The Logo Factor Design Blog » examples

Logo design demo reel

Steve Douglas — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 17:18:24 +0000

Logopalooza 2. A two minute and eleven second showcase of some of our work. Includes logos and a few Flash animations tossed in for good measure

Been buried in video production for the last couple of days, working on this demo reel, a followup to Logopalooza, our first logo design video (at 60,000 views and counting, a pretty worthwhile endeavor). Logopalooza 2 is a little more ambitious (even if it is smaller and shorter). This video was setup as high-def, we’ve added a couple of Flash animations to the mix, tried to make it a little more snazzy than just fading a bunch of logos in and out. As part of the project, we also created opening and closing sequences that we can use in other productions.

Video is a natural way for designers to showcase their work, and if our somewhat limited experience is any indication, a decent way to promote yourself through the various social networks like YouTube, Twitter and what have you. It’s not that terribly difficult either (though it does take a helluva lot of time and a lot of disk drive space – the source file for this project is around 30 gigabytes). The video above was built in Flash using various logos, Flash .SWFs and movie clips. If you can get your head around that, you’re pretty good to go.

If you need some technical info on converting your source Flash files to video, see here for the basics and here for a couple of tutorials. If you have any questions, drop ‘em in the comment section and I’ll try to answer them.

It’s back!

Steve Douglas — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 13:10:55 +0000

After an extended summer hiatus, The Daily Logo has returned

A favorite feature of our legacy site, The Daily Logo is back, starting off with an oldie-but-goodie, Soupy’s Tequila Shack. Keep in mind that unlike our main design blog, new Daily Logos features are NOT announced on our Twitter feed, but exclusively via our Facebook fan page.

HD video logo animations using Flash

Steve Douglas — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 12:48:53 +0000

At the shop, we’ve been creating Flash logo animations for years now. As a design studio that specializes in logos, it was always a natural extension, and something that I like to think we’re pretty good at. One of the often overlooked features of Flash is the ability to turn animations into video, and in particular, HD video. Accordingly, I thought you might like to see the new 4 second video introduction that we’ve been working on at the studio. The animation (after the jump) was created originally in Swift 3D by Electric Rain, a nice little 3D animation package that can export as .SWF files and, as in this example, QuickTime video. The HD source animation for the video is 1980 px X 1080 px and weighs in at a couple of gigs. The version featured has been reduced to 560 px X 318 px and weighs in at 2.1 MB.

If you want to convert Flash animations to video, there’s some tweaky stuff you’ll need to know, so we’ll be featuring a step-by-step tutorial later in the week, using a couple of recent HD video logo animation projects (follow us on Twitter or Facebook for announcements of new posts).

Social media & logo design. An argument for square logos? A look at logo footprints & aspect ratios

Steve Douglas — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 20:21:33 +0000

We take a look at the often misunderstood concept of logo footprints and aspect ratios, the advantages of each and why social media almost demands a square logo. Or at least a square version.

It never occurred to me that this was a topic worth discussing, let alone writing an entire blog post about. Until last week that is, when a frantic client called me on my cell. He was trying to upload his new logo, designed last summer, onto his Facebook fan page. “It’s so tiny” he explained, “and half the name isn’t there”. Having designed the logo myself, I knew right away what was going on. The logo was slightly horizontal in aspect ratio, had a mild footprint issue, and when uploaded to the Facebook server, the online image editor was resizing and cropping his image into a square format.

Square is where it’s at on most social networks

Using the logo on other social media platforms would get progressively worse, they being smaller than a Facebook profile ‘badge’. On Twitter, neither the icon, or the logo text, would be legible at all. Especially in a timeline feed. Even though this design, on it’s own, is a fairly simple logo. Trouble is, even if we use the absolute minimum visual ID area, carving out almost 2/3 of the overall footprint, the avatar badge would still be tiny. And would look hideous. In this instance, the fix was easy enough. I could set up a couple of square JPGs, using a bastardized version of the design, and our client would be all set. He could use the squared and simplified version of his logo in most of the social media networks, the edited version having enough of a visual relationship with its horizontal sibling to still make sense. As this particular logo wasn’t originally designed with social media in mind, it wasn’t the world’s best solution. But it would work well enough.

Do we start off square?

