With 2009 a day away, thought it might be fun to take a look back over the past year and relive some of the memorable (and odder) posts and features on our blog, at the shop and around the design world in general. We’ll review the first six months today, and finish up 2008 tomorrow…
January 2008
Who can forget the Pope’s new logo (though we did try). Wonder how this cat’s make money with logos scheme is panning out? Barack Obama’s logo starts morphing into the website variants that many will later believe helps earn him enough cred with the young folk to win the Presidency. Someone asks us “are logo design contests that bad?” which begins a year long back-and-forth about spec work, contest and the newly named design crowdsourcing phenomenon. We take a look at the ten things you’ll need to be a great logo designer, while my daughter’s infatuation with Heath Ledger and the news of his utimely death leads to the discovery of another copycat, the first of the year, but not the last.
February 2008
A fairly slow month at The Factor leading me to discover a new hobby. We introduce readers to UK pal David Airey’s new blog Logo Design Love (which will go on to become one of the best logo design blogs on the interwebs). A case of font piracy ends up with a rather acrimonious $1000 font situation over at Letterhead Fonts. Capital One releases a WTF makeover logo and I can’t help but wondering if Fax Spam is the most annoying thing in the Universe.
March 2008
We take a look at the best band logos evah (according to my teenage perspective). My daughter Amy – just prior to becoming a journalism student at Humber College – writes a tribute for the 50th birthday of the Peace Symbol. We release our first ever logo design video that features a not-too-shabby 350 logos in just over three minutes. By the end of the year it will have been viewed by over 23,000 people. In a Brandweek article, Logoworks, now owned by Hewlett Packard, finally comes clean about their business model, only leaving out a few details (which we helpfully fill in). Some idiots start using logos ripped from our site for their ebay logo auctions. This leads to a comment section skirmish, and an ongoing battle to get some Indiana based outfit HiTech Paradise to take our stuff off their website. In industry news, Adobe launches their free Photoshop service. And while The Logo Factory opened our studio doors in 1996, our domain thelogofactory.com is officially ten years old this month, having been registered back in March of 1998.
April 2008
April starts rather oddly with a bout of credit card fraud and a call from the FBI. My opinion piece on are logo design contests even legal? stirs up a hornets nest. Comment section comments are split evenly between folks that think I may have a point, and others that think I’ve given up my meds. This leads to some push back from pro-logo design contest folks and the best anti-logo design contest rant evah. The UK’s Office of Government Commerce (OGC) – a division of the UK Treasury – reveals their new logo, not noticing the oddly phallic pictogram created when the design is turned 90 degrees clockwise. Design blogs giggle for weeks. We release two new Vox Underground music tracks for download. Apple (computers) sues The Big Apple (city) for logo copyright infringement claiming the city’s new ‘green’ logo is a little close for comfort. Speaking of Apple, we took a look at the evolution of logos, including Apple and IBM.
May 2008
Another copied logo proves once again why logo contests don’t work. The US Congress copyright-removing proposals on Orphaned Works verge on legalized scumbaggery. Another lengthy post on the logo design contest battle We start a couple of how-to series with a look at the different types of trademarks, company logos and names and a fairly lengthy tutorial on how to design your own logo. We also feature a in-depth look at marketing online via blogs. If that wasn’t enough goodness for May, we also took a look at the most sinister logo ever.
June 2008
Started off the month fairly dryly with a look at logo color formats and palettes and an in-depth feature outlining how to create a spinning 3D logo animation in Flash. The month turns weird with the mysterious case of the stolen logo, a fascinating tale about some Serbian casino, calling themselves Ministering Angel, who went to enormous lengths to pinch a nifty little Angel logo created at the shop. Republicans get freaked out about Barack Obama’s Presidential Seal logo, though it’s clearly evident they’ve been doing the same thing for years. A logo design contest war breaks out, with someone spamming No-Spec buttons on a 99 Designs contest forum and the accusations fly. Fun is had by all.
2008 year in review continued tomorrow – New Years’ Eve.
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