We were thrilled to find out a few days ago that several of our designers will have their work featured in Logo Lounge 6—the latest in a series of well-respected design publications by Bill Gardner set to be published in February 2011. Nine of the logos in the upcoming book were created by the designers at Logoworks. Here’s a preview of what you’ll see in the book next year:

As you can see, the selected artwork covers a wide range of styles and creativity in logo design. We’re grateful to Logo Lounge for selecting our work for inclusion in the book again this year (we have several logos in last year’s book too). Congratulations to Jerron, Josh, Justin, Paul, Curt, and Jose who created the “winning” marks.

As always, our design team would love to put together a few ideas for your next project. Check us out at Logoworks to get started.

A few years ago, we were approached by a client to design a logo for a property holding company called Black Rooster. They didn’t have a lot of expectations, so our designers had a lot of freedom in concepting and designing the project. In my opinion, the work we presented to this client was exceptional. The client saw a total of six initial concepts (and four revised versions of his favorite concept after that). Here are two of the initial concepts.

The first concept is an illustration using simple shapes and just three colors to create a rooster enclosure. The more complex icon is contrasted with a simple clean type treatment:

And the second is one of my favorite logos we’ve ever created. It’s not perfect (for example, it would be hard to engrave or embroider with this level of detail), but it’s a great piece of artwork. I love almost everything about it.

Do you have a new business or product that could benefit from a stunning logo design? If so, we’d love to work on it for you. Check out Logoworks to get started.

We’ve posted a few videos showing our designers at work—or rather, at play (here, here, and here). We give them a camera and an hour or so and let them do whatever they want. Recently we asked Justin to take some time and just play around a bit. He chose to illustrate a somewhat prominent rap star using a reference photo, then he suggests a new product category for hip hop artists to expand their marketing clout. Nothing serious, just fun to watch. Check it out:

To put our designers to work on your next logo design (or other design project), contact Logoworks.

As you would expect from any logo design agency like Logoworks, we have a lot of creative people here in the office. And they like to be surrounded with things that stimulate creativity
and fun.

Yesterday I walked around the office and snapped a few photos of the interesting things we keep on our desks to help keep us creative and inspired. In fact, I took more than a few photos—we’ve got a lot of interesting keepsakes (enough for three or four posts). Here are a few of the things that I found…

Jeff’s collection of Wall-E, Floyd, and Star Wars icons:

We’re big fans of The Office around here (as if this post didn’t already make that clear). Dan keeps Dwight nearby for sales inspiration:

Speaking of inspiration, there are lots of posters and quotes like this:

Clayton keeps a few pets at his desk (this is way better than a fish bowl screen saver):

And as a reminder of what not to do, Rick, who sends out our small business newsletter (subscribe to that here, if you’re interested), keeps a stack of Spam next to his monitor. These also come in handy when we don’t have time to step out for lunch.

Finally, there are lots of plants and flowers to add some life to our workspace:

We’ll post a few more pictures another time (we’ve left out all the very popular nerf guns, the yellow submarine, the mini-buhdas, flags, sculptures, bunny ears, cars, crowns, and on and on). Just trying to give you a sense of the interesting people and their toys that make Logoworks such a great place to work.

We worry a lot about hue, saturation and value as designers, but there’s one aspect of color theory that designers often overlook: the TEMPERATURE of the color. This is important because, not only does it establish the mood of the logo, it greatly adds to the visual hierarchy, which is critical in good logo design.

Warm colors from the active side of the spectrum tend to come forward visually. They tend to agitate and convey emotions, sometimes unpleasantly (see the dental logos below). In nature, we see these colors when things are changing, i.e. a sunset, autumn leaves, and volcanoes.

Passive, cool colors like greens and blues recede. They instantly have a calming effect. They’re comforting and nurturing. Too much of it will relax the audience TOO much (see the BigShots logo below), so it’s best to liven it up with a dash of a warm or at least neutral color. In nature, we associate these passive colors with life and water.

You can balance the effect of these colors with neutral colors like grey, brown, ivory and beige. Their flexibility helps to tone down colors that might otherwise be overpowering. Let’s take a look at some examples to see how this works.

Here, the surfer is seen FIRST. The emphasis is on him. This is because the hot yellow will always stand out against a cool blue background.

In this version, the emphasis is paced on the setting, and not the surfer. We focus on what the surfer is looking at-in this case, a beautiful warm sunset.

This next logo is a good example of mixing the warm and cool to bring out certain areas. The dark purple provides a calming base, and the TECH portion stands out so the viewer can instantly see this is a technology-based company.

You need to decide what overall emotion you want to convey. Sometimes it will be excitement and fun, like this logo. Which one conveys those emotions more effectively?

We try to find emotional words in the creative briefs from our clients, and base our colors on those. As you can see from these examples, it’s pretty important.

