Research: Logos

The brief

How many logos can you name? Macdonalds? Nike? Apple? All huge multinational
corporations with millions to spend on building brand recognition. Have a look at logos and
see how they work – pay attention to the colour schemes and simple designs. You will
probably also find that, although you couldn’t recall them immediately when you see them
you immediately recognise them – banks, shops and products. Can you immediately recall
the OCA logo?

Introduction

This blog entry records my response to the brief. My attempt at recalling logos; I talk about the research I performed and the conclusions that I made;  I discuss this research and what I have learned. I recorded a number of  designs and references in my electronic notebook (see here Logos) and show some of them directly here.

Research

After having tried to recall a number of logos (see results below) I decided that I would start looking into award winning logo designs to see if I could find any common factors. I recorded a number of logos (see here Logos) some examples are below. In addition, I revisited some of my previous research and collections (Research: Graphic Designers    Research: Examples of Design)  where I had looked at logos and designers who had created famous logos.

I show here some examples of famous logos

(Click to enlarge)

Looking at these I identified the following:

• Designs are simple
• Sometimes there is an element (e.g. arrow in FedEx.LG) that is there to be discovered
• Mainly single colours
• Mixture of symbols and text (often involving the name of the company)

After this I looked into advice about creation of logos and found the following:

1. Logos can be classified
2. The characteristics of a good icon
3. Use of colour in icons.
4. Process for creating icons

Logo classification (see here):

I was pleased to find that logos follow a classification scheme e.g.

I think I will find this helpful when designing a logo.

Characterisation of a good icon (see here):

The following are regarded as characteristics of good icons.

• is unique and distinctive
• is memorable
• works at any size and anywhere
• reflects the brand identity
• is timeless

This is a good check list, although I suspect the devil is in the detail – how do you quantify reflects the brand identity? Interesting is the practicalelment of being able to be used across media and at differnet sizes.

Use of colour (here) (also see my previous research Colours and Meanings ):

• Red: Red stands for excitement, passion and anger. It’s a great choice if your brand is loud, youthful and wants to stand out.
• Orange: Orange is much less used than red but it’s just as energetic. This is a vibrant, invigorating and playful color.
• Yellow: If you want to look accessible and friendly, yellow is the right choice. It gives off a cheerful, affordable and youthful energy.
• Green: Green is extremely versatile and can work for any brand really. It’s especially perfect for anyone who wants to establish a connection to nature.
• Blue: Blue is a very classic and common choice. It is calming and cool and symbolizes trustworthiness and maturity.
• Purple: Purple can be your ticket to looking luxurious. Depending on the shade, purple can be mysterious, eclectic or feminine.
• Pink: If you’re going for girly, nothing works better than pink. But that’s not all! With shades like pastel rose, millennial pink or neon magenta, pink can give your logo a grown up and cool, but still youthful and feminine look.
• Brown: Brown may sound like a strange colour choice at first, but it works perfectly for rugged and masculine vintage logos. It can give your brand a handmade, unique and aged look.
• Black: If you are looking for a sleek, modern and luxurious look, black will be a great choice. A minimalist black and white logo is the way to go if you want to keep it simple.
• White: You want your logo to look clean, modern and minimalistic? Use lots of white in your logo. As a neutral colour it works in combination with all other colors, but adds a clean, youthful and economical touch.
• Gray: Gray is the ultimate colour if you want to achieve a mature, classic and serious look. Darker shades look more mysterious, while lighter shades are more accessible

 

Process of creating good icons

There are a number of resources telling how to create icons. The following is  a summary, bringing the major points together:

• Define your brand identity – the why  of a company, what are the beliefs and values
• Find inspiration for your design – brainstorm, mood boards, think like the audience
• Check out the competition – what are others doing and how does your design set it apart?
• Choose your design style –classic, retro/vintage, modern/minimalistic, fun and quirky, handmade
• Find the right type of logo – what classification (see above)
• Pay attention to colour – See above
• Pick the right typography – align with design style
• Evaluate your logo options – get feedback on options
• (What not to do when designing a logo) – cliched, too complex, too trendy
• Integrate your logo design into your brand – business cards, web, packaging…

Again a useful check list.

