Obama Imposing Islam on America Adding Islamic Iconography into Government Logos
Missile Defense Agency’s Logo Too Islamic
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s logo Design is under the heat these days. According to right-wing conservative bloggers the new logo looks similar to the Islamic sign of Crescent and star. Some even matched it with the Iranian Space Agency’s logo.
Irani Space Agency Logo
Obama’s policies which are often criticized as being too socialist came under heated discussions and some commentators even matched this logo with the communist socialist symbol of hammer and sickle.
Soviet Socialist Communist Symbol of a Hammer and Sickle
Conservatives were already blaming Obama for being too Pro-Islamic. Some even blamed that the Obama policies especially the health care bill are actually the implementation of Islamic Sharia Laws.
During the whole Missile Defense Logo noise, Obama’s 2008 campaign logo also came under strict scrutiny and conservatives blamed that the Missile Defense Agency’s logo looks like Obama’s 2008 Election campaign.
Obama’s 2008 Campaign Logo
We are least interested in Defense budget or Healthcare politics. What interests us is that how these people think that this logo is similar to Iranian Space Agency Logo? Sorry but we are unable to see the similarity. As logo design artists, we believe that both the logos are silly and poorly designed. What you think? Do you think that Missile Defense Agency’s logo is too Islamic for American values?
LogoInn.Net Redesigned
We are in the process of upgrading and updating LogoInn. The plan is to apply a theme that suits our expansion plans. And our expansion plans end at the total world domination.
Logo Design Trends in 2009
The global economy in general and the US economy in particular started to recover from the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Web and graphic design industries were also affected. But the new start ups and a growing trend of home based small businesses emerging throughout North America and Europe helped many medium sized design firms to continue flourishing in these difficult times.
Last year was a challenge to design artists as well. They had to deal with a new emerging clientele which had smaller budget and big expectations. Even then, these wonderful artists created amazing designs throughout the year. In this post we will be discussing some of the trends that were the most popular among logo design artists in 2009.
Funky Jaw Breakers
Remember the Jaw Breakers? Those colorful bouncy things that we loved in our childhood. Well though they are not back in popular culture but they are back in Logo Design trends. The colorful dots and spots covering a sphere was the idea that remained popular among the logo design artists throughout last year. A wonderful example of such colorful spheres is shared below. This logo design attempts to follow two common trends. The first trend is the obvious Jaw Breaker look of a bright colored sphere. However, since this bright color sphere is actually planet earth so the artist used bright green and blue colors for the ball. The black color is used to enhance the intensity of the colors inside and white is used for the type.
Crossed Circles
Circles are one of the basic shapes and 2009 saw new uses of circles in logo design. Circles were used to represent the globe, the environment, life, recycling and so much more. The creativity of the artists was the only limit. The differences this year were the color and how these light and dark colored circles crossed each other. Some artists used them as background and used the typeface to stand out in front of the circles. Others used the type to revolve move or appear beneath these shapes. You can easily understand the trend if you can recall the famous James Bond 007 Logo. In the movies you can actually see the circles of Black and White shades crossing each other. But even in the print you get the idea of Circles of black and white representing the Good and the Evil crossing at the text 007.
Shadows
Shadows have a mysterious feeling, mysteries provoke curiosity and curiosity provokes interest. Keeping that in the mind many design artists used sketches of bodies filled with shadows in their logo designs. There were different variations to these shadows, some designers attempted to fill the bodies with text, some tried to fill shadows with colored backgrounds. This trend witnessed many variations of creative new ideas in it. For example, below you see the shadowy image of a handyman but instead of using dark colors the artist here used bright colors and even used gloss over the shadow. This brings out the handyman and the text below the handyman becomes more prominent.
Fluffy Blobs
These Amoeba liked shapes were popular not only among the logo design artists but also in Hollywood movies. Some artists used them to create characters and some just used them for colorful display. What attracted the designers most was the playfulness of these blobs. Most often these shapes were used with bright colors and they gave away high spirited child like feeling. Some artists used a variation of this design trend by using gelatin like free shapes with sparkling textures.
Mosaic
Colored squares placed to cross each other creating a spectrum was also a popular trend. Some artists used a lot of hue in their mosaics some used soothing shades with more brightness. In this example LogoInn’s design team created a logo for A. Roc Records. You can see the usage of Mosaic and also notice the shades of pink, blue and the purple. The color changes through the spectrum and the font stands out ahead of the mosaic.
