Logo love

I've been thinking a lot about logos recently. For all intents and purposes, we will be phasing out the original name and logo for the little homebrewing project as we look toward the future. There were two reasons behind this: first, it was too reminiscent of other business names in the state, and second, the logo was too reminiscent of a few others.

Having put them away, though, I've started thinking about logos for breweries. It seems like there are a few basics. You have the crest; you have the logo with hop cones; you have the brewing equipment illustration. To be honest, I'm a little bored with all three, and judging from the identities I've seen on recently opened breweries, so are others. And with good reason...

A crest? If you have a family crest, great. Use it. It's a nod to history and tradition. If you don't have a crest, why create one? What do you gain by trying to reference a brewing tradition that isn't actually your own? Be new. Find a new path.

Hop flowers? Grain sheafs? I think we all know that hops and grains are the integral parts of beer. See the first point. You're not adding anything new to the visual landscape by using one more hop cone. Find another visual.

Equipment? Sure, I like a pretty copper kettle as much as any beer person. Do I care whether your brewhouse is a copper kettle? Maybe, but it certainly won't make me think "Hey, I want to buy their beer!"

In the end, I'm a fan of simple and clean. I like classic looks and type treatments that are appropriate to the image you're creating. If there's a local connection, even better. Use it, but don't force it. Ultimately, it's all just a paper tiger, though. People buy the beer, not the logo. They will seek out a good product because it's good; a good identity is the head on the pint.

That said, will I obsess over this as we start moving closer to business ideas? Probably. You can make me drink my words when I greenlight the first logo that uses a woodcut hop cone.

Procrastination

Via Ze Frank, a bit of design geekness for a Wednesday...

Shepard Fairey, Milton Glaser, and design as art or appropriation

Via Boing Boing comes this reaction from Milton Glaser to the controversy brewing over Shepard Fairey's iconic Obama poster:

For myself—this is subjective—I find the relationship between Fairey’s work and his sources discomforting. Nothing substantial has been added. In my own case, when I did the Dylan poster, I acknowledged using Duchamp’s profile as an influence. I think unless you’re modifying it and making it your own, you’re on very tenuous ground. It’s a dangerous example for students, if they see that appropriating people’s work is the path to success. Simply reproducing the work of others robs you of your imagination and form-making abilities. You’re not developing the muscularity you need to invent your own ideas.

I'm of two minds on this one. First, I think that Fairey added significantly to the photo. His treatment of the angle and expression elevate Obama's profile to the iconic level. His use of the campaign logo and color treatment create a new work — one that is admittedly propaganda. Moreover, the design of the poster has lent itself to a thousand variations, which helps it rise to an iconic level. At the level that design-as-art must also communicate, I see his work as entirely separate from its source.

Glaser's second point about a student's reaction to this work is an interesting point. Fairey lent a perspective and an idea to his work. The fact that he was able to lift it from the source and the fact that someone can create a similar effect using Photoshop does, however, risk teaching students that they can succeed by simply creatively manipulating someone else's work.

That said, I recommend checking out the comments on the Boing Boing thread. It's an interesting discussion.

Does everything need to be redesigned?

I bought the game Sorry! for Anna for Christmas. It was a game I figured we could both enjoy, and so far my instinct proved right. One thing bothers me about the game, though: the redesign.

This was the game I remember growing up:



And this is the game as it is currently designed:




The older version certainly needed a little updating. The design showed it's age, but what Milton Bradley did was unconscionable. Whoever designed it threw every trick in the book at it.

Grunge design has been all the rage the past few years, and the trademark splatters are here. Big cartoonish design has made a comeback too; the big outlines and super-splashy "Bam," "Pow" stars speak to that. And don't forget about half-toning; some of that's thrown in for good measure. Then there's the odd turn to a retro, space-age feel with the circles and gradients and bubble effects with circle outlines thrown on top of them. The cherry on top of that particular sundae are all the extra arrows and line elements that come from the little techie elements that felt fresh ten years ago. And don't forget about the updated cool-retro typeface—the name of which escapes me now—on the cover, the requisite handwriting font to give it the fun marketing splash of a printed Post-It, and the crazy-cool type treatments on the game board. To top it all off, there are transparencies everywhere. After all, where would we be without transparencies in contemporary graphic design, right?

Oy.

It all adds up to a redesign that feels like every design cliché of the past five years puked all over the package. In the end, it went from dated-but-readable to so-busy-that-you-have-to-concentrate-just-to-figure-out-what-you're-looking-for. I'm tempted to blame design-by-committee, but in the end it feels more like design driven by marketing. I can almost see the brand and sales managers agreeing that it looks new, fresh, awesome while a designer sits in the studio counting all the layers in his Illustrator files.

plagiarism?

