odds and ends from the world of design
You are currently browsing the monthly archive for July 2009.
iQ font - When driving becomes writing / Full making of from wireless on Vimeo.
Typographers Pierre & Damien (plmd.me) have combined two of my favorite things, driving and letters, to create iQ font: a font that uses the tracks left by “driving like you stole it” to create the letterforms. The technology is pretty cool, although the rather static-looking script that results is a little disappointing, but what can you expect from a minicar?
iQ is available for download here.
Thanks, Paul!
Tags: cars, Technology, Typography
A Starbucks in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood is being unbranded, to become a concept coffee shop called 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea. Starbucks is experimenting with a business model that other companies have tried with some success: rebranding their chain stores in a particular region to reflect local tastes. In an article for the Huffington Post, writer Marc Gunther wonders about the trend Starbucks might be setting:
“You can imagine where this un-branding campaign could lead. A little neighborhood burger place run by McDonald’s? A little neighborhood hardware store owned by Home Depot? A little neighborhood five-and-dime operated by Wal-Mart?”
Grocery super-giant Ahold has been doing something similar for a while, but while all of their stores still look like superstores, Gunther supposes that in the future, retail outlets for international mega-corporations might be indistinguishable from your typical mom & pop store. As anti-corporatist sentiments continue to swell, I’d expect more companies to try something like this. But that begs the question: how does a mega-corporation concerned with creating a meaningful local presence protect a plethora of regional brands while capitalizing on existing brand equity? I’m interested to see how Starbucks handles this problem… and if Starbucks coffee still tastes as good when it doesn’t say Starbucks (it’s doubtful).
Tags: Branding
Since I missed the opportunity to be the first to blog Mark Weaver’s art, I’ll be one of the first to blog about another friend, Aaron Trout. Aaron is currently a graduate student at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. His art blog hasn’t been updated in a while, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t busy. I stole this pic from a recently-updated Facebook gallery.
Tags: Illustration, portrait art, sketching
Mark Weaver is another former classmate of mine, and since his “Make Something Cool Every Day” project was picked up by BoingBoing.net via Morbid Anatomy back in January, he’s been blogged on about a million different blogs. But instead of just blogging about Mark’s work, 16-year-old designer Angelo Logan was lucky enough to score an interview with him. Way to go, Angelo! (When I was 16 I’d just discovered Photoshop.)
I’ve been following Mark’s career for a number of years now, and am pleased to see him succeed in this rough-and-tumble design world. Of course, I’m not jealous or anything. I just wish I’d blogged him first. 
Artist Evan Roth has cataloged a variety of graffiti tags both New York and Paris. The results are an amazing testament to the diversity of the artists and the adaptability of letterforms. He’s also selling prints, which I want!
Reblogged from Coudal Partners.
Tags: street art, Typography
Congratulations to Aaron Toole, a year 1 student from Blyth, Northumberland who’s just won a logo design contest sponsored by Barratt Homes, a housing company in the UK. The logo will represent a new housing development at Horton Park. This is a pretty big deal – it’s not every day a six-year-old designs a logo for a real company (though sometimes I wonder). Sorry, I couldn’t find any pics of the logo. Will update when they are posted.
Tags: contest, crowdsourcing, funny, logo design
An article in today’s online Wall Street Journal highlights the pros and cons of using a logo design service to brand your small business. The four design services they used came up with four acceptable but generic logo designs that could work on a letterhead or invoice. All were priced under $150.
$150 seems like quite a deal, especially when professional design services can take weeks or months and cost in the hundreds of thousands. So what makes logo design normally so expensive? Well to start out with, time. Market research can take weeks, before even the first round of logo designs. Then the first round normally consists of dozens of sketches. 8-10 of those initial concepts with be fleshed out in a rough form for delivery to the client. The client can be just one person, but more often it’s many people from different departments, maybe from different offices around the world. Each person will have their own ideas about what the logo should look like.
Subsequent rounds will involve tweaking initial concepts, creating new concepts, trying different color variations, trying variations of those variations, trying different arrangements of the logo’s elements, comping logo concepts on vehicles and buildings, building an identity system based on the logo, deciding how the logo will work on advertising and corporate communications, deciding how the logo will affect corporate culture, creating a roll-out strategy, putting together a brand guidelines for distribution to other designers, etc etc etc.
So as a small businessperson, don’t expect the work to be done after you’ve paid $150 for a piece of artwork with you business name on it. The work has only just begun, and your designer is not even there to help you use your new logo. If you’re in it for the long-term, consider using someone who knows what your business goals are, and who’s going to be available to help you down the road.
Tags: logo design, small business
How much packaging material is wasted every year? This slide show at Treehugger.com demonstrates what are surely some of the most excessive bits of package engineering ever.
Via BoingBoing.net.
Tags: environment, packaging design
So Carnegie Hall is offering one lucky designer/artist $150 in CASH MONEY, plus a whole bunch of swag for designing the best logo/artwork for their GAME ON! event. I know it’s lame, and it’s spec work, and I’m not supposed to care but this is something I think might be fun anyways. My apologies to my inner Howard Roark. I’ll see what I can come up with tomorrow.
Tags: contest, logo design, spec work
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