Tuesday, December 15, 2009

My Fair Logo

A long long time ago (January 2007) I said I was going to turn my photoshop transgressions (thanks Tiger) into a legitimate business venture. Well it's amazing how a 10 hour shift will stunt your dreams! My design company is however, progressing slowly toward reality. Here is the story of brave little logo and how he grew from an ugly duckling into a beautiful 300 calorie grilled chicken meal. Once my official website is set up I'll give you a full essay on how this logo came to be.

Logo Creator Software - Like Blonds in Sweden (Thanks Tiger)
Straight out of the College of Engineering, I had no idea where to start when formulating a logo design. From various design blogs I knew a few things like :
1. Logo should be scaleable
2. Logo should look good black on white or the opposite
I'm sure there were more rules, but I was young and impulsive... (Thanks Tiger). I fired up some Logo Creating software and spit out these beauties:





Wowsers! Surely one of these would have worked? Well turns out the problem with using "Logo Software" is that there will probably be a dude in Omaha or Boise or Calcutta that picked the same combination as you and now your "unique" logo idea is not duplicate. Plus, I couldn't explain to anyone what each swoosh or dot or twirllly line on these logo meant, which is kind of important for a graphic designer to be able to do...

"Urban" GFX Design Logo
Months and 10 hour shifts go by and I decide to get my foot in the design world door I should venture into the dark world of "Mixtape Cover GFX" GFX being the clever way mixtape cover designers abbreviate "Graphics" even though G-R-A-P-H-I-C-S is one word and can't be abbreviated. Either way I'd need a hot cool gangster logo. It was here that I decided to work the Camel angel extra hard and make it my company mascot. I also decided that Orange and Blue is more then world's best college fight song, but would make a great color scheme for my logo.


















I also dropped the LLC because incorporating is not in the budget this year (Thanks Tiger). Here I began with the basic black and white logo for general use and created a gradient outerflow filled triangle fest for use on the web. I still think it could work for some other businesses, but it's a little too casual, too gritty, too hot for TV to be used as a professional logo

No More Peter Pan, Choosy Moms... aka Professional Logo
A lot more months pass by. In this time I discovered the true power of photoshop brushes when combined with layer blends and masks (yes I know, this is all giberish to you). I also read an article about using subtle gradients to give your work depth. I also also read an article about using simple shapes to craft your logo. I also^3 think Tiger Woods Golf Video Game will still sell like hotcakes this christmas...

Going back to the creative well one more time, I created a logo that was equal parts typography, equal parts shapes.
Simple black and white version. Notice the highest circle is different then the rest. This represents the company's standing among the competition. (Yes I know, there's technically supposed to be 15 circles, and when I get my official website up, I will scan that scrap pad filled with crazy ways I tried to make that happen)

Orangeeeeeeee, Bluuuuuuuuuue, Orangeeeeee.... you get the idea. While this is light years ahead of that stuff the "Logo Software" it was still missing something. For letters, stationary, and envelopes, this is it for the logo. A Darker blue was used in future iterations, but you get the idea.

For web use I added this "blue-ish" background. Sadly Vista, Photoshop, my monitor, and my printer were all having issues getting colors to come out correct so I ended up with this weird metallic blue looking thing. Again this logo is usable, beats the pants off the earlier stuff, but it lacks depth. I have no mastered depth as you can see in the final logo.

Now I can honestly say that is a sexy, yet professional web logo. You won't see all these fractals and gradients on any court documents I serve you in the future, but for promotional material and web work, this logo is excellent. Notice the gradients in the words and circles that add a little visual depth to the piece. I also decided every future Fortune 500 firm needs a tag line and created one to sit under the logo.

Now on to the myspace facebook and twitter profile pages! Then a wordpress bases website!
Comments?

PS: I forgot how un-user friendly the pic tool is here on blogger. By unfriendly I mean like you just left your job as a naked butcher at the meat factory and you just fell in the lion exhibit at the zoo...

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Football was soooo Last Saturday

It took Tim Tebow's tears (which have the same healing properties as some rain Forrest plants) to lift the embargo on blog posts. Plus I'm more proficient at IPhone typing now. It's a shame too because there's so many funny things that have happened to me since November of 08. I'll try and recall them but you know how that goes. Now all I need is a little red line to show up under the misspelled words.

Anyway after last Saturday's 187 of the Gators in the SEC Championship Game, my coping with grief stages kicked in and I suddenly became retrospective. I was thinking about the 2006 National Title Game I witnessed live in person (yet will never blog about) and remember how amazing the moment was. Then I remembered how un-amazing all the games the following season were. That 2006 National Title didn't mean Sh!t the following season.

What does that all mean to the sports fan? It means you have to live in the moment extra extremely hard. Like Mountain Dew hard! It's the only way. It works when your team is up. Now when your team is getting bent over like an episode of Oz then you may want to live in the past... just like a UM fan.

Speaking of UM fans. I had to pleasure of being berated by UM fans all this week. The sad part is I probably would have taken it all in good spirits if these taunts were from actual UM alumni or students. But these are some regular "this is my team cause I live in the area" type stuff. This is not the NFL. I strongly believe if you never attended a particular college then you lose all rights to talk sh!t on their behalf. And some of these Canes "fans" have a worse case of Great Gatsby syndrome then Notre Dame!

Hello UM, the 80's and 90's called. They want their sports news back. You don't see Gators crying about SEC domination in the 90's do u? No!

Ahh. That felt good. Just like old times.
Welcome back Dwayne, welcome back.

Sent from my iPhone

WTF!!

Just wrote a long paragraph for this blog using a blogger app. But
unlike every other iPhone app that saves your information if someone
calls you, this app decided to send my paragraph to sentence heaven.
Thanks bootleg free Iphone App! WTF!!!

Guess it's back to emailing these in.
Sent from my iPhone