Google are well known for their simple yet innovative products, all aimed at getting us to click on those ubiquitous monetized ads. Google’s best known product is undoubtedly their search engine. Used by an estimated 300 million people every day, the web page may look relatively simple, but uses some powerful search technology to deliver accurate results every time.
To keep the search page interesting, Google have built up something of a cult following by changing their “doodle”, or logo, almost every day. Halloween sees the G.O.O.G.L.E. bedecked with cobwebs and spiders, at Christmas time it’s flashing with fairy lights and glistening with snow. Sometimes, the doodle is just for fun. Thursday 7th September was one of those “miscellaneous” days, and yet on that day, the infamous logo sparked a Twitter frenzy and even made the news.
The logo appeared fragmented into balls of color that moved away from the user’s mouse pointer, only to settle again when you typed in the search bar. Web developers the world over scratched their heads in puzzlement – how did they do that? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuNNcdD6G9A)
Speculators have proposed that the atomized Google logo made use of a new technology called CSS3 (Cascading Style Sheet). Here, each ball of colour was in fact the element of a web page, coded to look circular instead of rectangular, and to move away from the cursor at any point other than the search bar. Clever, eh?

All things in life change. Technology evolves. The same can be said about human mentality. Therefore it is really not surprising that art, and of course design, is undergoing constant changes.
The nowadays worldwide, famous organisation YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Organization) is a prime example of this rule, having gone through many logos over the course of its existence.
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Back when it was announced that Rio de Janeiro would host the 2016 Olympic games, their candidate logo was quite frankly a bit strange. In fact, I don't quite understand what was it meant to represent. My best guess is that it's probably a weird hybrid between a heart and some kind of flower. Of course, it might also have been some kind of insect. Or two headless people hugging a reversed pine tree. Seriously, people should not be taking lessons from the London Olympics logo already discussed on this very blog. Non harmonious shapes, strange coloring and awkward positioning, Rio's candidate logo was not quite as bad as London's pile of scrap, but close up there.

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In part 1 of this blog post series, we looked at the process of developing a brief for a graphic logo design project. Asking the right questions in order to build up a scope for the project is a crucial first step for the graphic designer, who needs to obtain enough information about the company, its values and the image it wishes to portray, to be able to develop a striking and instantly recognizable logo. There inevitably comes a point in this process however, where the designer needs to start actually designing, so what happens next? While each graphic designer has their own modus operandi, the design process generally starts with a good old fashioned sketch. Forget your Photoshops and your Illustrators for the time being, a graphic designer’s real best friend at this stage is a 2B pencil and a piece of paper.

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It’s always a risky move for any corporation to change its logo, and when internationally known clothing retailer Gap tried it recently, they soon learned that the customer is always right!

With industry experts suggesting that Gap was feeling out of touch with its client base in these times of economic crisis, a Gap spokesperson said that “after 20 years, it was time for change”. It was out with capital letters and a serif typeface, and in with Helvetica logotype and a blue gradient box design element – to the outcry of graphic designers and members of the public all over the world. 

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Today's market is unfriendly for designers. So unfriendly indeed that many of them cannot even find normal work... "Professional designer" is a species on the brink of extinction. But what cataclysm, what catastrophe is responsible for this? The answer to this riddle is simple: the ever-increasing popularity of spec companies.

The owners of those companies grant their clients an immense variety of logos, at the lowest prices anywhere! The secret to their success? Merciless exploitation. Really, one might as well call them slavemasters, as they summon hundreds of designers and pseudo-designers too in order to conjure up a myriad of logos for a company... yet most of those designers shall not receive a penny for their work. This is shameless devaluation of creativity. Sadly, clients, anxious to receive a vast panoply of logos for almost free, bite straight for the lure, forcing logo designers to play the same game and accept offers for spec work out of desperation... Alas! In their avidity, clients cannot realize they are ensnaring themselves in a trap, as very soon, there will be no true professional designers remaining at all. With logo design companies dying out from lack of clients, could it be that the profession "logo designer" may soon be labeled "EXTINCT"?

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The role of the graphic designer in creating a great logo for a particular company is a very important job – that logo will be used on the company’s advertising and marketing materials, on their website, on emails, on letterheads and stationery. It speaks volumes about the company’s ethos, its style, its purpose. A logo is a focus point for the eye, and a point of reference for the brain.

