Here’s a nifty project that we’ve finally completed - our first video logo design demo reel - over 300 logos in the span of 3 minutes. In order to save some time, I utilized images that were already available on our web site, either on our daily logo archives, in our logo design gallery, or featured in our Classic Logos portfolio. At some point I’ll probably lose all the frames and watermarks as well as demonstrate some logo animation samples and techniques. Overall, not bad for a couple of days worth of work. The raw Quicktime source file for this animation is the better part of 100 MB, with a compressed Quciktime Pro version of about 19 MB (if you’re so inclined you can see the higher resolution 19 MB version here) but I figured I’d compress it and shoot it up to our You Tube account so that people can have a looksee. If you dig the music, you can download the MP3 here.

No, we’re not AWOL but we may be a little on the MIA side. Had to put our Daily Logo on hold for a bit (yeah, I know - not exactly a Daily Logo then, is it?). Not much we can do - the move’s due in part to a backlog of work that built up over the Christmas Holidays, and while we sort out some areas in the site that are in need of a little TLC. To keep you going until then, we’ve updated our Daily Logo Archives, starting with a rather saucy logo clothing design for an outfit known as Hot Mom - hey, all in a day’s work folks, all in a day’s work. In any case, we’re planning to get back to our regularly (almost daily) schedule in a few weeks. Thanks for your patience.

You can file this one under the shameless plug department (though it also works well in the umitigated gall department). Been tinkering around with some CMS directory software - wanted to change our resources pages from their current state to something a little more elegant, and more importantly, something a little more manageable (ie: data base driven as opposed to hand-coded). Keeping resource pages up to date is a hassle, and more often than not, link swap requests come from sites that have nothing to do with logo design. Nada. Zippo. Zilch. Directory pages tend to become quickly out-of-date, broken links and whatever benefit they originally had long forgotten. Most directory sites tend to be spammy scraper sites that exist only to present an endless stream of Google Adwords and as far as information goes, are worse than useless. To that end, I decided to create a completely seperate directory, hosted on another server, that would serve as our resource pages. Already had the domain for a few years, logo-design-pros.com, and what better name to call a directory of themed resources and websites (despite the hyphens). Of course, needed a logo, but time has been at a premium of late (hence the lack of posting to the Factor). Accordingly, I took the easy way out, rummaging through our archives of unused material to find this nifty little icon (above left) - something that was presented to a client years ago, then turfed at some point during the design process. Up until now, the icon has sat on our studio network, collecting digital dust. Struck me as a hand being shaped into a telescope which seemed kinda fitting for a web directory. Wasn’t perfect though - needed a little more ‘oomph’, so I added an eyeball and highlight to finish off the visual metaphor. Selected a nice color scheme, added some complimentary font work and we’re off the races (right). Total elapsed time - 45 minutes, start to finish (including a few minutes to pour a cup of java). Not bad at all (though purists will give me heck for using a recycled design - something which I have to admit I’m not opposed to, as long as presented as such). Sometimes when we’re under a time crunch, ya gotta cut a few corners. You can check out the logo in use here.

This time around. thought it would be fun to show you two types of wildly different logo approaches - one illustrative, the other text only, from one of our recent projects. This design was worked up for Your PC Gear - a computer accessories, games and software store. The main caveat on this design was that it had to work on a black background - the planned color scheme of the store, as well as the in-progress web site. Despite the glows and chrome shading, the main text logo (above), remains in Vector format (as are all projects at the shop) and is adaptable for all types of media and reproduction. The client wanted some ‘depth’ to the mark, so through a little bit of Illustrator trickery, we were able to create a 3D ‘ish’ shield, in a 2D space. This is the design that the client ultimately went with (albeit rotated to the right), and can be viewed on their web site. During the initial creative workups, our designers also came up with a nifty little cartoon logo design (below) that added an whimsical flair to the company identity.

During initial character sketches, we gave him a back pack full of computer goodies - to outline the company’s services and offerings, and a pair of Ray Ban’s to amp up the ‘cool factor’. A logo of this type is extremely versatile - the character can ’speak’ to the audience, and can be used in various situations and environments. On the other hand, a cartoonish design isn’t for everyone (serious or conservative companies need not apply. Banks should probably think twice too) and while we enjoy creating such designs, it’s wise to think twice before embarking on such a theme. As nifty as our little dude is, alas, he was ultimately nixxed for the text version, but we still think he’s worthy of inclusion in our Daily Logo feature.

This handsome little fella is actually part of a sub-brand, an expansion of the Humdinger Snack Foods product line which we originally posted on the blog many months ago (now moved to the Archives). A cartoon logo of this sort is certainly not for anyone (a happy squirrel munching away at a nut wouldn’t exactly breed consumer confidence on a credit card) but in this case it’s the cats whiskers (or would that be squirrel’s whiskers?). In keeping with the original Humdinger brand, we first had to develop the central macot through a series of sketches and character studies - these drawings were floated past the client for approval before going to render. The font work was somewhat limited in freedom - it had to work with the original Humdinger typography (which also had to nestle in above the main text). Colors where pretty well dicatated by the subject matter, as well as being somewhat true to the real-life inspiration for the squirrel character. Cartoon logos are sometimes difficult to pull off (without looking amateurish) and require the attention of a fairly skilled illustrator who also happens to know their way around cartoon styling. All in all, a decent little logo that was a hit with the client.

And that would be it for this week folks - heading out to spend some quality time with the Mrs. and the kids, so posting might be a little scant over the weekend. I had originally planned to do some monster-sized blogging, but the weather’s good, my motorcycle is calling, and there’s what, 7 or 8 weekends left of the summer? Time to enjoy it while we can. Accordingly, here’s wishing you and yours a good one…

The Intelligent Design group is a Florida based web and internet development company whose tag line is “our business is growing your business”. Naturally, this was incorporated into the central theme of the design. Rather than using a woo-hoo Jack and the Beanstalk approach (though we did use that idea for another gig), this logo features an an elegant iconic driven treatment, simple font work and at the end of the day - a muted color scheme that’s reflected throughour IDG’s identity system. While the shop is kinda famous (some may say infamous) for our full-blown illustrative work, this piece illustrates that the gang still has the chops when it comes to more traditional logo work.