 

Results

I simply sat down and tried for five minutes to recall logos. The following is the list (no order) I created:

McDonalds, Nike, Shell, BP, FT, Toyota, Mercedes, Penguin, Obersaxen, Riehen, Fiat, Apple, Flickr, Microsoft, Lenovo, Intel, Google, IBM, KFC, HP, Syngenta, Novartis, Roche, OCA

I lot of them were technical companies or local organisations. I could recall the OCA logo but I had to think!

 

Discussion

Recalling Logo’s

I found it difficult to recall logo but was aided by considering industries and important players within the industry. As anticipated seeing a logo it was much easier to say the company it represents. The OCA log is memorable but not, I found, the details.

Characteristics of good icon designs

Is was fun to look at the famous logos to see what are characteristics that they share and then to see what is regarded in the design industry as good. I had an overlap but missed out on the brand identity which is probably the most difficult point to get right. it is probably also a point where the designer puts in levels of interpretation that may or may not be recognised by the viewer either liminally or subliminally.

What did I learn

First and foremost the idea of simplicity and secondly reflecting the brand of the organisation it represents.

Exercise: Poster and Flyer

The Brief

This exercise is about how you deal with two different spaces to work in.
You have been asked to design an A3 poster and an accompanying double sided A6 flyer
to promote a singing course run by an organisation called SingOut (all one word). They
have very little money so want to print these posters on their black and white
photocopier. You can use a colour paper if you want.
You may want to include an image such as a drawing or photograph, but be very careful
with photos as they tend not to reproduce well on a photocopier particularly if they are
colour photos. You will need to check by printing off your design and/or photocopying it.
The information they want to give is:

• Do you love to sing?
• Join us for an exciting opportunity during the day with a professional vocal coach.
Learn to sing different types of music, vocal techniques, meet new people and have
fun!
• 10.30 to 12.00 every Tuesday from 11 March
• The Community Centre, Charlotte Church Road
• £60 for the course
• No experience needed/no requirement to read music
• For more information call 011779 8765432 http://www.singout.com

The first thing you need to do is work out if you have all the information you need to
fulfil the brief. If not what is missing? Work out the hierarchy of the information. How
will you divide your information up to fit on both sides of your flyer? How will you link
the design for the poster with that of the flyer? How can you make the poster
eye-catching and effective with such a limited palette? Which typeface or faces will you
use and why have you made that decision?
When you have finished pin your poster up and critique your work. What do you think?
Keep notes and sketches in your learning log.

Introduction

This entry describes my response to the brief above. I describe my approach and my results. I also discuss the questions posed and what I have learned through the exercise. The research I undertook previously feed into the exercise.

I have updated my response based on my tutors feedback.

Method

I decided to first create a number of options for posters and then having decided the best option poster then tackle the flyers. My approach to this exercise was strongly influence by my research into posters. I decided to first consider the audience that were likely to be targeted by the poster, develop a number of potential concepts and then consider what style to create the poster with. But first I used mind mapping techniques to perform analysis on the brief and see what information might be missing.

Analysis

The following is the mind map I created:

(Click to enlarge)

In answering the question about missing information I came up with the following that i would ask:

• How many lessons are included in the price?
• Who is the intended audience? For the timing (Tuesday morning) it is likely that only people who do not have full time employment would consider the course. These are (unfortunately) likely to be women and retirees
• Knowing the types of music being offered would help with design.
• Where are the posters intended to be displayed? Again this would help with the design.
• Does SingOut have any design guidelines? Should the poster be coherent with the web site? I assumed a font for the SingOut logo.

Poster

My poster designs were influenced by the following considerations.

Audience

As I said above I would need confirmation but I interpreted that the intended audience was likely to be female and older.

Concept

I tried sketching a number of potential concepts to base the design on. See below

(Click to enlarge)

The basics concepts were:

• Use of mouth and music staff to signify singing
• Use of silhouette of a singer and staff
• Image of a singer

For each of these I gathered some images (tagged for reuse) that I thought I could use.

Style

I felt that because of the audience that i should choose a conservative style, with primarily simple fonts. Colours were dictated by the brief and here I assumed that paper with primary colours would be available.

Hierarchy

For the different concepts the imagery is more or less the focal point of the design. I aligned this with my font usage. In terms of information I used font size and position to provide an hierarchy, emphasising the purpose of the posters and the call for action.