The Logo Deigns presented above were designed by artists at Logoinn – a logo design company.© All rights of these images are reserved to their respective owners.
Logo Design Review: Xerox Logo Revamped For The Future
Xerox, the world’s leading document management enterprise has considered revamping its logo to meet the branding challenges (such as new media & intense competition) in the future. In diversified and dynamic markets, it has become critical to synchronize your brand with your innovations, upcoming products and marketing strategies that you have to introduce to your customers.
First, take a look at the previous logo. You will find it simple, classic red coloured typeface logo which mentions the name of the organization.
When it comes to classic Analogue photocopiers, Xerox has a historical reference as one of the pioneers of Analogue Copiers. Analogue copier works manually and scans one page at a time and makes a copy as per your requirements. In this domain, Xerox has a very strong brand recall in people’s mind. This is very much reflected in their previous logo.
On the other hand, now the photocopiers have digital technology which allows networking possibilities, scanning of multiple documents at a time and the ability to print them in different ways. There is more speed, convenience and flexibility which have redefined the concept of xerox machines.
If you look at the new logo, it defines innovation, flexibility and the dynamic outlook of Xerox as document management Leader in the world.
The new logo has animated feel with spherical icon and casual font. Inspired by the theme of previous logo, the red colour is still dominating the new logo.
This logo carries the modern logo designing perspective as it is quite friendly towards modern media like web 2.0, mobile platforms and interactive screen advertisements as well as traditional print and TV media.
With multimillion-dollar marketing investment and 2 years of hard work; Interbrand has crafted this logo for Xerox. Just to share an interesting fact that a detailed survey was conducted to acquire feedback from 5000 people to create this new logo design.
To explore more about this new logo, let’s take a deeper look:
Concept & Shape: The new Xerox logo has a lower case treatment of the brand name – “xerox” along with a 3 Dimensional sphere with lines sketched over it to illustrate “X” shape. The ball depicts the “moving-forward” and “youthfulness” concept. You will see that there are also prominent lines drawn on the “X” which are “connectors” reflecting the strong bond among customers, partners, industry and innovations. The overall concept looks more expressive, interactive and more convincing.
Colours: The red colour in the logo has become the essential element to build up the strong marketing image of the organization. Research indicates that people strongly associate Xerox with red colour. That is why it has not been changed in the new logo. Being an intense colour, red also has emotional association which also reflects the vitality and strength of the organization. Another reason for this refers to already developed business connections and market share of Xerox in Asia-Pacific region where red colour is regarded for prosperity, good luck and good will. Silver lines represent the concept of a developed and stable corporation. On the ball, the contrast of white colour with red is quite appealing and is able to grab the attention of audience on modern media including blogs, social networks as well as high definition televisions and screens.
Fonts: Bold and stylish font appears in lowercase which looks modern and futuristic. This reflects the brand transformation with the involvement of diversified products and technology to give the entire document management domain a new dimension. The font style looks very friendly in vibrant red and compatible to any sort of media from mobile platforms, internet and even when it appears on motorcycles (Xerox sponsors the Ducati Xerox World Superbike Team).
The officials at Xerox are very excited about this brand new logo and believe it will do an amazing job in terms of complimenting their future marketing and branding strategies. Within two years, this new logo will appear on packaging, marketing material, office stationary and other relevant signs. It is expected that with a very communicating and expressive logo, the brand will be able to promote the “Modern Xerox”.
Book Review: “Marks of Excellence” by Per Mollerup
Today, I have picked Per Mollerup’s “Marks of Excellence” for review.
If you are a creative designer or a brand marketer, this book definitely deserves to be on your coffee table. With a deep insight into trademarks and its meanings, it has covered each and every aspect that deals with trademark’s history, its evolution and its relevance in today’s world.
From the very beginning, the reader has a lot to explore about the origin of trademark with reference to heraldry, owner’s marks, monogram and certificates. These are specific terminologies you need to know to deeply explore this subject as well as if you have to brief someone about logos and brands history. You will also find that the use of symbols and marks in logo designing is also justified with great examples keeping in view different situations/scenarios.
When you move on to the subsequent chapters, you will come across the study of Communication Design and Corporate Identity, focusing on the applications of sign theory and its overall impact. This will obviously help you develop a better understanding of branding and designing.
