Archive for the ‘Logo Design’ Category
VW Camper Van Logo Designs
Back in June, we posted an article entitled ‘When should a Graphic Designer stop designing?‘ in which we explored when a graphic designer should just say ‘NO!’ and stop adding designs to everything in sight.
In the article we pondered whether to add vehicle graphics to our beloved VW Camper Van (something we are still undecided on). We have had a few comments from people with their thoughts on what we should do. One of the most interesting was from Amanda at Truly Ace Design who made us see that even in choosing the badges, colour scheme and tyres, we were still designing.
Anyway, as a follow up to this post I thought I would post some photos from a VW Event that is held on Paignton seafront every August in which people bring their vans from all over the country to show them off.
I thought it was interesting to see that a lot of the VW Campers have had logo designs added to the side.
Some of the designs were really good and this got us re-thinking about our our beloved VW and whether we should create a design to go on the van somewhere. However, after a lot of discussion (or arguments!) we have come to the conclusion that we should stop designing. The van has a simpleness about it (which is our style anyway) and we do not want to ruin that. It is hard as a graphic designer to know when to stop designing, but I think this is definitely the time.
What do you think about the designs? Too much? I am curious to know where these designs come from and who designs them? Have you ever been commissioned to create some artwork for a VW Camper Van?
Tags: Vehicle Graphics, VW Camper Vans
Posted in Graphic Design, Logo Design | 4 Comments »
How many Website Design companies??!
Now I am not normally one to pass judgement on other people and other companies, but today I received a flyer through my letterbox from a startup website design company based in my area. Whenever I see a new company in our industry the first thing I do is log on to their website and have a look at their design portfolio and list of clients.
Whilst their website was nothing hideous, it did feature the usual cliched stock images of women using laptops (I am not sure why they are always using laptops? Do women not use desktop computers?). Alarm bells rang when the rather small portfolio included a website which showcased the musical talents of someone by the same name as the director of the web design company. It was then that I thought ‘Oh no, another one’.
We seem to be overrun (in the South Devon area at least) by hundreds of people claiming to be web designers and graphic designers who offer their services at ridiculous prices and who offer such a wide range of services they could never be a specialist.
Similarly, I came across a website advertising the services of a Torquay based web design company which also sent alarm bells ringing when I read their list of services as follows:
- Website design
- Photography
- Logo design
- Setting up Internet Connections
- Setting up printers
- Networking
- Setting Up Ebay / Facebook / MySpace accounts
…and the list goes on. The most worrying thing about the above company is their price list. They are currently advertising logo design from between £45 and £60 (although this is free when you order a web design package!). You can also take advantage of their ’Free Home Page Trial’ in which you can have the home page of your website designed with no obligation to buy! Now, as I say, I am not normally one to comment on how other people run their companies, but this is surely pricing themselves out of the market (not to mention making it harder for the rest of us).
The worst thing about the companies I have mentioned is the quality of work produced. A quick check against the WC3 Validator reported over 103 errors on the home page alone (and 124 errors on the first example I mentioned). This combined with dead links, links which open in a new window for no reason, slow download speeds and table based layouts all show the quality of workmanship is simply not there.
The scary thing is that a quick Google search showed there are many more companies offering the same cheap services.
Reading other blogs it seems that this is something that all designers feel quite passionate about (especially in relation to logo design). I recently read a post by Tara on her Graphic Design Blog in which she tells of an incident in which a company had come to a designer friend of hers after having had their newly designed logo added to there company stationary and to a fleet of vehicles, only to discover that another company (from the same industry as them) already uses that very same logo. It seems that it is only after an incident like this that a client learns the benefit of seeking a skilled and professional designer, rather than trying to save a few pounds and getting it done cheap.
However, not all potential clients have had this experience and it can be frustrating having to explain why our prices are higher than the company down the road who will complete the whole project for a lot less money and throw a free logo design in for good measure!
Don’t get me wrong, there are many talented web designers and programmers in the South Devon area, some of which we have been lucky enough to work with but there seems to be a new web / design company cropping up every day!
We recently wrote a blog post about the funny things clients say and ask for and the general feedback from our readers was that it is our obligation to educate our clients to the reasoning and processes behind our industry. The problem is, businesses are based on money, and it’s very hard to explain to the client the difference between a £45 logo design and the price that would be charged by a professional graphic designer.
What are your thoughts on the subject? Do you feel there are lots of companies in your area letting the industry down? How do you explain to your clients the differences between the service you offer compared to a much cheaper company? Or are you a designer / company who offers cheap services and feels you have a valid reason for this?
