The Logo Factor Design Blog » design

Valentines Day Sweetheart logo. Download away!

Steve Douglas — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:46:30 +0000

Valentine’s Day is on Sunday, but as most of us will be busy with our sweethearts (the entire point of the exercise), thought we’d get the jump and offer up this keen little Valentine’s Day love heart illustration (download buttons below). Might be worthwhile for anyone who’s in a do-it-yourself card making mode. The artwork is free from our Morgue Files and all we ask it that you don’t use it for a commercial gig, resell it to anyone else, add it to a stock illustration collection or enter it into a logo design contest (see here for our blanket Morgue Files legal blabbage). Other than that, if you think it’ll brighten up the day of someone come Sunday, download away and use as you see fit. The artwork is available in Adobe Illustrator .EPS and .PDF formats. If you’d prefer to grab a nice big raster version, you can download a .PNG file (with transparent background no less) by clicking on the linky. And to all our clients, visitors, staff and internet friends, Happy Valentine’s Day!

Snippets: Crowdspring to offer spec writing, NEA holds a spec work contest & other news

Steve Douglas — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:05:39 +0000

Crowdsourcing platform Crowdspring has announced that they’re going to be offering writing ‘projects’ using the same spec-work model that graphic designers never seem to tire carping about. Which means we can expect a whole bunch of tireless carping from professional writers too. This ‘taking over the creative world’ thing kinda reminds me of a sci-fi movie from the 70s. Tall dude with a mask, respiratory issues and a really bad attitude. Answers to another dude in a cape. Live in a big metal planety thing. Can’t quite put my finger on it. [Crowdspring]

Speaking about spec-work, apparently the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) may be arty and all, but apparently devoid of a sense of irony. To wit, they’ve decided that one of their lofty goals is to remind society in general, and business people in specific, that “arts workers are real workers” and “part of this country’s real economy“. Further, the NEA would like us to remember that artists “earn salaries, support families, pay taxes. Artists are also entrepreneurs and placemakers, who revitalize towns, cities and neighborhoods“. Cool. In order to illustrate these ideals, the NEA would like a logo designed, so they launched a logo design contest. On spec. Facepalm doesn’t begin to describe how well this went over with designery folks. [LA TImes]

Stock logo website Brandstack announces their new service Upstack, supposedly a custom version of their stock service that dodges the spec-work bullet by paying participating designers a portion of the design fee. All cool and all, but that just happens to be how Logoworks, formally the poster-child for all that’s wrong with online logo design, works. And has worked since 2001. When half the world freaked the fuck out, because of the way Logoworks worked. [Brandstack]

Speaking of innovation, yet another new design contest site has opened its doors, pages or whatever a web company opens when they launch. Graphicster promises to be different than all the other innovative companies hosting design contests. Which is pretty much what all innovative companies hosting design contests promise. Getting off to to a flying start, Graphicster’s blog told us “We are going to eat our own dog food by creating a project for the logo of the site itself“. Dog food you say? Awesome. With that accomplished, they promptly launched a fake contest. [Graphicster]

How much is a Twitter account? Free. How much is a stolen Twitter account? $1400. Now compare that to a stolen MSN account that only fetches a buck forty on the black market. Completely unscientific conclusion? Twitter is way cooler than Microsoft. Even with criminals. [IT World]

Logo Design Love. A totally impartial book review.

Steve Douglas — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 21:07:40 +0000

When I first learned about David Airey‘s then in-progress book Logo Design Love. (named after his excellent design blog of the same name) I’ll admit to feeling a slight twinge of envy. Dammit, I’ve been trying to write a book on logo design for years, but finding it rather exasperating, it remains firmly entrenched in my “things to get around to whenever I have the time or inclination” list. But that’s just it, isn’t it? David’s enthusiasm for logo design, and his dedication to the craft, gives him the motivation and insight to pen a book that when everything is boiled away, reflects his love for logos. And despite being green with envy (okay, maybe not a deep green) I have to give him kudos for taking it on, and after seeing the book, congratulate him for a job well done.