The best part of the book is its alphabetically indexed trademark themes – an elegantly illustrated selection of world’s best and famous trademarks. You will also discover an impressive resource in the book, which is a catalog of trademarks with name marks, picture marks, logo design and abbreviations.
In the last section, there is a timeline of trademarks that how trademarks have evolved with time, languages and cultures across the world.
About the book and overall layout – The presentation is impressive, visually appealing and provides great information to engage readers from start to end.
Mollerup provides good background information and explains the psychology and methods involved in successful logos. Even though he has done a great job, yet I feel that with certain logo choices he has lacked in reasoning. He could have provided more explanation regarding logo development and ideation involved in the process.
Last but not least… I am going to briefly introduce the author of this book. Per Mollerup is the founder of a leading Scandinavian consultancy “Mollerup Designlab” which has expertise in visual communication, information design and corporate identity. With his diverse experience and skills on designing, he used to be a famous speaker in conferences worldwide. Mollerup has written quite a few books on designing.
Per Mollerup’s Marks of Excellence has 240 pages and it was published by Phaidon Press.
I recommend this book as it is ideal for graphic designers, students and even marketers.
You can buy this book from Amazon.com as well as any good bookstore near your place.
Logo Design Review: Wikipedia
Everybody is quite familiar with Wikipedia, the world’s largest online resource for content about everything. On January 15, 2001 when it was officially launched, the founder Jimmy Wales used the American flag “Old Glory” as its logo; but it turned out to be a bad idea and attracted widespread criticism.
People called it “Ethno centric” biased approach. Being the fastest growing and largest source of multilingual content with over 14 million articles, this logo seemed to be irrelevant to the Wikipedia concept.
The icon of such a great global resource should suggest global representation. It should portray an exclusive image and objective.
Wikipedia people realized this and they asked Wikipedians and logo designers to put forward their concepts and recommendations to create a new logo for Wikipedia. Thus, an international competition was held and the new logo was selected with little amendments. Paul Satafincer of Wiki Networks won with his globe like concept. He received appreciation as the new logo represented global reach and extensive information accessible by everyone.
The logo of Wikipedia, as we see today, has a 3D globe like sphere with puzzle concept and it perfectly represents the largest multilingual encyclopedia online.
Shape: Logo holds a 3D globe sphere with puzzle concept. It communicates that Wikipedia is a global source of information for people worldwide and there is content available on almost everything humans are familiar with. You will notice a few missing puzzles, which means that Wikipedia also carries the information which is distinctive and evolving with the time. With the characters of different languages embossed on puzzles communicate that Wikipedia is a multilingual source of information. These embossed characters and 3D globe sphere reflect authenticity and strength of information.
Colour: The light shade of grey, with soft tone, indicates elegant and professional approach as well as simplicity. The sober colour and tint mirror integrity and sophistication.
Font: Serif font style with sharp edges is classic, noticeable and straight forward. You will notice that the tag line is in italic and communicating the message “The Free Encyclopedia”.
Today, Wikipedia logo is one of the most popular logo designs on the World Wide Web and becomes a symbol to promote knowledge sharing, contributing intelligently for the free access of information for our generations.
Origins of Twitter Logo
We are sorry to announce that the bird we all love and recognize is not Twitter’s official logo. Yet, still we see the bird everywhere representing twitter. Just to clarify things, this is twitter’s official logo:
So where did the bird come from?
The story of Twitter bird begins when someone at Twitter spotted an illustration of a bird by a Japan based British illustrator Simon Oxley on iStockphoto. Twitter paid $7 for the usage rights of the illustration and started using it as a decorative element on their website. Oxley was not aware that his illustration is being used on a website that is soon going to become one of the world’s most favorite online destinations.
What about the cute blue bird?
Well the cute little bird is called Ollie. He is the official mascot of the Twitterrific Twitter application for Mac OS and iPhone. Designed by IconFactory, Ollie is probably the most famous of all birds used to represent twitter on the web. Many artists created many variants based on Ollie and the cute blue bird has become so popular that some people don’t even realize that it is not twitter’s official logo. However, I personally think that a bird represents twitter better than their current logo.
Twitter itself uses blue, light blue, sky blue variations of the bird on their website. It is part of their branding strategy but it is definitely not their official business logo. Here are some birds Twitter uses on various parts of their website as style elements.