Design

I used Adobe InDesign and Photoshop to create a first set of designs based on the concepts I had developed (see Results). My first design (Design 1) where I had white present, I only retrospectively realised that with the constraints of the brief there was no easy way to produce this! Shame since I felt this could be the basis of an interesting design. For this design I then removed the colour paper to make a black and white design (Design 3).

Looking at the designs and discussing with my family I preferred Design 4 and possible Design 2. I subsequently made some improvements to both of these and tried in different primary colours (to make attractive) (See Results).

I finally decided on Design 4. This had more energy to it and I felt would attract the audience I had targeted. Different coloured paper could be used to provide variants.

There were common elements across designs, for example my font choices since I felt that they worked well (I tried other combinations but have not recorded). I printed out one of the posters on A4 to see if the printout worked. I used my older printed to simulate a poor photocopier (see below).

Flyers

Having decided on the poster design (Design 2) I then created designs for the flyer. my first decision was on layout – portrait or landscape. Because of the imagery I thought that landscape would work better. I felt that one side of the flyer should contain the image and the information on the other side. Using the same fonts (for consistency with the poster, linking the designs) and colours I created a design for the flyer. I decided that I needed a simple decorative element (oval echoing the image) in order to make the flyer more interesting. (See Results)

Results

The following are the results I created (see Method above)-

Poster first Designs

Design 4

Design 3

Design 2

Design 1

(Click to expand)

Poster final designs

Design 2

Design 2

Design 3

Design 3

Design 3

(Click to expand)

Flyers

Flyer designs based on Design 3.

 

 

(Click to expand)

Printout

(Click to enlarge)

Discussion

I found this a very interesting exercise, although in this day and age the use of old black and white photocopier seems somewhat unrealistic. But it provide a good constraint.

I am generally happy with my final design (Design 2) being somewhat dynamic in layout. Perhaps the linkage to the flyer is a bit simple but it seemed a natural approach.

My printout looked a little washed out (gamut issues) but I think using colour paper would correct this.

What did I learn

My primary learning was the importance of imagery and fonts when there is a restricted colour palette.

Research: Posters

The brief

Posters have a long and rich history documenting everything from boxing matches to
Bollywood films, the Soviet Revolution to punk, encouraging young men to join the army to
persuading women to buy bras. There are many collections in books in museums and
galleries and on the internet. Find out more about your own particular areas of interest.
Make notes in your learning log.

Introduction

This blog entry describes the research that I undertook in response to the brief. I will describe my investigations into:

• Poster classifications / categories
• Review of posters I have collected
• “Event” posters
• Posters that could be regarded as good
• Characteristics to be considered in creating posters

I also summarise what I have learned from this research.

Discussion

Poster classifications / categories

I started this research by first looking to see whether there was any broad agreement on the classifications / categories of posters.

I did some internet research (Naillon, 2019; Chilliprinting Online Printing Knowledge Blog., 2017; En.wikipedia.org, n.d. ) and found there were general classifications that were recognised. The following is an amalgamated hierarchy that I found (brief explanations where necessary):

Advertising

Informative / Educational (inform or educate people about something)

Subject (often promoting a subject e.g. singer)

Music Group promotion

Affirmation & Motivation (feature inspiring or motivational sayings)

Pin-Up

Propaganda / Political (portray the values or philosophy of a company or political candidate)

Movie

Events (promoting specific events)

Travel (advertise or encourage viewers to travel to different destinations)

They are not totally orthogonal, there are overlaps but this list I think is good enough to use to classify most posters.

Review of posters I have collected

Over the period of this module I have collected a number of examples of posters . I show a number below. I thought looking at the collection might help see what form of posters I was subconsciously attracted to since I had not my any concrete decisions.

 

Imagery

Imagery & Colour

Fonts

Colours

Colours

Imagery

Imagery

Imagery

Simple layout

imagery, fonts & colour

2016 Winners of the 20th International Fair Poster Competition

2018 International Design Awards Winner

(Click to expand)

There appear to be a mixture of categories but event posters appear to be in a majority.