About David Airey

Should probably pony up an impartiality notice here. I not only consider David Airey a compatriot in the logo design business, but a friend. We’ve chatted often online, discussing things related to design. And not. We’re fellow Irishmen, so there’s that too. David’s even helped my daughter out on a college homework assignment, giving her a trans-Atlantic interview (in which he admitted that when he first heard of me, he thought I was a snotty tosh because in those days, I didn’t respond to comments on my blog). I named Airey’s blog the best design blog of 2008 (in a year wrap-up that I have yet to finish for 2009) and have come to respect, and like, the bloke immensely. When David put me on the free copy reviewer’s list (heh, one of the perks of running a blog) I was delighted, and agreed to do a review of his tome. And review it I will, as impartially as possible, and with the preceding notice of my opinion of the author. Should also point out that several of the links presented go to Amazon, and if you buy after clicking, they’ll send a few shekels my way. With those disclaimers outta the way, and without further ado…

Logo Design Love

The first thing that struck me about the cover of Logo Design Love was the simplicity of the design. Trending towards illustrative material, I’ve never been accused of being a simple designer myself, but I can still appreciate effective, simple design and simple, effective logos. I love the way the book is tied into Airey’s blog, sharing not only the logo, but the ‘look and feel’. It’s a nice exercise in branding, which is ultimately what the book is all about (should probably note that Airey was not only responsible for the content, but the cover design and book layout itself).

Inside, you’ll find a wealth of logo design knowledge, tips and case studies (featuring loads of examples from a slew of other designers) that are sure to serve as inspiration for both the advanced and intermediate designer (even though the book is listed on the back cover as being aimed at beginners and intermediates). And that’s the thing that impressed me the most about the book. David has picked the brains of dozens of collaborators – from agency to freelance designers – and rather than being filled with ego-driven ‘how I do things’ blather (sorta what I’d write I suppose), he shares the spotlight with a lot of extremely talented designers.

Examples & case studies

LDL doesn’t feature page after page of boring static examples either. Many of the case studies show the entire design process, from mind-mapping (an interesting chapter) to rudimentary sketches through to final execution. Most of the logos are presented in black and white, before the final color choices are revealed, and demonstrate (quite dramatically) why logos should nearly always be designed in black and white, lest a client be scared off with a color scheme they don’t happen to like. Also, and as a design voyeur, I always love to see how logos shake out in the design process, as well as taking a peek at variations that are tossed midway. If that’s your bag too, there’s lots of eye-candy to take in.

Practical advice

Airey delves into various aspects of logos themselves, from their importance in marketing and branding, to the various elements that iconoclastic logos utilize to make their mark. For the learning designer (aren’t we always learning though?) there’s lots of how-to information, using David’s considerable experience, and drawing from the techniques he uses on a day-to-day basis. I liked the way the book is written too – easy and breezy, layperson language that makes his advice easy to understand (I often get bogged down in the jargon of many other design books). After serving up a heaping serving of case studies and how-to stuff, the book closes with some down-to-earth, and practical, advice for the would-be logo designer. Everything from a substantial Q & A section to 25 practical logo design tips. LDL is laid out in a simple, uncluttered fashion (letting the case studies and examples do the talking) and a bonus point for those of us with tired, old eyes; large Gotham type which was easy for me to read sans specs.

All in all, I’d suggest that Logo Design Love is a must-read for anyone who wants to make their living in the graphic design industry, especially those who want to specialize in the fiercely competitive logo design niche. Maybe a little advanced for the inexperienced designer just starting out (but even they’ll find a lot of pearls in here).

Quibbles

Couple of nit picks – the $42 Canadian retail price tag is a little steep (though this is a problem for all book publishers when attempting to factor in the ever-fluxing exchange rate on the $US). A few of the pencil and pen sketches are a little hard to make out, due to their size and probably due to the original resolution. These are minor points. One only effects Canadian readers (and you can always order the book online for less), and the other might be corrected if I can find my damn specs (which I’ve misplaced since Thanksgiving).

Logo Design Love is published by New Riders of Berkely, California. It’s available here. You can also grab a free chapter here.

iStockphoto to sell stock logos

Steve Douglas — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:46:54 +0000

In an announcement that took some in the design industry by surprise, iStockphoto today announced that they were planning to roll out some sort of stock logo service, presumably after the New Year. Shortly after the news hit Twitter (and after receiving an e-mail from David Airey about the plan) I received this e-mail from the popular stock photo and artwork service.