Afterwards, I realized that this might not be so uncommon for clients, especially with the do-it-yourself nature of social media profiles. Our client had absolutely no idea why his logo was being truncated, yet I knew right away. Perhaps, and as designers, there’s many things about design we automatically assume everyone else knows. That’s worth a discussion of its own, I guess. It also got me thinking. I think we can all agree that social media is here to stay, and will continue to grow for the foreseeable future. Accordingly, should the use of a logo in social media networks dictate some of the design process itself, especially in the initial steps? Put simply, is social media an argument for square logos? Or at least a logo that we can shave off a square portion from, in order for clients to effectively manage their avatars and profiles on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube? I’m thinking yes. To illustrate the thinking behind this, I grabbed some logos out of our portfolio and tried to make them into social media avatars. So that I wouldn’t be ‘cherry picking’ examples (for best results) I grabbed the first set that came up in our logo design examples slide show. As you’ll see below, I had mixed results.

From left to right, the first two, I was able to use pretty well ‘as is’. Type at the size of social media icons is never going to be terribly legible in the first place, so I just carved out the icon portion of the design. The third, My Car Guy, wasn’t bad, considering its relative complexity and illustrative nature, but that’s probably the result of a Rorschach Test effect (we know what the logo is supposed to look like, having seen the original, and our brain fills in the details). Will first time viewers be able to read the tiny type or recognize the car? Who knows. Funny thing, even though the car logo looks like it has a square aspect ratio, it doesn’t really and any serious social media use of this logo would probably need a rework. Below, I’ve setup a few examples using our own logo (’cause it happens to be square) to further illustrate this notion. Will also serve as a handy-dandy sizing guide when it comes to developing logos and avatars for the most popular social media networks.

Facebook

Facebook is the most ‘generous’ of the major social media platforms, allowing you to upload a relatively large profile image. That image is reduced to typical avatar site along side comments, status updates and feed. The Facebook upload mechanism is a bit wonky, and best leave a few pixels around your icon, especially if it doesn’t bleed on all four sides. Your profile pic sits on white and blue backgrounds so best give it a thin border in which to breathe.

Twitter

Twitter uses a couple of sizes throughout their network. Your profile avatar shows up on a profile page, as well as on a timeline ‘feed’ accompanying your tweets. Twitter allows you to upload square, horizontal and vertical images, of almost any size, but you have to use the online tool to crop them into a square.

You Tube

YouTube follows almost the same format as Twitter, with a few pixels difference between the two. Avatars show up in two places, your profile (channel) pages and on the videos you upload. The size on video pages is a positively miserly 46 pixels square. If YouTube’s your thing, better dial back on the detail significantly.

Gravatar

If you’re a frequent blog reader, or commenter, you’ll be familiar with Gravatar. If not, Gravatar is the web-based platform that allows you to set up a consistent avatar, linked to your e-mail address, for use on blogs (that happen, as most are, to be running the Gravatar plugin). The sizes of Gravatars are all over the place, dependent on the blog designers layout. Some are quite large. Others, like ours, are very small. They’re all square.

Logo use on blogs and websites

Before everyone starts squeezing their logo pegs into square holes, there are some very important caveats to the ‘square is better’ mentality. Websites and blogs are also part of this newfangled social media too. And when used on websites and blogs, logos are better served if they have an aspect ratio that leans towards horizontal. Not that this is carved in stone, but square logos can can lost in the top left corner of a typical web page header (yeah, I know. Our own web header logo is both square and on the right hand side. We try to swim upstream once in a while). Their vertical cousins can practically disappear. Let’s take a look at some logo design aspect ratios.

Now let’s plunk those logos into some basic website header layouts to see what’s what. Granted, we’ve exaggerated things a little to make a point, but I think you’ll get the idea. And I don’t think there’s a graphic designer alive, at least those with a few years under their belt, who hasn’t run into a variation of this scenario, and then having to explain to a client why their logo is so small. In any case, a horizontal format is definitely nicer for website use than a square one. For all intents and purposes, extremely vertical logos are out.

