Steve Shanabruch loves design and his home of Chicago. Bringing together these two passions, he’s launched The Chicago Neighbourhoods – One designers take on Chicago.
Steve plans to design a few logos a week until he has covered all 77 community areas of Chicago.
I’m looking forward to seeing how this project progresses. You can track The Chicago Neighbourhoods on both Twitter and Facebook.
If you dig this project, you may also be interested in checking out Branding 10,000 Lakes.… Read more
The 2011 logo design trends report has just been released courtesy of the fine people at LogoLounge.
It’s always interesting to peruse the report for recent logo fads – if not at least to see whether oneself has been guilty of following any.
I found this comment from the report summary particularly interesting:
It feels like what people believe a logo to be is also becoming more transcendent. A logo is no longer a single piece of flat art.… Read more
This is a guest post by Dennis Salvatier, blogger at Tanoshiboy and designer at Salvatier Studios, an award-wining design studio located in Southern California. You can reach Dennis through his website or on Twitter.
Crowdsourcing Won’t Help You
In the last few years crowdsourcing has become the single greatest enemy to design, more so when it comes to logo design. Let’s start off with an explanation about what crowdsourcing is.
This is when a company or an organization offers a… Read more
If you haven’t already heard the news, American retailer JCPenny has just unveiled a ‘bold new logo’.
According to the official press release:
To choose a new logo design, jcpenney sought submissions that reflect a wide range of perspectives. Participants included the Company’s associates, several design agencies and two art schools — University of Cincinnati and Rhode Island School of Design — that collectively submitted over 200 designs for consideration.
The ‘winning entry’ was designed by a third-year graphic design… Read more
Whether you are doing it solo as a freelance designer, or run your own design studio, your chances of success are pretty slim unless you learn to manage client relationships properly.
I have been running my own design business for around 2.5 years now, and while I don’t pretend I know everything, there are a few tricks I have picked up along the way.
In this post, I will be sharing 15 rapid-fire bits of advice on how to manage… Read more
Many legitimate designers understand the frustration of trying to achieve a decent Google ranking for design-related search terms. Try a search for ‘logo design’ for example – the results are infested with logo warehouses.
Today Google released a Chrome extension that allows users to block and report sites with shallow or low-quality content from their personal search results.
Will this change the poor state of Google search? I doubt it.
For personal gratification however, it’s a win.… Read more
BankUnited gets an attractive new logo/identity courtesy of Pentagram.
The existing BankUnited logo featured an illustration of a palm tree that attached the company to Florida. The new bank plans on expanding to markets beyond the region, and the designers have created an abstract symbol called “the bridge,” based on the curving forms of the letters B and U. The icon is inspired by the causeways of Miami, but also represents a bridge between south and north, local and global,… Read more
While I have experienced both successes and failures as a designer, one thing is for sure, I have certainly learnt a lot along the way. To impart some of this knowledge, in this post, you will find fifteen useful logo design tips.
1. It all starts with the brief
Okay, this first one is really a given. Building a comprehensive design brief upfront is vital to the success of a logo design project. It will become your point of reference… Read more
Its been nearly 12 months since Logobird was launched. Overall its been a great year with the site steadily growing – completely exceeding my expectations.
Despite doing rather well so far, the time for change had come, and here you have it – the all new Logobird.
This post will give you a rundown on some of the changes to the site and what you can expect from us going forward.
We have switched domains
Firstly, we have ditched our… Read more
A new logo for HTML5 has been unveiled by the W3C – the international community responsible for developing standards for the web.
The new logo will primarily act as a badge for web designers and developers, giving them a standardized symbol to inform visitors that parts of HTML5 has been implemented into their site. Important to note however, the logo does not imply validity or conformance with web standards.
The new identity for HTML5 was developed by Honolulu-based Ocupop. Here… Read more
It is hard to believe that 2010 is really coming to an end. I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank you for your support over the past year. Without it, this blog would not be possible.
As always, below you will find five of my favourite logo and identity design reads for the month.
In no particular order.
Logo and Identity Design Resources December 2010
The People’s Supermarket – via @ID_Designed
A beautifully executed identity system created… Read more
Logo redesign and corporate rebranding is always a challenging, and often controversial undertaking for both the designer and organisation involved.
With the year drawing to a close, I thought it would be useful to take a look back at some of the more successful logo redesigns of 2010.
Disclosure: Each of the logo redesigns featured below were originally profiled on Brand New – one of the best resources for logo and identity design opinion. Please visit Brand New for logo… Read more
Curious to see where other logo and identity designers work, I recently made a call-out to some of my friends and colleagues to submit a photo of their current studio or workspace setup.
Amongst the submissions there are some really inspiring and interesting setups.
Let the voyeurism begin.
Where logo and identity designers work
Sean Farrell (Brand Clay) – Twitter
Graham Smith (Imjustcreative) – Twitter
Pete Lacey (Chopeh) – Twitter
Jacob Cass (Just Creative Design) – Twitter
Leighton Hubbell –… Read more
November is coming to an end (where did the year go?) and it is that time again where I like to share some of the best logo and identity design resources for the month.
In no particular order, here are five of my favourite reads (or links) for the month.
1. Why a bigger logo can harm your brand via IdApostle
Can a logo be too big? You bet. How big is too big. Head over to IdApostle and read… Read more
From time to time I will be bringing you a look at what has been going on behind the scenes at Logobird.
The aim of the post is to share with you some recent personal developments and to keep you updated on what we have been working on.
Logobird has moved
Firstly, some of you may be aware that I have recently relocated interstate from Melbourne to the Gold Coast. The move is only temporary as my wife and I… Read more
For anyone outside of the design industry, finding a good logo designer can be a really frustrating experience. While there is a mountain of choice when it comes to hiring a designer, finding a quality designer can be a real challenge, especially if you don’t know what to look out for.
The intent of this article is to help guide individuals and businesses navigate the potential minefield of hiring a professional logo designer. For fellow designers wanting to identify how… Read more
It’s time for the monthly logo design resource roundup once again.
This month’s post has a slightly different format from those previous. I felt that the old ten link format was a little bloated, so this month the list has been reduced to just five links.
The links below are what I personally consider “must read”. I hope you find them valuable.
1. Unevolved Brands via Imjustcreative
Unevolved Brands is a study of logo and brand simplification, launched by Graham… Read more
I was recently having a discussion with another designer who claimed that most talented logo designers are naturally gifted. The gist of his thoughts was that some designers simply had an ‘eye’ for creating brilliant logos. In his words, you either had ‘it’ or you didn’t. To give examples of designers who he thought had ‘it’ I was referred to some logos he had seen on a popular logo design gallery.
If a logo design was a competition based on… Read more
Steve Zelle is an award-winning logo and identity designer with over 20 years experience, based in Ottawa, Canada. Apart from being an extremely talented designer, Steve also runs two websites; idApostle – his personal blog and portfolio site, and Processed Identity – a site dedicated to exploring the creative processes of visual identity designers.
I highly recommend you take a look at Steve’s sites to check out his outstanding work and read some very interesting articles and discussions on identity… Read more
Continuing the popular logo designer interviews series, this week I had the pleasure of interviewing Steve Douglas, creative director at The Logo Factory.
Steve has been involved in offering online design services since starting The Logo Factory in 1996. No that isn’t a typo, 1996. If it has happened in the online design space, Steve is likely to have witnessed it. He is a true pioneer.
In this interview, Steve discusses how he got started using a free 10 megabyte… Read more