I was searching for images related to the Peterson's Guides today, and one of my searches brought up this old logo for the company:


The image seemed awfully reminiscent of something else I've seen recently, something that was supposedly designed recently:


I guess this means the McCain campaign is so bereft of new ideas that they can't even design a unique logo. Or maybe it's just that there isn't anything they won't recycle. Anybody care to comment?

research

One of the best parts of any creative project--whether design or writing--is researching random components and ideas. In this case, I'm about to try a layout based on the phrenological map. Sometimes work really is fun.

design geekitude

This little quiz is great. Now, if I could only break above 24... just one more sign that I've been administrating for too long.

(Thanks to Bonnie for the link.)

design poll!

Here are two designs for posters for the Strawberry Street Festival, a major fundraising event for Banana's school. We may run both, but if we can only run one, I'm putting it out there for my few readers... which one would you pick? Let me know in the comments.

design and ad fun

As part of a project I've been working on at home, I've been poring through several turn-of-the-century copies I have of North American Review, Harpers, and the Atlantic Monthly. There are some real gems of classic type and art, not to mention a certain degree of hilarity.

I need a real digital camera...

I spent some time this afternoon taking shots of a number of print and art pieces. After working out the light questions, I was fairly confident that my little Fuji A700 could handle it. I was wrong. More than half of the shots look like I used a spherize effect in Photoshop.

From the "You've got to be kidding me" annals

a.k.a. the "Why is the government spending our money on this shit?" annals...

I bring you Ghostbusters 2007, the terrorism edition. Then again, this is also the edition where the ghost/terrorist is, in fact, a gingerbread ninja.

Thanks, guys. Our infrastructure is falling apart. Our schools are underfunded. Our health "care" system is a delivers better profits than care. Our environment is degrading. But at least we have a Terrorist Busters logo.

Thanks again.

Good Magazine

I'd heard about GOOD magazine but hadn't sought it out yet. The cover of the latest issue, their one year anniversary issue, caught my eye in Barnes & Noble earlier, and I picked it up. Having tried to launch a magazine once upon a time, I'm still a sucker for new "books."

Good is better than most, however. The writing is solid. The design is well-done--kudos to Open Design in New York. The uncoated stock the book is printed on lends a nice balance to the question: "Can design do good?"

Certainly that is a good question, and one that the issue tries to address. It's a useful question, a useful topic; unfortunately, it's hard to get away from the fact that every new thing we create adds to a potential landfill down the line.

brilliant design sensibilities

This is a fucking brilliant cartoon.



Midway through, Banana wanted to know when the "real" shows were going to come back on. I told her to stop and watch. I explained that it was things like this that had taught me how to draw lines--and that it was my ability to draw lines that paid our rent. She stopped and paid attention. Together (I hadn't seen this toon in years), we oohed and ahhed over the brilliant design work in this one.

Target steals designs.

We were cruising around Target this afternoon for the first post-move Tar-zhay run. I was, of course, putting more in the cart than expected, and breaking the basic budgeting rules by not coming with a list. Anyway, we wandered into kitchen wares and Banana asked if we could get the pink and purple cups. At $1.99 for four, I was fine with it. At the next end-cap, however, I saw familiar looking cups and utensils.

Anyone with kids and an IKEA nearby knows the utensils, bowls, and cups I'm referring to. They are ubiquitous, with design flourishes that make them popular with the kids too. Target's versions are in the some of the same colors, but they lack the funky utensil tops that let the kids figure out which piece is which.

Thankfully, Banana still preferred the tumblers to the knock-offs.

classic euro-modern

Via daddytypes, I came across this vintage design archive. There was a bit of a surprise to learn that Elmer the Elephant has been around longer than I have. Be sure to click through to one of the other thumbs for a cool cube toy that Milton Glaser designed for MoMA.

Green Design update

So the initial cost estimates for a publication with a Yupo (locally-produced) cover and Mohawk text (sourced from 100% PC content and produced at a wind-powered mill) literally doubled my expected budget for the job--taking us from my goal of $1.80/book to $3.75/book. If we were selling these or, better yet, were a private sector company with money to burn, I could probably argue for it. Sad to say, that neither is the case, and I've had to pull back significantly on my goals in favor of a more economical book.

Ethics are, indeed, expensive, and as we well know, ethics are rare in our government.

Green Design

I am working on a major new project at work--the rethinking of a planner we did two years ago, as well as two other publications that will be wrapped into it. Since the green movement finally seems to have gone mainstream, this seems like an opportune moment to take the Cradle to Cradle and sustainability questions to the fore.

The question of paper is an easy one. Finding good recycled papers and synthetic papers takes little effort. If I truly want to think the whole process through, however, I need to look at even the corporations and their facilities--from Mohawk's wind-powered paper mills to Neenah/Fox River's considerable efforts at waste-free manufacturing.

Then there is the question of printers, namely finding a printer that can print and bind 18,000 160-page books with the least amount of waste and emissions. There is also the question of writing specs for wire bindings and ink that meet the ethical standards.

Finally, there is the question of design, and it is likely that some of these other considerations will influence the design itself.