5ive Minute Logo.
5ive Minute Logo
Fast food, fast cars, fast women, and now fast logo design!
Why shouldn’t logo design be instantly gratifying? It should be! Life’s too short to waste time on complex and costly logo design projects. I’ve solved this problem while making the whole process fast and easy!
How it Works
For $5 I’ll take 5ive minutes and become your short order design cook and whip you up a tasty visual morsel before you can say “Craptacular!”
My loose sketch.
This post is a brief behind the scenes look at a recent custom typography project I posted on my Glitschka Studios web site.
Loose Sketching
When I start working out my hand lettering I like to use a standard pencil. I hold it with two three fingers loosely and lightly gesture draw which allows me to flow the letterforms better. I then go in and roughly work out the basic composition. I don’t worry about letter weights at this stage.
Awesome Possum design.
I love modern nomenclature and how people create and use certain terms or phrases. I know I’ve been inspired by creative terminology I’ve heard. One favorite phrase of mine I use when excited about something is “Awesome Possum.”
Not really sure how or when I started using the phrase “Awesome Possum,” but I’ve been saying it for years. Another one I’ve been using since I first watched Seinfield back in the mid early 90′s is “Giddy Up!” (View it here) That was a phrase Kramer would say that always cracked me up and after a while I caught myself saying it and it’s just stuck with me ever since.
I decided to turn this favorite saying of mine into a t-shirt and stickers.
A local companies identity.
The majority of clients and agencies I work with are either out of state or out of country. That said I like helping small business owners locally improve their own branding and marketing efforts as well if and when the opportunity arises. When ever I see a new local business open up and it has a lousy logo I’ve wondered to myself at times “How do I get connected with them before they started building upon a bad graphic foundation?”
A local sign shop recently asked for my business card because they were familiar with my work and said they’d like to send people my way when ever they run into poorly designed work that comes their way. I’m all for increasing the quality of the local design culture so I gave them some of my business cards.
I was contacted by a local business called “Green Carpenter Antz” who asked if I could clean up their muscle bound construction worker, and change his face so he doesn’t look drunk. He wanted it to be more fun and happy. He also explained how some people thought he was an exterminator instead of a carpenter.
Holding back a laugh, my gut reaction was to just turn it down and say “Sorry but I really don’t re-furbish existing logos.” But right after this initial thought I had another one that made me think “Why don’t you try to help this guy out? You can create an identity for him that’ll work great.” in other words I should invest in my local design culture.
So I proceeded to explain to this small business owner the problem with his current identity by auditing it.
Logo Identity Audit
- This isn’t really a logo, it’s a bad layout using equally bad illustration.
- There is no clear hierarchy of information, it’s a cluttered mess.
- It reads “Carpenter Antz” and “Green” is lost.
- No one can tell you build using environmentally conscious “Green” methods.
- It looks amateurish which I’m assuming doesn’t reflect the quality of the work you do?
I explained to him how he needed a logo that would read quickly, a more graphic approach that would also reinforce the fact that he was an environmentally conscious carpenter. I also said part of the communication problem is that he was using “Antz” in his business name so I suggested changing it to “Green Carpenterz” instead. He seemed to be OK with that but insisted it had to have an ant in it still.
I informed him what I normally charge for an identity but said I would be willing to help him out and just charge for my time only. He was still hesitant even at this severely discounted rate. At which time I thought to myself again “Just wish him the best and tell him you’re not a good fit for what he’s looking for.” I again battled within thinking “I want to convince this guy that good design can improve his bottom line.” So I told him I’d be willing to design a logo and show it to him, if he liked it than it would be the price I stated and if he didn’t than he could walk away without any cost to him.
He agreed to this arrangement and I planned on working on this later that night.
The copyright infringer John Williams.
The Backstory
This past summer a plethora of creatives across our industry were infringed upon by John Williams. In a nutshell he ripped off hundreds of logo designs and began selling them through his site called LogoGarden.com. The full backstory and documentation can all be accessed via my original post here.
No Remorse
I thought after being publicly called out by the industries best, that John Williams would get a clue and change his ways. But instead he continued to show other peoples work on his website.
It’s been over four months now, plenty of time for John Williams to remove infringed content from LogoGarden.com. So lets take another look at his site, see what we can find, and see if our reasonable requests of all work being removed has been the case.
New MLB cartoon logo.
Designers by nature are visually oriented, we’re attracted to beautiful design and rightly so. But we also take notice when we see something that falls short as well.
There’s been many times a design has flooded my eye gate and caused me to think or say to myself “Ugh! I wish I could have worked on that.” or “The idea is fine but the execution is just horrible.”
Earlier this month both of those thoughts streamed my conscience when I saw the new MLB team logo for the Baltimore Orioles. I’m familiar with this cartoon bird approach because in the 1980′s I was a hardcore Orioles fan. My favorite player was Eddie Murray and my favorite hat was the cartoon bird logo used at that time.
That all changed one summer when the Orioles came to Seattle to play the Mariners. I showed up early at the press gate, baseball cards and a sharpie in hand to get Eddie Murray’s autograph. His cab pulled up and Eddie Murray began to walk towards the gate, I intercepted him holding out my baseball card and saying “Mr. Murray can I please get your autography.” Murray kept walking, didn’t even look at me and said gruffly “Get outta here kid!”
From that point I didn’t like Eddie Murray any more, and found a new favorite team in the Boston RedSox. But I digress, back to the original intent of this post.
As you can see in the image above created by the MLB, the new cartoon logo stinks. The execution of the design is crude. It contains an awkward white shape, inconsistent weight on the line work, confusing detail such as the bottom of the beak, incorrect perspective most noticeable in the eyes etc. The artwork looks like a minor league designer pulled it off instead of a skilled seasoned veteran.
Design Sensibilities
The most intriguing projects for me are those that challenge me to think differently, or cause me to approach something in a new way. Rarely are projects so smooth as to avoid any bumps in the creative road, some times that happens, but most often the creative process between client and designer can get a bit messy along the way. So knowing how to steer the proverbial ship through the waters of client expectations and personal preferences is paramount in pursuit of resolving a design problem.
In this post I’ll reveal some interesting aspects that transpired during the course of a recent project.
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