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To answer this question, it’s firstly important to establish that there is a difference. Web design is the art (and science!) of building a website. On the surface, a web designer is someone who makes a pretty website by arranging blocks of text, images, and other elements into an attractive and eye-catching design that will inspire a site visitor to take a closer look at the product, service or information being offered. Delve deeper however, and you’ll see that web design is highly technical and includes the use of some complicated-sounding programming languages. Speak PHP, Ajax, BASH, AWK, TCL or Python, anyone? Graphic design on the other hand was traditionally a print-based profession, and the design process still generally begins with pen-and paper sketches. Nowadays, the internet and computer software such as Adobe Illustrator now go hand in hand with the job. Graphic designers create logos and corporate identities, and design packaging, advertising, letter heads, brochures and more. They work with typography – not only the traditional black and white, or Pantone 2 to 3 color logos, but increasingly these days, full color logos incorporating gradients, transparency, 3D shadows and more edgy effects. A graphic designer may provide the artistic and aesthetic talent towards creating the look and feel of a website, and mock up where on the page the different design elements should go, but the web designer is the responsible for converting this mock up by splitting the graphics into images, polishing the design with software such as Adobe Photoshop, and then using web coding to translate the design onto the screen. Since the global recession, design companies have been increasingly looking for multi-skilled jacks-of-all-trades who can perform the role of both graphic and web designer, thus cutting costs and getting two skills for the price of one.

You've been in business for more than a couple of years. You've enjoyed moderate success through positive word of mouth and by delivering top-level quality of service, but your industry is becoming more and more competitive and the need for a more professional look is becoming imperative. Sound familiar? The truth is that in today's market even the best companies need to sell its image and brand in order to succeed. This is achieved primarily via the company logo as it is associated with all of the company media: letterhead, envelopes, websites, business cards, brochures and advertising campaigns.

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On the left, the current Spartans' logo. On the right, the proposed new one.
 

Changing a logo is not a simple task, and it’s rarely even useful.

There are monetary concerns, for one thing. Changing a logo means that you have to replace the old logo by the new one on all products related to your company. This is a small concern for internet firms whose logo only appears online, but for a team like the Michigan State University’s Spartans, it means replacing all the uniforms, souvenirs etc.

However, even more importantly, when you alter your logo, it’s the whole image of your company that you change.

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Pixmac stock photos is the “Pink Picture Market”. One of the fastest growing royalty free stock photography and image agencies in the world began their microstock industry revolution in September 2008.

In less than 2 years, Pixmac has assembled a vast image collection of more than 10 million pictures, representing Fotolia, Dreamstime, Celebrity Images, and the Pixmac collection all from one site. The largest collection of legally licensed stock photos anywhere!

Pixmac invented the "One Stop Shopping" experience for image buyers. This is the ability to find and purchase the perfect image instantly in a matter of seconds without the need to register first.



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These days, global warming and ecology overall are quite the hot topics and there is no need to say that concern for the environment is a great plus for any company. So how can you show the world your desire to protect the planet?  Getting an appropriate logo is one of the ways.
It is far from true that a logo related to nature is not modern. A professional designer can make a “green” logo cool and edgy. The diversity of nature related logos is stunning as well. Below are a few neat examples of plant themed logos:
Trees are obviously a great theme, after all, what says “green” like a tree? As you will see, there is a great many ways to design a tree themed logo. This particular creator went for a realistic approach: the beautiful tree on this logo looks almost as if it was a photo.

So, designers came up with a bad logo. And when I say bad, trust me, I mean it. I have seen 5 years old kids draw things more beautiful than this “work of art”.

And the Olympic Committee somehow approved of that logo design.

And now, people don’t like it. For some mysterious reason.

And all the officials have to say is, “This is surprising”. Way to go, geniuses. I personally find nothing “surprising” in that reaction. This logo is bad. Did I mention that already? Yes I did. But allow me to mention it again, for when something is so mind-bogglingly horrible, saying it is bad just once is certainly not enough.

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Here at LogoBee, we continue to offer our skills and talent by providing the public with royalty free material. We proudly present a new custom set of brushes, which can be used assembled as a complete ornament or taken apart, and used separately in your design project. This file is provided completely in vector in Adobe Illustrator CS3 version. Please click here to download an Illustrator CS3 file complete with a brushes set.

LogoBee`s second logo design tutorial is released 
Immediately following the release of their first logo design tutorial, LogoBee wastes no time before releasing a new one! This new tutorial describes the creation of the shiny sphere. This is an interesting project, encompassing the use of some new techniques such as the gradient mesh tool and transparency. The techniques described apply to Illustrator CS3 and CS4. Once again, we hope that many users will enjoy the tutorial and find it very useful and interesting. Click here to go to the tutorial