More articles on this subject:
Why logo design does not cost $5.00 - By Jacob at Just Creative Design
What’s your logo worth? - By David Airey
6 Reasons Why a Logo Should Cost More than your Lunch - By Tara at Graphic Design Blog
Posted in Freelancing, Graphic Design, Logo Design, Web Design | 13 Comments »
Gender in Logo Design
There are two of us here at Eightyone Design Steve (male) and Me (Lucinda - female). We can never stay out of each others projects (even when told to!) and often collaborate on work, particularly logo design as this is something that we are both equally passionate about.
My interest in gender and logo design started about a year ago when we designed a logo for a economic consultant. She held a brain storming session with some friends and colleagues to get some feedback on the designs we submitted. This was a very helpful session and there was a general consensus between the group on a particular logo, type face and colours. As a simple exercise the group went through the logo’s and gave them a gender, (which is something I had never given much consideration to when creating a logo to appeal to both sexes). It turned out that all the logo’s that I had created they had marked as female and all the logo’s that Steve had created they marked as male. Which lead me to wonder if subconsciously we do design logo’s that appeal to our own gender?
We recently created a logo for Wakeham (an asbestos consultant) and once again we both worked on logo concepts for the client, but this time the logo had to appeal to a male market. As a quick exercise I showed the logo’s to a friend and asked them to rank them with manly ones at the top and less manly logos at the bottom. Surprise surprise my logo’s were at the bottom (and the chosen logo in the middle). So does that mean that I can only design female orientated logo’s?
One thought is our logo design process, we generally go away and sketch our ideas and then meet back up and discuss what we are going to develop and submit to the client. We are aware that we don’t want to submit designs that are similar (as often we come back with extremely similar sketches - its quite scary!) so it’s a possibility that my male oriented designs get sidelined and the more female ones get developed and submitted.
Obviously I’m not saying that men create male looking designs and women create female ones, it can’t be as black and white as that. I have since created an event logo for a rugby event in Newquay which was intended for a male market and Steve didn’t have a great deal of input on this one as he was working on other projects (not due to me giving him the boot!), however the client was thrilled with the design so I know that I can create logo designs for a male market.
I’m not too sure if I have a conclusion for this post really, it’s just that I find this subject particularly interesting and wondered if anyone has had any experiences of gender specific design or can recommend any further reading on the subject?
Tags: branding, Graphic Design, Logo Design
Posted in Graphic Design, Logo Design, branding | 2 Comments »
Design development for Wakeham Asbestos
Back in February we were approached by Wakeham, a new company in the asbestos industry who offers training and consultancy. The company required a full set of branding as well as brochure and website.
As with every design project, we start at the beginning - the logo. They felt that their industry was particularly male dominated and wanted a logo which was strong and bold yet quite simple. After an initial discussion we concluded that the logo could center around these themes:
- Utilise the “W” of the company name
- Focus on the “A” in the company name highlighting Asbestos
- Use the three strands of the business (training, management and surveying)
- Focus on some imagery or representation of asbestos
Other than requiring a strong, bold logo, Wakeham didn’t have any other specific requirements in mind. The logo was to be used online as well as brochures, stationary, invoices etc, therefore it had to work on all types of media.
Stage 1 - Sketching
We started by utilising the “W” of the company name combining it with shapes representative of the three strands of the business (training, management and surveying). A lot of time was spent sketching “W” type shapes. We wanted the logo to look contemporary as our research had shown that competitor logos were very dated, we therefore needed something different, something fresh and alive. However, we were also aware that the logo had to appeal to a B2B market as well as B2C so therefore had to look somewhat corporate.
Once again we combined the three strands of the business concept when focussing on the “A” in the company name. As Wakeham are a consultancy we liked the idea that they can handle all aspects of your project and so developed several umbrella type designs.
It’s easy to get carried away when you are designing and creating a logo and once we looked over the logo’s we decided to present the following concepts:
The client immediately liked one of the logos. They did have a few minor adjustments to the tracking of the text and the corporate blue colour so we experimented with both these aspects.
From the logo the stationary was then developed. This was quite a seamless leap and the logo transfered well to the letterheads, compliment slips and business cards.
We then started work on the brochure, Wakeham supplied all textual content as well as a rough layout. They wanted the brochure to be simple and easy to read and as there was a lot of textual content we decided to break the layout into sections. We ensured the contact information was repeated on the brochure so people could find it without too much trouble.