Quick fix: removable icons and fluid logos

It’s getting a bit complicated, huh? So bottom line, which are better: square or horizontal logos? Alas, both have their applications, and neither performs a coup de grâce on the other. The real answer, at the risk of breaking more logo design commandments, is that anyone that’s serious about social media, and promoting their logo, probably needs a little bit of both. It’s always been advisable, if you’re incorporating any type of pictorial imagery into a logo, that it should be able to used solo, on it’s own and disconnected from the typography (that advice has been part of our main site logo design tips for years now). That’s not always possible (like the My Car Guy logo above, typography can be intertwined with graphics), so designers need to be a little more fluid in adapting logos to different uses. Clients need to be a bit more fluid in allowing designers to do so. I’m of the impression that as social media evolves, and the avenues where logo can show up increases, we need to ditch a little bit of the bunker mentality. The ‘you can’t change that’ mantra. ‘Cause I think we do need to change things once in a while.

At the very least, you’re going to need a square version of any logo.

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.

One from the vaults: 3D Cardboard Cube Puzzle

Steve Douglas — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 09:59:15 +0000

Every once in a while, a designer will work on a project that is difficult to top, either the hoops they needed to jump through to complete, or the cool-factor once completed. I guess, this 3D Cardboard cube that I worked on back in 1996 (just months before I launched The Logo Factory) is one such project. As part of an interview for Design Inspiration, I was asked “what are the projects you’re most proud of and why?” After thinking long and hard, I decided that through the span of my career as a designer, there are two projects that I’m particularly fond of. The first is an old CFNY Radio poster that we talked about earlier in the year. The other is this funky, 3D cube thingamajig that I built in the mid-nineties, and that was ultimately used in a promotional campaign for ALDO shoes (a major Canadian shoe retailer) that I worked on during my tenure at a small advertising agency – Crunch Inc. Communications. While briefly mentioned the cube in the Design Inspiration interview, I thought you might find it interesting if I went a little more deeply into one of the coolest things I ever worked on.

ALDO, one of Crunch!’s A-list clients, were running an internal sales incentive promotion and wanted something “different”. When it comes to their marketing, ALDO have never shied away from pushing the envelope, so Garret Klassen (owner of Crunch!) Glenn Funk (a fellow Crunch! designer) and myself were let loose to come up with something that was supposed to get employees excited. Before we continue, we need to hop back a few summers, when I had tried to make a card puzzle box, a kind of poor man’s Rubick’s Cube. At the time, these little cube puzzles were becoming popular in the advertising business. You’ve probably seen them – plastic cubes joined by printed stickers on the faces, which can be twisted and turned into various configurations. As an out-of-work designer, I thought it would be nifty if I could print artwork and logos on the cube surfaces, and the piece would make a rather neat little portfolio drop-off during my, to-date unsuccessful, job hunt. Trouble is, I was broke, and there was no way I could afford to pay the rather hefty set-up charges, nor did I need the sizable minimums required. The only way I could create a cube puzzle for my artwork was to create it out of card, in such a way I that I could print it one-of using recently improved desktop digital technology. I had seen similar things done, but I didn’t have anything to work from, and would have to figure out how to build one from scratch.

Trouble is, I am neither a paper engineer, nor particularly adept at creating dielines (though at times, I have a monster case of OCD which helped put this one to bed). Using the plastic cube puzzle as a guide, I worked on my cardboard version for several months, playing with a multitude of dieline configurations before finally nailing it down into something that worked.

The complete cube was made up of four individual die cuts which were held together with with little tabs. I had to do a lot of experimentation, printing layout after layout out 11 x 17 sheets at the local copy & print center, cutting them out with an X-Acto and a steel ruler (losing a few thumb tips in the process) before assembling by hand. I knew what I wanted it to do. Getting to do it was another thing entirely. But OCD and persistence paid off, and after umpteen tries, I finally had a template that worked. Worked pretty well too. Now, I had to set up the artwork to go on it. That was more difficult than I imagined.

Each cube face rotates when the cube is twisted into its various configurations. Some faces have to be upside down. Others have to be sideways. Took me weeks to figure out what went where. To help, I set the entire thing up in Quark, using images boxes that could be spun (with the linked images set up as individual Illustrator documents). After figuring out how everything need to be laid out, I ended up with a pretty cool thingamajig. My original idea was to create a couple of one-off portfolio pieces, by hand, that I could drop off at agencies and studios. But then I got a few well-paying freelance gigs, then the job at Crunch! and my pet project was shelved. Never even completed a final mock-up (OCD’s like that). I knew at the time that production of these things would be prohibitively expensive and figured there would be no commercial application at all. With my career back-on-track, I forgot about my obsession de jour.