This, admittedly very unscientific, review reflects what I feel. I believe that Event posters is an area that attracts me most.  Analysing why I like this class of poster I came up with:

• I like the idea of publishing an event verse a product
• Events can be very varied
• The event itself can strongly influence the design

 

Posters that could be regarded as good

I though it might be useful to collect a number of posters that are regarded as good. (Xerox, n.d.; Cody, 2016, Budrick, 2018, D&AD 2020) This is obviously subjective but I thought that if they had won an award this might be significant. The following are a set (with background and my classification) that I collected.  Because of my interest in Event posters I have focused (not exclusively) on these.

Advert: Charles S. Anderson Design Co., Minneapolis; http://www.csadesign.com: Charles S. Anderson (creative director/ art director), Jovaney Hollingsworth (designer), Erik Johnson (writer); French Paper Co. (client)

 

(Click to enlarge)

Event posters

Looking explicitly for event posters I tried to whether any general themes emerged. I could see no general trends: typography is used as well as illustrations/photographs; positioning of text tends to be towards the top but this is often not the case; colours including text are extremely varied. Visual hierarchy tends to focus on the title. The designs use varied concepts and styles.

 

 

Characteristics to be considered in creating posters

I finally looked to see whether there were any general guidelines / advice about aspects creating posters. I found a number of resources (Fussell, 2017;Raz, 2019) that were relevant and summarise my findings as:

Adapt to your audience

Consider who the poster is for and what you are trying to achieve, base the design on this.

Start with a concept

What is the concept for the poster? It is especially important if a poster series is to be created.

Find a style that works

Along side the concept what style will the poster have

Choose a focal point and create visual hierarchy

Since the viewer is likely to have little time, the poster needs to attract and guide the viewer to what is important.

Consider using a grid

When creating the layout, especially more complex ones consider using grid to provide organisation.

Consider the poster size

Where and in what size will the poster be displayed? Consider the implications on scale e.g. font size for legibility.

Use eye catching colours

Contrast catchs the eye and use of colour is one of the easiest ways to achieve this.

Balance use of illustrations/photography against typography 

What is the focal point? If it an illustration or photography then the typography should be subservient or vice-versa.

Simply designs are often better than busy ones

Occams razor applies,  particularly if the poster is only going to be looked at briefly.

As a bottom line and as anticipated there is no easy way to create good posters but there are a number of things to consider in order to avoid to prevent designing a bad poster!

What did I learn

From this research my main takeaways are:

• It help focus my interests to Event posters
• There are a number of guidelines that inform poster design

 

References

Budrick, C. (2018). 60 Poster Design Ideas from the Regional Design Awards. [online] Print Magazine. Available at: https://www.printmag.com/posters/rda-60-poster-design-ideas/ [Accessed 23 Jan. 2020].

Chilliprinting Online Printing Knowledge Blog. (2017). These Are The 8 Most Popular Types Of Posters – Chilliprinting. [online] Available at: https://www.chilliprinting.com/Online-Printing-Blog/types-of-posters/ [Accessed 23 Jan. 2020].

Cody, S. (2016). Top 15 Poster Designs in History. [online] Creative Market. Available at: https://creativemarket.com/blog/top-15-poster-designs-in-history/ [Accessed 23 Jan. 2020].

D&AD. (2020). D&AD Awards 2020. [online] Available at: https://www.dandad.org/en/d-ad-awards/ [Accessed 23 Jan. 2020].

En.wikipedia.org. (n.d.). Poster. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poster [Accessed 23 Jan. 2020].

Fussell, G. (2017). 12 Pro Tips for Creating Buzzworthy Event Posters. [online] The Shutterstock Blog. Available at: https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/12-tips-buzzworthy-event-posters [Accessed 23 Jan. 2020].

Naillon, B. (2019). Types of Posters. [online] Bizfluent.com. Available at: https://bizfluent.com/facts-6152556-types-posters.html [Accessed 23 Jan. 2020].

Raz, D. (2019). Graphic Design: Posters. History, Types and Design Tips. [online] Icons8.com. Available at: https://icons8.com/articles/graphic-design-poster-design-tips/ [Accessed 23 Jan. 2020].

Xerox. (n.d.). 50 Posters that Rocked our World. [online] Available at: https://www.xerox.com/en-gb/digital-printing/insights/custom-poster-prints [Accessed 23 Jan. 2020].