Archive for the ‘Logo Design News’ Category
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21July
- Logo Companies Face Off in the Wall Street Journal
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Reading through the logo design news for the day, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the venerable old’ Wall Street Journal has a piece written after Logo Blog’s own heart, covering logo design and logo design companies. Although we won’t besmirch the Journal for inching in on our territory, we do have our own take on their findings.
Peter King, the writer of the Cranky Consumer feature for the WSJ, created a fictional business in order to test and review, several online logo design companies. Operating under the assumption that the client was a jobless entrepreneur, King set his budget at $150 and under and went to work.
Creating DiskFix, an imaginary data retrieval service who specializes in data recovery from hard drives, King selected The Logo Company, Logo Design Guru.com, Logo Design Creation.com and Logo Loft to build his imaginary brand.Providing only a tag line and a simple one sentence description King purposely kept the input to a minimum and let the designers have at it.
After reviewing each design, King and corporate brand expert Dr. Glenn Christensen, assistant professor of business management at Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management, provided their commentary. Although King and Christensen reviewed price, service, and design, we will turn our attention to the design itself.
Logo Design Guru
I liked this one, it seems both corporate and dynamic, while integrating a cyclical motion with an outlined circle around the company name. I also can’t help but notice a very FedEx like arrow in between the “I” and the “X” in “Fix”, very subtle. The typography is also strong and metered providing an excellent hierarchy between Disk Fix, Solutions, and the tag line. I would like to see the tag line slightly larger, but it can work both ways.
I disagree with Christensen’s assessment that the logo does not communicate what the company is. Clearly the circle, hidden arrow, and the circle around Disk Fix Solutions provide some indication of returning a user or a customer right back where they started from, as any customer of a data recovery service would so sorely want to feel. Overall strong text, plus the subtle cyclical motion makes this the strongest contender.
LogoLoft
I found this logo to be slightly more problematic, in that I found it too spread out and elongated for my taste. Also the text is a little bland. I feel if you are going to design such a text centric logo, you should at least capitalize on it and do something interesting with it. I’m just personally bored by the text in this logo.I do like however the hard disk head resting on the platter, jutting out from the “D” in Disk. (I’m a sucker for design elements worked into text.) My only concern with this is that it could be mistaken for a thermometer. If someone wasn’t particular intimate with the internal working of a hard drive, he or she may not know what was being depicted.
Logo Design Creation.com
I have mixed feelings on this logo. I find the type to be very weak, and I’m not just some sans serif hater, this text is Land of Bland. The text is fitting for a road sign on the Autobahn, not for a data recovery firm.The icon is compelling, in that it’s a blunt in your face representation of the company, but I disagree with Dr. Christensen that it’s the best representation out of the group. To me it’s uninspired and looks a little too much like an oscillating fan.
The logo is also fairly long and horizontal, and not as condensed and compact as most standard logos.
The Logo Co.
This is a compelling logo similar to the Logo Design Guru logo that I think takes the right approach. Circular in design, the logo creates the effect of spinning drive platters and is appropriately turning clockwise indicative of getting back to the start of something.
The 1s and 0s are a particularly nice touch at communicating the nature of the business and providing the necessary fill in inside the logo’s center. My only concern with this would be printing or embroidery. I wonder how well this would come out. I find the font for Disk Fix a little too thin, with the word “Solutions” becoming lost below the company name and above the tag line, but the design is still perfectly serviceable.After offering our humble commentary on the design portion of this article, what are your thoughts about these logos? Did the Wall Street Journal get the design aspects correct? Which logo is the best and most likely to be selected and used? Which firms could have done better? Leave a comment below or vote in the poll on the right, under the RSS feed box.
Images and Graphics originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal July 16, 2009.
-Kevin Scott
Tags: Logo Design, logos, wall street journal
Posted in Logo Design News | No Comments »
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01July
- Billy Mays: The Logos of a Celebrity Pitchman
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Billy Mays. (July 20, 1958 – June 28, 2009) was the face of direct response marketing in America. His upbeat and friendly- in your face personality-helped sell any product he represented. He was a simple salesman who built his way up to celebrity status through his unique delivery and convincing pitch. It was his distinctive, burly, bearded look and booming voice that make him the most well known figure in television sales. Billy Mays was known best for promoting cleaning products such as OxiClean, Orange Glo, the Awesome Auger, Mighty Mend-It, Mighty Putty, Quick Chop and other assorted household items. Mays started his career as the last of the great boardwalk pitchmen in Atlantic City then moved on with the Home Shopping Network, and soon started his own company Mays Promotions, Inc. He then moved on just recently working on a documentary series on the Discovery channel, Pitchmen. Billy Mays created his own success and as a great huckster, sold himself into a household name and into the hearts and ears of America.