Fast forward a few years, where ALDO came in. As mentioned earlier, they were looking for something different for their new campaign. Lost for some really radical ideas, I told Garrett about this cube gizmo I had developed and he dug the overall concept. My setup was still pretty rough, and we needed to work on some practical considerations (a box manufacturer helped us fine-tine the dieline and we utlized a couple of insider trade ‘tricks’ to iron on some wrinkles). We reverse engineered a campaign into the cube – called it “Get Out Of The Box” (as hackneyed as that phrase is now, back then it still had cache) and developed the artwork you see here. Each panel could break into the various prize categories (prizes were being awarded to employees depending on their sales performance) and then back to the central logo.

Damn thing was bilingual which added to the complication (ALDO are based in Quebec) and any designer that has worked with French/English translations will know that they’re NOT the same length and require a lot of finessing. Fitting all the artwork into the various panels and cube faces took forever – a lot of the artwork was done in Photoshop and in those days PS didn’t have layers and only one level of ‘undo’. We used Apple Z a lot.

When we pitched the idea, ALDO loved it and advised us to “Go For It”. We also designed a box for the cube to sit in, but had to make it open from both ends (so that the cube could be pushed THROUGH, rather than pulled OUT. In early mockup-up versions, trying to pull the cube out from a top-only box always tore one of the tabs and ripped the cube in half). The size of the cube was rather arbitrary – we made it, and the box, as large as we could for the press size of the company that were going to print it. I do remember this – the dielines for the box and the cubes were stupidly expensive. Everything was tied into the “Get Out of The Box” concept – the campaign used the cube in all the catalogs, posters (see below) and was a big hit with everyone involved. It was one of the things that once completed, you can sit back and think “hey, I made that”.

And now, the downsides. The cube had to be assembled by hand. Each and every one. If you’ll remember, the cube had four faces. Each of those had to be assembled (using locking tabs, the cubes shouldn’t have required glue, but that worked better in theory than practice). Despite almost maniacal attention to accuracy, one of the dies was a little ‘off’. After the segments were wrestled into shape, the entire cube had to be put together and slid into the packing boxes without wrinkling, or mushing one of the component cubes. Everyone that worked at Crunch! spent day after day in the coffee room, assembling piles of cubes, sliding them into boxes before starting again, and other production work was shelved until we had built them all. Because the cubes were so delicate, we couldn’t bring in outside ham-fisted help. As we didn’t have a lot of overruns (total production was about 1,000 or so units) we couldn’t afford to mess up very often.

I’m not sure of the figures on the project, and while the blliables were probably impressive, if Crunch! made any profit at all, I’d be amazed, due to the sheer time-intensity of it all. But while it may have not been the most money-making project I’ve ever worked on, nor the most efficient, or even the best artwork that I’ve created (a little heavy on the purple there Steve), the gig ended up with something that’s still pretty impressive to this day, almost fifteen years later. People still pick it up and make comments along the lines of “well I’ll be damned”.

Unfortunately, there’s only a few still kicking around now – the one copy I have is a little beat up, wrinkled and sun-bleached (it sat in our studio lobby curio cabinet for a few years before we realized the window-facing side was fading). I still have the template dielines on my hard drive somewhere, and still could probably build a new version for The Logo Factory if I really tried.

Not sure I’d want to.

New design for Apple Quicktime logo

Steve Douglas — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 11:04:13 +0000

Looks like Apple has a new QuickTime logo. The shiny, chrome 3D design is to replace the gel version that’s been kicking around for a few years, and will represent Apple’s movie player with the QuickTime X (as in ten) release. I suppose this is timed to coincide with the rollout of Apple’s new operating system upgrade, Snow Leopard 10.6. Unlike the hideous MobileMe logo design, this is classic Apple design goodness, and the new version works well within the Cupertino company’s family of icons and logos – arguably the best branding design package around today. The QuickTime logo has been updated regularly, almost with every major update release (below).

As an interesting aside, General Motors came under criticism from some design quarters a couple of years ago when they rolled out their new Goodwrench logo, complete with an aqua gel treatment (below). Many opined that it looked suspiciously like the QuickTime mark and wondered if the now bankrupt car company had borrowed a few tricks from Apple designers. While certainly similar, not sure if it qualified as a ‘rip’ of Apple, though it does look remarkably like the ubiquitous “power on” symbol used on many electronic devices and appliances. The reason I’m mentioning this now is that I wasn’t aware of this ‘controversy’ at all until I poked around the Internet, researching this post.

