Build One Solutions Inc.

What Exactly Makes a Great Logo ?

Ian — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:00:00 +0000

It's a simple question, but one that can provoke a myriad of different answers.

One of the most obvious factors when you're dealing with art, is that it is subjective. YES ! Graphic design is a fine art, and as with any art, beautty can often be in the eye of the beholder. Some people will absolutely love a grey and blue logo, while others still may shiver at the idea of having a blue and grey logo represent their company. The real fun begins when you get both of these people in charge of marketing for the same company ! : )

All the personal preferences aside, there are some factors that are universally accepted as fundamental to good logo design. They are;

1. Simplicity

Simplicity has got to be near the most important factor in good logo design. Close your eyes and visualize the NIKE logo, Good. Now close your eyes again, and this time visualize the McDonalds logo. Good. Both of these logo's are both so clean and straight forward that perhaps even a child could sketch them for you from memory.

Now close your eyes and visualize the Starbucks Coffee logo. Come on. Now draw it for me from memory. Come on, I'll give you ten minutes ! Can't do it ? Hey ! You had a starbucks card in your wallet ?!?!?! Cheater !

Now this is an important distinction; It would be incorrect to say that Starbucks has a bad logo, as this is simply not the case, but what makes the Starbucks company memorable clearly has far more to do with thier 'brand' in general, their corporate culture, and their level of service than it does with their logo itself. From a purely visual perspective it is far more complicated than the other two examples referenced above. If you want to be noticed quickly, and remembered quickly, you are best to keep it succinct. Much like a conversation that drags on and on and is easily forgetable, a good logo speaks up, makes it's point clearly, and leaves you wanting to know more.

Generally speaking the cleaner and simpler the logo, while still distiguishable, unique, and apropriate the better.

2. Relivance

Relivance is key when discussing logos. While art can make any type of a statement it wishes for art's sake, logo design serves the express purpose of acting to represent a business or organization and how effectively it does this is imperative.

If you close your eyes and visualize the 'Disney' logo with it's soft and playfull illustrative style you might get a kind of euphoric feeling of what it felt like the first time you saw the Jungle Book. This reaction is not accidental, it is intended and the stylized Disney logo is as relivant and apropriate today as it was 50 years ago.

The fun and franetic lettering that works perfectly for Disney would likely look sorely out of place if used to brand an insurance brokerage that specialized in death and disability. In this instance the tone should fall somewhere between professional and secure but misses the mark completely when landing at overwhelming exuberance.

3. Functionality

Logos do not exist on their own, rather they are part of a larger whole. A logo is a component of a companies entire visual 'idenity' system. The visual idenity is again a part of a larger whole, a companies 'Brand'. A brand, simply put reffers to the companies image is percieved by the world at large. A brand, really, is a businesses reputation, and the set of values and beliefs that people associate with that business. In the context of a logo assisting in furthering a "brand", a logo becomes much more than simply a shape, a word, and a color.

The Nike logo is widely referenced and regarded as being very clever. The 'swoosh' or 'check' symbol that rides across the bottom of the word mark says a whole lot without having to try. Imediately when you view the NIKE logo you are struck with impression of speed, agility, changing directions, shooting across, and so forth. All of this is of course happening on a sub-concious level. The utitility of the visual mark is to say what cannot be said using letters, and to say it quickly ! Case in point you are in your car, and somebody cuts you off in traffic. You can pull up beside them and explain at length how much it has upset you that they have chosen to disregard your right of way, or alternatively there is a certain combination of fingers on either of your hands you may wish to display which will quickly, and effectively illustrate the same point. In fact doing it with your hands may ellicite a far stronger emotional response because of all the negative associations this bad driver may have had in their lifes with this particular hand-sign. This short demonstration simply shows the power of a FUNCTIONAL and apropriate image. Imagery garners and imediate emotional response in a speed and a fashion, which words are simply not qualified to produce. This is the power of a great logo.

4. Unique-ness

A great logo must be unique in some way.

