From there. we'll review the logos, pick out the most promising design(s), and work on refining those designs.

For next class, please read the article:

There Are 12 Kinds of Ads in the World, by Seth Stevenson (click open the slideshow on the linked page).

And before next class, please post to the blog an ad (it could be print or video), and write which of the 12 ad types you think it is, giving supporting examples for your classification.

Assignments and Resources for next Wednesday's class

For next class, please bring:

1. A graphic of (or a link to) a logo that you think is well-designed. Be prepared to answer the question: why do you think this logo is a good design? (We didn't get to this in class today, so we'll catch up with it on Wednesday).

2. A start to your logo assignment. It would probably be good to have a sheet of sketches for several logo ideas. I will want to see 15 prospective variations of your logo design, broken down as follows:

a) Five logos that are purely font-based (you can, and probably should, tweak with the font letterforms, but the logo itself should be formed only out of text)

b) Five logos that also incorporate some sort of abstract shape that somehow supports the "tone" of the business (for example, the Nike "swoosh," which is an abstract shape, but which connotes speed, energy, etc)

c) Five logos that incorporate some sort of pictographic "icon" -- a simplified version of something representational (for example, the way the NBA logo has a silhouette of a basketball player)

Here are some resources that might be helpful:

Free fonts:

1001fonts

dafont

fonts4free

Illustrator tutorials:

Using blend shapes to make a vector flower petal

3D in Illustrator:

3D logo

3D vase

What's due on Monday's class

For the next class, I want you to have ready, at the beginning of class, three things:

1. Have your choice for the logo you're going to design. As I said, it could be a logo for a business of your own or for a business of a friend's, it could be a logo for yourself, or you could choose to make a logo for a fictional business -- but you have to choose what this fictional business fictionally does. For instance, a logo for an ecotourism company will probably look very different from a logo for a sports car manufacturer.

2. Bring a graphic of (or a link to) a logo that you think is well-designed. Be prepared to answer the question: why do you think this logo is a good design?

3. After having read the three articles posted below, type out and print a page of answers to the following questions:

In response to the Obama 'O' logo article: Why were the designers so concerned about having standards and consistency around the reproductions of the logo? What would the dangers have been if the logo seemed too "branded" or "slick"? Make a list of the specific qualities or emotions you think the logo evokes (or intends to evoke), and pair each quality with a design element (for example, one emotion it intends to evoke is "patriotism," and it does this by incorporating the colors red, white, and blue).

In response to the Pepsi articles: Do you agree with the designer that the new logo "brings humanity back" to the Pepsi? What do you think he means by that? What design choices were made to make the logo seem more "adventurous" and "youthful"? Do you think the design succeeds in those categories? What are the emotional qualities of the new font choice? Why is changing a logo so costly?

Here are the articles:

The 'O' in Obama

What went into the Updated Pepsi Logo

Thoughts about Pepsi

That last post is on a site, logodesignlove, that has some terrific resources, for example:

Links to free vector files for logos

A list of logo design resources

Welcome

Welcome to the blog for Intermediate Digital Darkroom.