Logos @ Work – Dice Man Board Game

Steve Douglas — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:24:01 +0000

As a company that specializes in logo design, we often show off our work by featuring projects as standalone artwork in our logo design gallery and portfolios. Nothing wrong with that per se, but it’s often more interesting to see the logo in its native habitat, in context, and as it was ultimately used. Sure, we can always look at how our work end up in stereotypical uses – letterhead & stationery design for example – but there are times when a particular logo’s story is a little more fun than your typical branding exercise. Take this logo (above) we designed way back in 2001 for a then in-development board game called Dice Man. Originally, we were tasked to design the product logo, but as the project went on, we were brought in to design the entire product, board game, instruction manual (which, truth to tell, I was never quite able to understand) as well as the box itself.

As well as a standalone logo, our team also designed the Dice Man central character (above) which was incorporated into every aspect of the product itself (the original R & D plans saw die-cut plastic Dice Men as part of the game play, but production costs shelved that idea in favor of wooden pegs, pinched from another game). Using the game concept sketches, and in close discussions with the developer we also designed the game board itself.

All the material for Dice Man was developed in Adobe Illustrator – one of the main concerns of the day (believe it or not) was the file size of Photoshop files. Internet bandwidth wasn’t was it is today, and there were some concerns of e-mailing large files to Hong Kong, where the game was to be manufactured. The physical size of game board packaging would have seen Photoshop files weighing in at hundreds of megs, so any artwork was created in smaller vector graphics native to Illustrator. Not a big deal – all the logos and support artwork were created in Illustrator anyway – but it restricted us in the use of special FX that would have jazzed things up a little bit.

Must admit I was a bit of a skeptic and saw the exercise as a little bit of a ‘pipe dream’ for the developer. Using dice as the backbone of a game, a board game at that, didn’t seem to me to be the height of cutting edge, and I wondered if there was a market for such a product. Stuart (his last name escapes me), the inventor of Dice Man, was positively contagious in his excitement, so we gave the project our all, and when we were completed wished him the best (I was never quite convinced that this game would see the light of day). The Logo Factory can be pretty fast-paced at times, so once the artwork files were shipped, the game fell off our radar as we moved on to numerous new projects.

A couple of Christmases later, I was at our local Toys R Us, looking for some presents for the kids, and what should I find in the board game section but pristine copies of Dice Man, in all their plastic-wrapped glory. Felt a little guilty for doubting the potential of the game, and decided that judging a board game’s success or marketability probably wasn’t my bag after all. Much to my later regret, I didn’t pick up a copy, and other than telling the gang at the shop “you’re never going to believe what I saw at Toys R Us“, didn’t give the game any further thought.

Until this morning when I stumbled onto this listing on Board Game Geek, a website devoted to famous and obscure board games alike. While Dice Man has long since disappeared from Toys R Us shelves, looks like it’s carved out a place in board game history with true aficionados. And go figure – Dice Man also won the Swedish gaming industry’s Årets Spel (Game of the Year) in the 2001 Children’s category. Looks like some congrats are in order.

And I should really think twice about doubting clients and their pipe dreams.

Free Logo Design Book – Logopalooza Volume 2

Steve Douglas — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 22:38:33 +0000

Got to admit it’s been a long time coming, but we just finished up the second edition of Logopalooza, our logo design e-book series, a few minutes ago (quite literally). This puppy is hot of the digital presses, so there’s probably a few typos that we need to fix, and there may some last minute edits as we go over the 70+ pages (yep, 78 to be exact). It’s also going to take us a day or two to set up the e-mail form-request gadgetry (so, technically I guess the book hasn’t been ‘officially’ released) but figured we’d give our faithful blog readers first chance to snag Logopalooza Volume Two first. We’ve ‘beefed up’ this volume with a load of design tips, examples and other logo design information that might be interesting if you’re a designer, or someone investigating a logo project for the first time. Download free here. (6.5 MB. requires Adobe PDF reader and minimum registration for download).

UPDATE: We’ve switched over the download request form, and the first edition of Logopalooza has officially been retired. While understanding that free stuff always has an appeal, I still find it hard to believe that our first e-book was downloaded almost 60,000 times. Thanks to everyone that made it such a success.