“We’re excited to announce a whole new product coming to the iStock collection in just a few months: logo designs. Our clients will be able to download a unique logo to brand their business or organization right here at iStock from designers like you. As a designer, you’ve probably created hundreds of different logos over the course of your career and we’re offering you an outlet to start selling new logos to the world’s largest community of creative buyers. If you create one of the first 10,000 approved logo designs for iStockphoto by January 1, 2010, we’ll pay you $5 per approved logo and another $5 if we reach 10,000 approved logos by that date. So fire up Illustrator to create some amazing logos or dust off all those much-loved logos that never made it past the third round with a client. We will begin taking applications from potential iStock logo designers soon. There will be a Logo Training Manual made available before we begin accepting files. In the meantime, please join the discussion about logos here.”

Other than the amazingly low come-hither “bonus” of $5 a pop (the overall royalty rate will be 50% of selling price, at least for the introductory rollout), can’t say I’m terribly surprised. iStock have made a fairly successful enterprise out of selling all manner of stock art and illustrations, and logos could be considered a fairly natural extension. Nothing new either – stock and template logo services have been around for years with some success (Pixel Logo and Brandstack to name just two). Hell, we’ve even tinkered around with selling stock logos and graphics odds-& ends since 2000 (with varying degrees of success). I think it’s the size of iStock that has designers in an up-roar, most notably on Twitter. The announcement is probably tied to an earlier, much less noticed announcement last week in which iStock made this dramatic “promise”

“Files purchased and used in accordance with the iStock license, will not breach any trademark, copyright or other intellectual property rights or rights of privacy. We’re calling it the iStock Legal Guarantee and if a customer does get a claim, iStock will cover the customer’s legal costs and direct damages to a combined total of $10,000. Here’s the best part: it’s on us. Starting Wednesday, every iStockphoto file automatically comes with a free Legal Guarantee.”

Not an easy guarantee for iStock to make, especially when they’re on the hook for 10 grand when things go awry. It is, however, the ONLY way that they could start selling off-the-rack logos to customers who’ll ostensibly be trying to trademark some of the designs as their own. At the time I thought that iStock were going to get a lot more aggressive in policing their material (especially on design contest and crowdsourcing sites where submissions of stock artwork to projects remains at an astonishing level). Guess we now know why.

What does it mean?

I don’t see this as being a terribly big deal on the front end – clients aren’t about to pony up a large amount of money for what is, in reality, glorified clip art (flash generated stock logo gizmos like Logomaker and Logo Yes have been plying their goods for some time now). There will be probably be a lot of hand-wringing over the next couple of days among designers, especially among those, like our shop, who have marketed themselves as logo design specialists. Granted, it might seem like yet another assault on the graphic design industry, still trying to come to terms with the increasing impact of spec work and design crowdsourcing. And iStock are a very large company, with a established footprint in the stock art segment of the industry. However, at the end of the day, companies and businesses who appreciate the value of a decent brand will still be looking for a custom treatment, rather than some stock logo that’s sat on a website for months (and will undoubtedly be purloined several times over).

And that, is where the issue really lies. I predict there will be massive copyright problems as would-be designers, eager for quickly produced logos, scour the internet for material to, ahm, be “inspired” by. And in a little bit of karmic schadenfreude, logo design contests and crowdsourcing sites will be ground zero for a lot of “inspiration” for stock logos to upload. It’s an unfortunate, but predictable, aspect of a design business model where the emphasis (and only profitability for the designer) is to create a large number of logos, in the shortest amount of time possible.

Copying issues notwithstanding, and without the benefit of an accurate crystal ball, I don’t really know what impact this iStock logo deal will have on the industry at large. But I do have a feeling it will make a few copyright and trademark lawyers a lot of dough.

So what you think – Harbinger of doom, or today’s “who gives a toss”?
Comments are open if you so wish.