As great as Billy’s pitch was, the logos for the products that Billy Mays promoted are little plain and uninspired at best. All designed in the same Ron Propeil school of tacky and in your face infomercial fair, the logos were simply serviceable. Yet, with a pitchman like Billy Mays, I guess they felt they didn’t need a great or memorable logo. Perhaps, in his passing, the owners of these products will reconsider the importance of a great logo and reinvent their visual corporate identity.
-Nora Reed
Tags: billy mays, Logo Design, logos, orange glo, oxiclean, sales logos, sales pitch, tribute
Posted in Logo Design News, LogoBlog | 2 Comments »
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25June
- 76ers Go Back to the Basics With their Logo Design
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Just in time for the NBA draft, the Philadelphia 76ers have recently changed their logo by reverting back to the original design that they had during their glory days of the late 70s and early 1980s.
Their marketing department must feel that the old design is a symbol of luck and it was time to rid themselves of their current curse, much like the Detroit Lions did earlier in the year. The Lions modernized and modified their existing logo in hopes of changing their image from consistent basement dwellers to winning NFL franchise.
It seems to be a trend with sports teams to wash away the bad luck demons and start fresh with a new logo. It makes sense if you believe that a team logo is a lucky charm. If this is true, wouldn’t a team mascot be just as responsible for delivering bad luck to a team? If you change one, shouldn’t you change the other as well?
Changing a team’s logo will sometimes subvert the never ending cycle of a losing sports team. A bad season leads to poor ticket sales, low merchandise revenue, and a general lack of funds. What does a sports team need money for? Better Players! How does a team raise money to field a winner? By Repackaging and reselling all new jerseys, hats, apparel, and assorted gear, a sports franchise rebrands itself into a winner, and in turn collects the necessary money needed to sign highly valued free agents.
A team should be responsible for their own luck. If they can’t win a championship, don’t blame the logo, just play better!
-Nora Reed
Tags: 76ers logo, Logo Design, original logo, sixers, vintage logo
Posted in Branding Tips, Logo Design News, LogoBlog | 5 Comments »
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20May
- “Ida” Fossil Inspires New Google Logo
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Meet Ida!
“Ida,” is the little fossil that was recently found in Germany and is considered to be the “missing link.” The fossil is a huge find for those who study human origins. Paleontologist, Jorn Hurum, is responsible for leading the team and analyzed the 47-million-year-old fossil. He suggests Ida is a critical missing-link species in primate evolution. His studies show that the Ida fossil bridges the evolutionary split between higher primates such as monkeys, apes, and humans and their more distant relatives such as lemurs.
Ida, properly known as Darwinius masillae, has a very unique anatomy. The skeleton is mostly like a lemur, but features primate-like characteristics such as grasping hands, opposable thumbs, clawless digits with nails, and short limbs. After the announcement was made about the fossil’s discovery, it seems Google took advantage, using the fossil’s image for today’s Google logo.
Google has always been great with keeping up with current events and displaying what is going on through their logo art. It’s nice to see that they continue to do so by proudly including Ida in their design.
Tags: evolution, fossil, google logo, Ida, Logo, Logo Design, primate
-Nora Reed
Posted in Logo Design News, Logo Inspiration, LogoBlog Poll | No Comments »
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15May
- Doodle 4 Google: Google’s Logo Design Contest
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Design contests seem to occur frequently throughout the online graphic design community. We’ve had plenty of contests in the past even here. It seems now, the latest contest is sponsored by Google, in which they are offering the opportunity for kids to design a new twist on their ever changing logo. This is Google’s yearly event, which includes a theme. This year, the contest’s theme is “What I wish for the world.” The winner’s design will be posted on Google’s site for one day. Along with that honor, Google is also offering a monetary grant and scholarship as their top prize. The contest is called “Doodle 4 Google.” I have to admit, it’s quite a catchy name. The contest seems to be a great way to involve kids and to share a future graphic designer with the world. A group of artist’s renditions have already been picked, but now it is up to us to vote for the best ones to see which design makes its winning debut.
It really is a fantastic opportunity and it’s nice to see Google using a small portion of its long running financial gain to support art and education. The concept of the global awareness also is good for kids to learn if they didn’t know it already. The theme itself forces them to think about how our world is “going green” and what the actual ideas are behind that. Kids may hear the expression and just think of it as a trend, but it’s important for them to know how the idea came about and what to do to improve our global situation.
Posted in Logo Design Competition, Logo Design News, Logo Design Tips | 1 Comment »
-Nora Reed
