In the graphic design business, logos are known as "business identities". They are pretty important, companies spend a fortune on them and there are a whole bunch of different methodologies used to get a 'good' identity. That being said, it really is more of an art and it would be difficult to get a group of designers to agree on the best approach to logo discovery.
This video of Paula Scher may be illuminating http://www.hillmancurtis.com/hc_web/film_video/source/scher.php If your designer doesn't give you a pad-talk like Paula, you're getting short changed. <joke /> For the logos that I've helped create, I focused on the way it was intended to be used. In business communication, you want the logo to be recognizable despite being presented in different ways. For example, on a fax, the logo should be recognizable, so it should be created using a lot of positive and negative space with few gradients because gradients look like crap on faxes. This requirement will limit the number of colours the designer can use and in my experience, the fewer colours the better. If you will never be faxed, this will be less important. You generally want the logo to be able to drop to 16x16 or 32x32 pixels and still be recognizable if it is to be used on software. Once again too much detail and you will run into problems. A fist with two pylons and lines will shrink to a grey blob. There is a designer trick where you can use a subset of your logo for the favicon, but the portion needs to be pretty strong. For example, if your logo is a green tree with one red leaf then you can put the one red leaf in the favicon and visitors will 'get it' that your brand is the one red leaf. You don't have to show the tree. You need a clever designer to do this; the $150 per logo guys will not give you this kind of work. The problem your designer will run into is the fact the electrical pylons are not the most exciting thing in the world and you'll want something exciting. They're not conventionally beautiful; sonnets are not written about pylons. Pylons are quite mundane, they look different in different countries, they buzz if you get too close to them and visually they are painfully reticulated. All this and it's got to look good enough to go on a shirt and have someone cough up money for it. This blog has some good before after images of logos from major companies. http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/ I'd stay away from swooshes - done to death. K On Jun 1, 3:15 pm, Ben Bangert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Jun 1, 2007, at 11:11 AM, Mike Orr wrote: > > > > Regarding the logo, I'm more concerned about the theme than the > > details. What guidelines are we going to give the designer? Just > > "make a logo"? Or "make a logo containing an electrical tower"? It's > > really up to us to choose our mascot, not leave it to the logo > > designer, otherwise he may go off totallyon a tangent. Though it's > > worth asking him if he has some different ideas. I like the current > > yin-yang snakes in the Python logo but I didn't like some of the > > previous logos and refused to wear T-shirts that had them. Quixote > > has some windmill logos but what's so "Quixote" about them? > > > Cheers, > Ben --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "pylons-discuss" group. To post to this group, send email to pylons-discuss@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