Why you shouldn’t use a photograph in your logo

Steve Douglas — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 22:00:27 +0000

Designers often talk, a great lengths, why a logo design has to be simple, some going as far to say it’s a “carved in stone” kinda rule. While I agree in principle with that basic premise, it’s a rule that we’ve been guilty of breaking, on numerous occasions (in our defense, we always make sure if an illustrative logo treatment is appropriate, according to future plans for the design). Was out for an early motorcycle ride this morning and stumbled across a classic example of why this ‘simple is better’ is the rule, rather than the exception (pardon the photograph quality, but it was overcast and the pics were taken with my handy-dandy iPhone).

Different applications. Different results.

Take a look at the sign above. It’s a big one (actually, identical billboards have been placed in about four locations, to grab eyeballs from every traffic direction). The logo in the middle is for the real estate development featured. Uses either a photograph or a photo-realistic representation of a magnolia as the central theme, accented with torn photo edges and drop shadow. Nothing terribly wrong with the logo itself. It’s nicely designed, probably looks smashing on glossy business cards, textured letterheads and highly-varnished presentation folders given out to prospective home buyers. Has a nice vibe, presents a decent upscale image (needed with the price of houses these days) and is an example that most designers wouldn’t mind having in their portfolio. So what’s the issue? Well, that logo was ONLY designed with print (or web) use in mind. When it comes to other applications, the logo presents some very real problems.

At every entrance, the real estate development features huge granite structures (speaking of “carved in stone”) that are emblazoned with the same magnolia logo. Or a not-so-reasonable facsimile thereof. This time, the design doesn’t look so good. In fact, it has reproduced horribly and looks like an bad clip art, pinched from the library of some shopping mall ‘custom’ embroidery hat store. To be honest, the photo doesn’t do justice to how bad it actually looks. The stone version of the logo has lost the upscale vibe of the original entirely, even though I’m sure these granite monoliths cost an absolute fortune to produce. I’m also sure the manufacturers did what they could with the original logo as presented.

Neither the designer, or the people carving the logo into the granite were incompetent, and both are probably very skilled at their individual craft. It’s all speculation, but I imagine the designer probably wasn’t aware that the logo was going to show up on multiple granite slabs, almost 20 feet high, on every road that entered the estate. And the monument manufacturer simply wasn’t able to covert the complex photo-detail of the original into his/her medium. Trouble is, the difference between the two applications is profound (enough that I’d blog about it anyway).

Plan for future use. Avoid using photographs.

If we can take something out of this, it would be to avoid using photographs (or other extremely realistic) depictions in any logo design project. Another would be that it’s critical to know beforehand how a logo is planned to be used. We try to extract that information before starting ANY project at the shop, lest we corner a design’s use somewhere down the road. Trouble is, many businesses in start-up have absolutely NO idea how their logo usage will pan out in future days.

If that’s the case, it’s best to keep it simple.

Bitmap to Vector conversion. Online Vector Tracing

Steve Douglas — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 14:31:21 +0000

Any logo designer worth their salt knows that vector formats are the only way to go when it comes to logo design. The vector-capability boundaries between Illustrator and Photoshop have blurred a little over the years (yes, you can create vector based in images, but it’s still a little hinky). Years ago, when it came to quick and dirty (often very dirty) vector conversion, we used a handy little utility called Streamline at the shop. Put out by Adobe, most of Streamline’s vector conversion properties were bundled into Illustrator CS and renamed Live Trace.

Auto-tracing. A little hit & miss.

Never been much of a fan of ‘auto-trace’ solutions for anything – they tend to create ‘choppy’ graphics, are a little control point happy, and leave a lot to be desired when it comes to overlaying one vector object over another. Most auto-conversion programs tend to leave little ‘gaps’ between the objects (attempting to butt shapes together like a jig-saw puzzle, rather than overlaying one on top of another as a series of layers). At the end of the day, I’ve always felt that manual hand-tracing is always the way to go (see our logo repair section for more), especially when you want smooth curves and what have you. Auto-tracing an image, then hand-editing it to acceptable standards often takes MORE time that hand-tracing from scratch.

Converting photographs to vector formats.