As I mentioned a week or so ago (here), we get far more requests for icons in logos than logotypes. When an icon reflects the simple idea that a brand represents, they make great logos. But if the icon is a symbol that’s not obviously connected to the product or company name, well, it’s less important. In those cases, a logo made up of a unique type treatment may be more effective.

Here are two logotypes from the Logoworks archive that I happen to like very much. The first was created for a client who asked for a high-tech logo in black and a vibrant red. They also asked for something clean and simple. This was one idea we presented:

The next logo was created for a company that specializes in community governance models. They asked for something “minimalist” and simple. Our designers presented this as one of the options:

I like both for their simplicity. But perhaps the most important strength of a typographic logo is that the only image the customer sees/reads is the company name. Something to think about when you create your next logo.

This isn’t a video demo, but rather a few screen captures from a project that crossed our desks this past week. Here’s Paul describing his thinking as a sketch becomes a more finished icon using Abobe’s Illustrator software:

I start with a rough sketch of a gopher, giving him little beady eyes to make him a bit more unique and demented. Some designers prefer to make the cleanest ink drawing possible, and then use AI’s Live Trace tool to vectorize it. I prefer to modify it and simplify after I’ve scanned and traced it.

I use a black stroke and the pen tool to trace the sketch. It already looks cleaner, but it’s still a little boring.

I realize he doesn’t quite look rodent-like enough, so I add some buck teeth.

The paths are turned to fills, then I use Path>Simplify at about 95% accuracy to remove excess anchor points.

The corners are blunt, so I use the direct-select arrow to move points around to make the corners sharp and lively. Then I can manipulate the lines to be thick and thin, to give it contrast and visual interest. I don’t make them too thin or too thick. I just maintain a guideline in my head as I pull points around so there’s some consistency.

Once I’m happy with the outline, I use Path>Compound Path>Release so I can start clicking on areas to color.

Hmm…those beady little eyes could be better. I’ve saved those until this point so I could experiment, since they give it the most personality.

Since I got the sense that this client was going more toward “cute” than “crazy” I made some big Disney eyes, making them slightly off-kilter to retain some crazy.

I use the Knife Tool to slice of some portions of areas, and make them a slightly darker grey-brown. I make the lighter parts an 85% tint of the darker colors when I’m trying to conserve PMS colors.

There you have it. The pink ear insides may have been indulgent, especially if the client is trying to save money on ink, but they can be turned into light brown quickly if needed.

To put Paul or any of our other designers to work on your next design project (logos, websites, brochures and more), visit Logoworks and get started! To see more demonstrations, click on the links under “Demonstrations” on the top right side of this page.

A few days ago, we wrote about three things you should never include in your logo. You can read that entry here. Of course, there are more than three things to avoid when you are working on your logo. Here are two more:

#1 Avoid using too many colors in your logo. When it comes to helping your customers remember your company and visual identity, simplicity is the key. The best brands choose a single color (in some cases two) to represent their business. Coke uses red—and only red. It’s not likely you’ll ever see a blue Coca-cola logo (but Pepsi uses blue). Prudential Financial uses blue. Starbucks uses green. And all of these brands have a version of their logo in black and white that is just as recognizable as the color version.

Over time, colors help customers easily recognize brands. We read color and shape before we read the information in those shapes, so your brain recognizes a Coke can before you can even read the name printed on it. Your logo deserves no less.

In addition, if you ever need to embroider your logo onto a uniform, promotional give-away, or materials in a retail store or office, having a logo with just one or two colors will help make it possible. Gradients and multiple colors make it far more difficult and in some cases impossible to create these products. The same is true if you need to print your logo in a small area, a simple one color logo will make the job much easier.

#2 Avoid using too many fonts in your logo. How many is too many? In most cases, two fonts would be too many. Once again, it’s all about creating a simple mark and avoiding anything that can make reading it more confusing or complex. Unless you have a very compelling reason to do otherwise, one font should be enough for your logo. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, make your mark as simple as possible. Choose fonts that are easily readable and represent what your company stands for.

Of course there are exceptions to every rule. There are logos that effectively use more than one color—the discontinued rainbow Apple logo is an example. (Although Apple had a single color version to use when necessary, which has since become their “official” logo.) And there are logos that effectively use more than one font, but usually one font is the mark, and the second font is a simple descriptor to help give context to the mark.

Bottom line: keep it simple.

Read about more things to avoid when creating your logo, here.

Watching a designer work can be a lot of fun—as we demonstrated here and here (go ahead and click the links, it’s worth it and we can wait).  So why not do it again?  This time we did a mash-up using some reference photos of Heath Ledger’s Joker in jail from the most recent Batman movie and Benjamin Linus from LOST. The result is, well, interesting…

Let us know what you think. And if you need a logo or help with a brochure, website or other design project, why not check out Logoworks?