To create a unique logo 75 years ago would have been far easier than it is today, simply due to the vast many more companies dotting the planet earth and our prolifically branded, media saturated North American culture. Having said that, this is why it's of even MORE importance to stand apart from the competition today.

Copycat logos are a dime a dozen. How many logo's where created in the 90's with some sort of swooshing element ? At one point it was near impossible to find a dot-com startup that did not have between 1 and 6 swooshes criss crossing throughout some part of their logo. At the end of the day, Google's logo, while in my opinion not an exceptionaly attractive logo, really does differentiate Google from a pile of other online properties simply via it's unique-ness. For this reason alone I deem it a fairly great logo.

Massive Tech Show

Ian — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:41:00 +0000

We had a real blast Exhibiting at the 'Massive' Tech Show here in Vancouver last Tuesday.http://www.massivetechshow.com/

There where lots of great companies exhibiting and we really enjoyed meeting all the exhibitors and attendees who came past our booth.

We are in an exciting era where allot of tools are being placed into the small business owners hands, such as Content Management, Customer Relationship Management, and Online Marketing Management. It was exciting and interesting to see all the various incarnations of these technologies and the impact they are having for the small and medium business owners.

One interesting Discussion which we where able to attend was "Online Marketing 101". The panel was a who's who of the local and international Search Engine Optimization and Marketing Sector. While most of what was covered was fairly straight forward entry level material (hence the name of the discussion), some interesting areas where also highlighted. When I posed the question; "What about viral marketing for the small business." I was met with a host of different reactions from; "It's too expensive and unpredictable" to, "You can't measure it", and so forth. While there where these opinions expressed the Google and Yahoo.ca representives both touched on a great point which was that, referall marketing IS viral marketing, and for the small business owner perhaps some of the best viral marketing available. They suggested writing white papers, or articles that are informative and insightful to your customers and clients. In the age of Youtube, and Facebook, it was expressed that these too can be powerfull marketing vehicles for the small business owner. Food for thought.

Special thanks to Lindsay and the Massive team for helping secure us a booth at the last minute and making our tradeshow an excellent experience. Until next year !

-Ian.

Adobe Dreamweaver CS3

Ian — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 13:12:00 +0000

Check out this great 30 minute interview with Kenneth Berger, product manager of Adobe's Dreamweaver and learn all about the latest in this powerful web authoring tool. They cover allot of ground on topics like; the use of 'SPRY' effects, content management, AJAX, and database integration enhancements made available in the latest version of Adobe CS3.

This really is a good run down on the core Adobe CS3 functionality in general. Enjoy

Vector Magic

Ian — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 22:47:00 +0000

It's a common problem. You have a bitmap image but you really need a vector image for resizing, animating in flash, using the curves for masking, or printing in a high resolution format. Often there is simply no solution like redrawing the artwork by hand in a program like Illustrator, and depending on the complexity of the image this may be the only solution.

Adobe originally released a program called Streamline which was a simple utility built expressly for the purpose of converting bitmap images into vector artwork. Now Adobe has built this functionality directly into Illustrator, available as "Live Trace".

Still there are certain images that live trace doesn't handle as well as it potentially could. I would love to see how this technology will look in five years.

Recently a friend of mine sent me a link to an online application called Vector Magic. Vector Magic is a bitmap to vector conversion utility that is entirely web based, and wow does it ever do an amazing job ! I was actually very suprised to find the ease of use, and level of sophistication available in this free web-based software. Try it yourself. Grab a simple bitmap logo and walk through the steps you will be suprised at the quality of the resulting vector image.

http://vectormagic.stanford.edu/ Click this link to go to the vector magic site.

Welcome !

Ian — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 10:57:00 +0000

Welcome to the new Build One Solutions web site. We have put in many hours the past month creating this site and while it is not 100% complete, we are quite happy with the direction it has taken us in. Please feel free to look around and email us any questions at: info@build1.ca

In the next several weeks our blog will begin to take shape along with the rest of the site. We have many site updates planned and lots of content to add, so please check back often.

Thank you sincerely for your interest in Build One !

Ian House
Creative Director
Build One Solutions Inc.