But what if you want a quick-and-dirty solution and want to quickly crank out a vector version for a comp, or you’re after a posterization effect where choppiness and rough edges are the desired result? I’ve been tinkering around with an online vector tracing site, Vector Magic (screen grab above), that allows you to upload jpgs, pngs, bitmaps and just about any other image file and quickly convert it to various vector formats. At first I was a little skeptical, but the results are as good as ANY desktop application, and in some cases even better. My first test involved a photograph of some toothy-grinned kid (relax, it’s me) that I was playing around with for a personal Twitter avatar. Not a terribly big image size (it was carved out of a photo booth picture of me and my father, when was I was a buck-toothed kid in Ireland). I let Vector Magic do it’s thing and ended up with the result below:

Aieee, that’s big! Anyhoo, not bad. Not bad at all. Decent detail and shape integrity (the subject matter notwithstanding). Vector Magic also overlays shapes on top of each other, so there’s little concern about editing or printing problems. Matter of fact, if I were looking for a posterized version of my mug, and needed in in vector format, this puppy is pretty well ready to go. Now, I’m not saying that these kind of images are suitable for use in logos. Far from it. Despite Adobe’s claim that their ‘Live Trace’ is “perfect” to creating logo artwork, these kind of illustrations ALWAYS have a brutal construction-paper cut-out vibe to them and don’t have enough fidelity to cut it as a logo. As a logo add-on, they can certainly work (think Shepard Fairey‘s ‘Hope‘ illustration for Barack Obama as an example).

Converting raster logo images to vector graphics?

It always amazes me when business owners ‘lose’ their logo assets and end up with only one file format remaining – some low-resolution RGB jpg that they expect to turn into a pristine print-ready image for use on their business card or letterhead. Ain’t going to happen. A lot of the time, we need to repair their logo, hand-tracing the image in illustrator, adding new font artwork and converting the logo into CMYK or spot-color artwork. Figured I’d give Vector Magic a shot at converting a jpg version of one of our portfolio logos – a highly illustrative design created for radio personality Steve Dahl.

Amazingly, Vector Magic did a really decent job on the illustration portion. The detail held up pretty decently and the program seemed to be able to ‘guess’ what went where without too much trouble (below), especially impressive since, at 300PX x 269PX at 72 dpi, the image was fairly small to begin with.

Don’t get me wrong – the artwork isn’t up to snuff for full color print or anything, but still a decent try if you’re looking to re-size an image (bitmap/raster images tend to turn fuzzy if enlarged, while vector images can be sized up with little issue).

Font conversion. Always an issue.

Like most auto-conversion programs, Vector Magic tends to have an issue with fonts. The human eye is much more forgiving when it comes to abstract shapes that it is when it comes to typography. The brain tends to fill in missing detail so that even a wonky image ‘looks’ like what it’s supposed to (think of the old “is it a vase or two people talking” optical illusion). Font recognition doesn’t work that way – your brain needs to read the words – so any broken or hinky lettering is going to look, well, bad. Let’s take a look how Vector Magic handles the letterforms in our test logo

Not terribly well. To be fair, this was a problem with Streamline and is a problem with Live Trace addition to Illustrator. Actually, Vector Magic seems to handle font recognition better than most. Doesn’t matter though – a quickly converted image that features lettering is still going to require a large amount of hand editing.

Practical applications for the designer.

So, is auto-conversion of logos worth while? Maybe. If it’s for a quick and dirty turnaround, yes. If you’re using the logo for a final file, hand tracing is still the way to go. The amount of time you’ll spend tweaking points and bézier curves would be better spent starting from scratch. However, if you’re after a quick posterization effect (like my toothy visage above) or some illustration backgrounds torn from your fave photo, auto-conversion seems like the way to go.

Automatic raster/bitmap conversion. Some basic tips.

Couple of things I found when playing around. The bigger the image, the better. The program has more pixels to ‘guess’ what the shape’s supposed to be. High contrast photographs work a lot better than lower ones. I also found that by ‘sharpening’ the images in Fireworks (you can do the same thing in Photoshop) the results improved dramatically.

Converting your images.

If you’re a designer who happens to be running Illustrator, Live Trace is worth a shot. If not, Vector Magic is certainly worth checking out. They’ll let you download one or two images for free (that’s how I managed to work with my toothy image from above), there’s a subscription model and a downloadable desktop application if you’re so inclined.