Wakeham had few minor text adjustments with the brochure, but overall they were happy with the design and the corporate branding that was emerging.
Using the style of the brochure we created a simple, clean website. Again the contact information is repeated on every page, allowing users to get in contact easily.
This was a great project as the client had some initial guidelines and ideas and knew a lot about their market and who they were trying to target. However, they also gave us enough free rein to explore other possibilities and ideas.
So what does everyone think? Did Wakeham Asbestos choose the right branding? We would love to hear your thoughts.
Tags: branding, brochure design, Graphic Design, identity, Logo Design, Web Design
Posted in Graphic Design, Logo Design, Portfolio, Web Design, branding | 11 Comments »
How easy is it for a graphic designer to brand themselves?
I don’t know about you, but it took us what seemed like decades to decide upon our name, logo and branding. We went through rigorous brain storming and research trying to iron out what we liked, what our market would like and what would stand out against the crowd.
Our main problem was that we wanted something that was a little crazy and ‘off the wall’ that would make us stand out from the crowd. We thought that having no client restraints would be great as we could do all the crazy design things we had always wanted to. However, we knew that this wouldn’t quite work with our potential clients due to our location as quirky branding may put off our target market (which consisted of mainly small to medium sized local businesses). Once we thought this through we had a much better idea of our market place (our potential clients and competitors) and how we could slot into that, so we started at the beginning (as it’s a very good place to start) with our name.
Step 1 - Our Name
We had several ideas for our name, but the first one that really stood out for us was (drum roll please…) Remote Media. We liked the idea that we were living in a remote part of England (sort of…) and also offered quite a range of services (video and dvd creation) so we felt media left it quite open to our expertise. Our style has always been really simple and we knew our logo had to reflect this. We created a simple type based logo with a simple colour scheme. To be honest, I don’t know where the grey and lime colour combination came from but I think it was something we had both probably thought of previously.
Step 2 - Our Website
The next stage was to build a site using our new name and develop our branding. We had several branding ideas and we felt the strongest of which was that we stood out against the crowd (well, we thought we did anyway!) so we adjusted photos to illustrate this. However, after hours of creating one green pebble in a group of grey ones, or one green phone box in a group of red ones, we felt that this was too cliched and overused so decided against it. We also liked the idea of using photo’s merged with vector art but felt it didn’t reflect what we wanted to say about ourselves. By now we were getting a few jobs and realised that very few of them were related to video or dvd, and the fact we were finding it so difficult to decide on branding made us nervous about our name. So we decided that before we went too far down this route we would stop and start right from the very beginning.
Original Remote Media Business Card Design - Side 1
Original Remote Media Business Card Design - Side 2
Step 3 - Our Name… again
So we began brainstorming again and the same names cropped up, however this time a new one came into play… eightyone design… and we both loved it! Why eightyone design? Well, that was the year we were both born. We were sure we were onto a winner with this one and after several sketches we came up with a logo and applied our beloved lime green and grey colouring. Using the lines we created for the logo we started to develop simple branding. Our business cards came from the logo, and our website came from our business cards. The whole process seemed to be a lot more seamless than the first time round (Well, with a slight detour to a more distressed style - see the initial ideas for the website below). Company stationary and letterheads flowed easily and before we knew it eightyone had a style we were pleased with. Don’t get me wrong there are times we look at other peoples sites and branding and think “why didn’t I think of that?”. We also sometimes cringe at our company name as once people know that eightyone represents 1981 and that was the year we were both born it usually sparks looks of concern for our age and experience. This then leads to people talking about what they were doing in 1981 - very cringy indeed, but a good talking point.
First draft of the eightyone design logo
initial ideas for the eightyone design website
Conclusion
So to my question ‘How easy is it for a graphic designer to brand themselves?’ the answer from our point of view is no, it is not very easy! I am sure that in a couple of years we will have to review our branding and style to ensure that it is forever evolving and fresh. However, I do feel so much more prepared for it. I am prepared for us to critique it from every angle and spend a ridiculous amount of time on ideas you know are wrong. I could quite confidently say to a client that we put 110% effort into making their branding right for them and their market place. However creating our own branding seemed so personal and there is the possibility that we thought about it too much and tried to go against what we felt was right.
Final eightyone design business card - Front
Final eightyone design business card - Back
What about you? We would love to know how other people went about branding themselves and what they think of ours?
Tags: branding, Logo Design
Posted in Graphic Design, Logo Design, branding | 12 Comments »