Eightyone Design Logo

Posts Tagged ‘Logo Design’

Design and Development of The VW Camper Van Blog Website and Logo Design

Monday, December 1st, 2008

As you are probably well aware over here at eightyone design we have a huge passion for VW campervans. We have written a couple of articles on them (When should a graphic designer stop designing? and VW campervan logo designs) and love to tinker with our own VW T25 Camper Van. We had been thinking of creating a blog solely dedicated to our hobby enabling us to write endless articles about various events we attend, camping, plans for our van as well as featuring other peoples vehicles. We finally launched www.vwcampervanblog.com last month and we are really pleased with the overall look as well as how it has been received by the VW Community. In this article we outline the design process we went through to design the blog and where we drew inspiration from. 

Overall Style

We decided upon a vintage / retro theme as the blog would feature all different vans from 1950’s and 1960’s splitties through 1970’s Bay Window Vans and also the more modern VW camper vans. 

Logo Design

We started at the beginning - with the logo design. Knowing we were after a retro feel we hit the usual inspiration hot spots such as Flickr. We found some great examples of vintage and retro drinks signs aswell as petrol / oil signs which we really liiked and seemed to suit the subject matter really well. (more…)

Designing the Winter 08/09 WBR World Beach Rugby Clothing Range

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

As we have previously mentioned (WBR World Beach Rugby Summer 08 T-shirt Design and Development) we have been involved for the last 2 years in designing clothing for a rugby brand called World Beach Rugby (or WBR). In the post above we discuss how we developed the Summer 08 clothing range. After completion of the Summer 2008 range we started work straight away on the Winter 2008/09 additions. We completed these back in May and the items are now available for purchase through the Lovell Rugby online store. In this post we show you the design and development process we went through to create the garments which were added to the WBR range.

Back in April 2008 we met with the guys at Lovell Rugby and discussed their direction for the Winter collection of WBR. They wanted to extend their range of rugby shirts and wanted these to be branded with an imaginary team and crest. We decided upon four team names. We also discussed the sort of colour scheme required which was to feature washed out and distressed charcoals, maroons and browns. They also wanted the patching and neck labels to be slightly different to the summer range to reflect a more vintage and traditional style. We then set to work creating the crests.

In our initial meetings, we had discussed the use of traditional heraldry crests with full decoration. Initially we sketched out four different crest designs ensuring that the overall shape of each of the designs were quite different, allowing them to be distinctive at a glance.   (more…)

Gender in Logo Design

Monday, July 28th, 2008

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? 

Mewstones logo designs

(more…)

Design development for Wakeham Asbestos

Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

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:

  1. Utilise the “W” of the company name
  2. Focus on the “A” in the company name highlighting Asbestos
  3. Use the three strands of the business (training, management and surveying)
  4. 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.   (more…)

How easy is it for a graphic designer to brand themselves?

Monday, June 2nd, 2008

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. (more…)

It’s all black and white

Monday, July 23rd, 2007

When designing a logo, do you design in black and white? Or do you jump straight in and use all of the many wonderful colours and shades the latest packages allow you to use?

When brainstorming an idea for a logo, consider the worst common denominator - where the logo will look its absolute worst. This is normally a photocopied / faxed / laser printed document. All of these have one thing in common, they will display your logo in black and white. So if you start your design process in single colour, you ensure your logo does not rely on colour to work.

I always tend to start any design with some rough sketches on paper, which of course means my ideas are entirely black and white. Then, when you move to your mac or pc, leave the design in black and white. This will give you one less thing to worry about so you can really focus on the design. You can make sure every little detail fits together without worrying about what colour each part is going to be. It is only when I am fairly happy with the design that I then move into colour. (more…)