And now, onto the website design

Steve Douglas — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 12:11:12 +0000

If you’ve been following our blog over the past few months, you’ll know that we’re planning a logo makeover and new brand roll out for The Logo Factory. In fact, we chronicled the development of our new logo starting here, continuing here, and then finishing up with the ‘final chapter’ here. Long and short of it – we’ve decided to lose the famous TLF house (even though it’s been with us for a while) and use a simple font-driven design and a cog element. Now that this process is complete, it’s time to start work on using that new logo, as part of a new website design that we hope to launch sometime early fall. And just like with our new logo, we’re going to bring you several blog posts that detail this development.

Luckily, we’re not building our new website from scratch and already have an idea of what we want the site to demonstrate, the sections that we require and how the whole thing works together. Granted, over the years our site has become a little unwieldy, as new features have been bolted and duct-taped onto old. There are a lot of redundant pages, many are way too heavy in the text department, and some pages are simply out of place. Fixing those, in terms of the site hierarchy will come later, and for now, we’re going to focus on the overall site ‘look and feel’ as well as the main navigation system. Because in those departments, our site has become positively old and tired.

Here again, we don’t have to start from scratch – we were able to look at our Google Analytics information and figure out which sections were the most traveled and seemed the most important to users. Using this information, we build several website design wire frames in illustrator. First – the header design wire frame.

This will serve as the main interface for the entire site. There’ll be varying sub-menus and what have you, but for all intents and purposes, this will work. (see full size image here). We also needed a footer design. This time around, we’re going to pay a little more attention to social media, using live-link ‘chiclets’ for services like Facebook, Twitter, RSS feed and our YouTube channel. The Logo Factory is relatively active on Twitter, and we have a fan page on Facebook, but other than our blog home page, there’s no way to access them from our site (in our defense, the latest version of our site was built a couple of years ago, before social media became the rage that it is). When building the footer wire frame in illustrator, we decided that we needed a series of gallery chiclets, small thumbnails through which users could access ten examples of our latest work. Adding to our logo design galleries is a bit of a chore, and this would allow us to add new work as it came online, rather than wait months (or even years) before we got around to updating our portfolio section (view a large size image here).

There are areas in which these gallery chiclets would be redundant (our galleries for example) and we’d need a ‘stripped down’ footer design for those.

Now, let’s put them together with a roughed-in wire frame of how the page body will look like. Obviously, this will change in various locations around the new site, but it will give us a starting point from which to work. The amalgamation of the header, footer and body wire frames looks something like this (see large image here).

Now that we know how the site pages are to be structured, we can start actually designing how it will look. First thing to go on the new design is the stock photography that we are currently using in the various sections. When putting together our current site a few years ago, we tried to be too clever by half, using industrial themes and images to portray all the various sections and design services offered at the shop. As anyone that’s ever worked with stock photography will tell you, it’s a time (and budget) saving technique, but after several conceptual hits, you’re going to end up with a lot of ‘misses’. You’ll enter “that will have to do” territory and the original strong ideas will become more and more watered down. Such is the case with our themed stock images (except the spark plug idea, and we’ll talk about that later), so they’re all, save the spark plug, gone.

We are going to use cogs and gears for various backgrounds, but we set up some decent artwork using layered images, rather than one photo “out of the box” (interesting aside: when searching for photos, I couldn’t find an appropriate photo using traditional cogs and gears. We ended up using an interesting, super close-up of a watch mechanism for the header background). We added the 3D cog graphic that we used in our logo re-development phase (see large image here).

Just like our current site, the various sections will be color-coded, but rather than (often goofy) photographs, we’ll add 3D icons and logos wherever needed and if appropriate. Like in our Flash logo animation section (see large image here). In the Flash animation section, the thumbnail images will preview recent Flash animations, as opposed to various artwork examples.

That sort of theme will continue throughout the website makeover. Here’s a peek at our logo repair section.

We’ll also be redoing our blog, but the change there is pretty dramatic, so we’ll save that for another post. In the meantime, here’s approximately what the new TLF Studio Blog will look like (large picture here).

And there you have it. Keep in mind that most of this stuff is first/second stage and a long way from completion. Some things will change, but I suspect the final website design will turn out pretty similar to the images presented here.

We’ll keep you posted as the new design comes along.