The design of this blog is crap. There, I said what a lot of you’ve been thinking (but have been much too civil to say). Not surprising really. Most of the design was hatcheted onto a default Wordpress theme years ago (September 2005 to be exact), when I didn’t have a clue about CSS and style sheets. The layout is hinky as all get-out (the links are red and purple for heaven’s sake). To speak of, there’s no real ‘design’ going on (which might seem odd for a design-themed blog) and the overall look is, well, crap. There are also some content issues that need a little TLC. This blog is supposedly part of a website that’s meant to sell graphic design services. You wouldn’t know it reading this blog.
Over the years, I’ve written about things that interest, motivate, and piss me off. Most of those scribblings are from a designer point-of-view, because try as I might, I just can’t write about “entrepreneurship” with any zeal or gusto. Sure, I tried writing articles and features aimed at buyers and clients, but I always slid back to designer themed articles. You know the drill – discussion of industry issues like the spec work debate and carping about logo design contests. And let’s be honest – most clients couldn’t give a rat’s ass about design crowdsourcing, the legality of logo design contests or any of the issues that I can write about from religion.
Accordingly, and over the years, our studio blog has become unfocused, suffering from multiple-personality disorder (I’m wise enough not to use the term ’schizophrenic’ even though that was the one that original came to mind). Hell, we’ve changed our blog’s name three times. We originally started calling it Logopalooza (which became the name of our sort of regular free logo book). Then it became The Logo Factor (which was cool and all, but that was culled from a domain that I purchased for trademark reasons). It seems that the blog could never ’settle down’ for an extended periods of time, and I confess to being guilty of an almost unpardonable sin in marketing – trying to be all things to all people.
As part of our new logo and website design roll out, I took a long, hard, look at our blog and decided to make some changes. I’m bouncing them off readers, because it will fundamentally change how we do things around here. The first major change is the look. The new TLF Studio Blog will be incorporated into the look and feel of our new site design like so (you can view a full size version of the proposed design here);
The mechanics of the new TLF website design can be found here. In terms of blog content, this blog needs to be re-focused on our new brand as well as the core mission of our website. The new version (tentatively retitled Cogs & Gears) will still feature (hopefully) interesting design and logo material – though written to a buyer/client perspective. We’ll phase out my personal rants and raves, as well as a lot of the designer-oriented material that we’ve featured in the past. Not that I’m going to stop writing them – far from it. You see, we’re not discontinuing The Logo Factor blog. Just moving it to it’s own dedicated domain entitled (strangely enough) TheLogoFactor.com.
When thinking about the new direction, it struck me that logo designers and logo buyers often need information from a different perspectives. Designers (should) already know about the various applications of logos across different media. Buyers may not. Buyers may be interested in some very basic information on what makes a good logo. Designers would look at that kind of article as “meh – been there, done that”.
It seemed only logical that a blog that specialized in logo design information would be split into two halves – one for designers, the other for clients and buyers. And like any project around here, before we could begin any earnest development, we needed to create a look and feel. I’ve always liked the idea of a logo being a ’spark plug’ for a brand, so I decided to keep that analogy for The Logo Factor’s new blog logo. That basic premise is nothing new (check the bottom of this page), but the actual logo has been long due an overhaul. With all of this in mind, I worked up a new version, complete with font treatment. We’d need two logos, one for the buyers’ side and one for the designers’ section. As much as I like the spark plug graphic, the type workup is very strong on its own, so the spark plug graphic was unceremoniously thrown in the growing pile of “Neat Little Graphics That I’ll Use Some Other Time”.
Still needed some sort of spark plug illustration to use on the site and as part of the overall branding. Didn’t want to use the stock photograph that we’ve used for a few years any more (you can see it on our logo design portfolio page). Wanted something custom, so I created these two 3D spark plugs using the original graphic as a starting point. The two hi-key colors reminded me of old studio markers (little stubby things the name of which escapes me) so I added marker ‘trails’, a theme that I’d work into the blog theme design.
The website setup is fairly straight forward. A home page that features both the design and client options,
And color coded sections for each. Green for designers.
Orange for buyers. Each blog section (set up using two separate Wordpress installations and custom themes) will feature categories that (hopefully) will appeal to each reader segment. There’s a lot of decent articles that have become buried in the backwaters of this blog (and thanks to the hinky navigation are next to impossible to find) so we’ll have no content problems for quite a while once we start editing and updating them. They’ll be easier to find is all.
As part of this expansion of The Logo Factor, the plan is to take the best of both client and designers blogs and publish them as self-help manuals (whether they’ll be e-book downloads or dead-tree versions is still up for debate). In any case, we’ll use the spark plug analogy there too. Like so.
In terms of my personal rants and raves (especially when it comes to third rail topics like spec design work, logo contests and the goings on in the graphic design industry) I will be parking those articles on my upcoming personal blog at SteveDouglas.com. Tentatively entitled ‘Dairy of a Mad Designer‘ (appropriate methinks), having my own piece of internet real estate will allow me to distance myself from The Logo Factory proper, something which will give me a little more freedom in how I write and tackle issues and news. I’ve always been cognisant that The Logo Factory studio blog was attached to my studio and held back a little when ranting and raving (some may find that hard to believe I suppose). In any case, the design for my personal blog will look something like this -
As you’ll see, all the new layouts have common features so that they’re visually from the same ‘family’ while being completely unique in focus. Which brings us full circle to Logopalooza, the original name of this blog that was co-opted to become our logo book downloads. That’s undergoing a face lift too, with a new logo and a new website, now in planning stages.
This pet project is something that I’m fairly excited about, but there’s not a lot I can tell you just yet. Still working on the logistics, but here’s a quick overview. For a couple of years, we’ve made a free logo book available from our site. Logopalooza featured designs from The Logo Factory studio, some tips and was used as a marketing device for the shop. We never promoted it heavily but had over 100k people download one version or another and have picked up quite a few gigs from the book distribution. The new version of Logopalooza will be de-branded and open to all logo designers (with some qualifications). There will be a site tie-in that will feature online portfolios and a way for clients to find pre-qualified designers and view their work. No, this isn’t going to be some design crowdsourcing or logo contest copycat – but a talent-finding mechanism that will help buyers find designers without designers having to give away the farm for it to happen. I’ve railed against logo design contests and spec work for years, but have never offered up any alternatives. Logopalooza will hopefully evolve into one such alternative.
There’s not much else I can tell you at the moment (don’t want to give too much away either) but I think that this can turn out to be a fairly cool gig, both for me, and the designers who get involved. I’ll keep you posted with new developments as I’m able.
And that’s that. A whole mess of designing, rebranding, refocusing and expanding of The Logo Factory as a corporate entity and myself personally as a designer. And now we can get down to the business of changing the crap design of this blog.
Related posts:
- Free Logo Design Book – Logopalooza Volume 2
- Hey – where Logopalooza be at?
- Logopalooza – 35,000 downloads & counting…
- And now, onto the website design
- Logopalooza – Volume Two in the works.
Tags: branding, rebranding, web design
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Wow. Quite an undertaking to retool everything, but I like the results so far. It looks like you really took everything into account for the big push. Can’t wait to see the sites!
Nice job and cool idea with the preview posts. Should be cool.
@ Leighton – hey, thanks for dropping by (and many thanks for booting the post around Twitter). Greatly appreciated. Yep, that’s the battle plan for our ‘big push’. Sound of the sites are starting to come on line now. Should launch others in a month/month and a half. Time to up our game a little.