Logotastic

WPM Ltd are a Windsor based Building Surveying, Construction Design and Project Management Practice.Their project management team are fully trained to work from the clients brief, prepare feasibility studies and budget estimates, prepare consultants briefs on behalf of the client, and organise fee bids from both external multidiscipline and specialist consultants. Their clients include Local authorities, Housing Associations, Schools and Primary Care Trusts.The design team at Logotastic designed their logo, flyer, blog page and website for them and WPM were thoroughly delighted with their new corporate identity.

Epic Designs specialise in designing and making ethnic, authentic clothing with an African theme. At the moment their target audience is children. The clothing colours are inspired by the animals and plants of the African Savannha. They hoped their design would be something eye catching and colourful and possibly including a picture that was defining of the definition of epic, something like a sunset or image of the horizon. The design team at Logotastic wanted to create them a brand image that was attributed to values such as quality, expense, exclusivity and creativity. Epic Designs wanted their corporate identity to be something rather special and unique and so we worked hard to find a logo that did all these things for them and they were delighted with the end result.

DPM London are a property maintenance company who deal with large blue chip clients. They also deal with property management companies and will soon have a division which deals with abseiling and awkward access jobs on high rise block buildings. This will include the installation and testing of safety eyebolts and anchors. DPM were keen for their logo design to create an image that projected them as a reliable and good quality workforce that a client could depend on and trust. Their target audience are blue chip companies, management agents and property developers. Our design team at Logotastic needed to create them a corporate identity that was professional and friendly at the same time, from first impressions - the logo design needs to assure customers that they are dealing with a dependable and safe company. The design team at Logotastic worked through a number of images until DPM were a hundred percent satisfied with the outcome and this is what the finished product looked like -

The BBC wrote an article a couple of weeks ago that really caught our eye at Logotastic. It gave the opinions of two people who summed up why our choice of typeface can be so important when writing or publishing information. To some, it may seem ridiculous to put so much emphasis on something so minor as font size or shape but to others, it seems ridiculous not too.

The BBC article discussed how graphic designers were up in arms about the typeface that was used for the film Avatar, one blogger commented -

“I hated it on the posters and then threw up a little in my mouth when I realised I would have to read that ugly font throughout the film in the subtitles.’

But obviously graphic designers make it their business to be interested in typefaces, what about the common man’s opinion on font? Well I don’t think we can ignore the fact that organizations everywhere spend millions of pounds ensuring that typefaces in their logos and branding are always spot on. They must do this for a reason, they must strongly believe that typefaces carry a lot of value and that they really do make a difference. The BBC article outlined the opinion of Julie Strawson, director of Monotype Imaging, an international type-design company, she argues that the power of the font goes right back to the Greeks.”The Greeks created handwriting and that’s one of the most personal ways of communicating.”

Although we can argue that a typeface will never be able to fully replace the personal touch of a pen and ink, there are thousands of available fonts to choose from today that can help deliver a very personal message.

‘Selecting a font is like getting dressed’, Ms Strawson says. ‘Just as one chooses an outfit according to the occasion, one decides on a font according to the kind of message you are seeking to convey. Some people find serif best because, like handwriting, it helps the eye to link the letters,’ Ms Strawson says. ‘With sans each character is completely separate, there’s more white space which is why some find it more readable. The typeface matters because of its power to create a sense of recognition and trust’ she argues: “Everyone recognises the BBC just from three characters in Gill Sans. It’s an icon. If you wrote BBC in a flowery font people wouldn’t recognise it.”

The other person the article showcased was Jonathon Barnbrook who founded the website Virus Fonts and he had some different ideas about value that typefaces carry. He argued that ‘a good typeface creates an emotional response in relation to the message it is conveying. You’re trying to get that tone of voice right - you can shout or whisper and you want to sum up the spirit of the age, because they do date quickly. People have become more aware about the impact of fonts because of computers, but the power of typeface is still largely subliminal.’

Mr. Barnbrook is most famous for producing the rather controversial fonts named Exocet, Bastard, Prozac and Nixon and he also designed the cover of David Bowies 2002 album which he also spoke about in the BBC interview. ‘I talked a lot with Bowie – the discussions went back and forth. He’s the creator and you re trying to get the atmosphere of the music across in the design. I chose one of our own fonts-Priori-which is formal but playful, as the album was quite dark. Typography is so closely associated with language so you can express irony and get the whole complexity of emotion in there. It’s part of a typeface designer’s essential make-up to get hung up on tiny details and sometimes that can be downright annoying. The problem is you’re watching a film and you notice a sign. You realise that the letterforms are 20 years later than the era the film is supposed to be set in’

So I conclude that typefaces do carry a great deal of value, hence why we put so much money, effort and time into branding. These are just the opinions of two of the people I enjoyed but I’m positive that if we look further – we will find that lots of people have their opinion on why fonts really do matter and why they carry so much value.

Oil-Power Ltd is a business providing a start-up model for people wishing to establish a fluid power company. Oil-Power Ltd provide all the necessary software and documentation to run a successful Hydraulics business together with central purchasing.They have a B2B customer database which targets entrepreneurs who wish to establish a Fluid Power franchise and capitalise on Oil-Powers experience and industry contacts. Their new corporate image needed to be totally customer focussed with a friendly, simple and genuine feel. Although it was also very important for the image to project the idea that Oil-Power Limited are experts in their field. The design team worked through a number of logos before finding one that had exactly the right balance for them and Oil-Power Ltd were very pleased with the end results. At a later date, Oil Power Ltd came back to us and decided that they wanted to have a serious of educational comics designed. They wanted to use the comics as a follow up to the logo in order to get across a variety of messages. The character is called Dr Flo and the Logotastic team designed him in a number of poses that included - a business pose, a hands on pose and a genius pose. You can see a few examples Dr Flo below -

The design team at Logotastic recently created a logo for the Los Blancos football team. They are a Sunday league team that play in Jewish league and needed a club badge designed. We have recently received some pictures from the team, and thought we would share them with you all as the boys are proud to be wearing their new logo on their shirts.

Blue Marble Consulting Ltd is primarily a vehicle for Mr Paul Skinners independent strategic consulting work. Mr Skinners background is global marketing ( developing brands for L’Oreal) and sustainability , which often have collaberative ‘open source’ components, using online hubs and platforms. Blue Marble Consulting develops expertise in understanding the major macro-environmental trends of our time.  The image that we needed to come up with at Logotastic needed to ooze exclusivity and have an expensive and modern feel. Although the logo could be rather cutting edge it needed to hang on to that corporate vibe. Paul was keen for the concept to include the original blue marble photo and include a caption too. The main thing that Blue Marble Consultancys new corporate identity needed to portray was that of a high end consulting service that showed individuality and intelligence.

The design team here at Logotastic worked through a number of designs before finally landing on a design for a corporate identity that ticked all the boxes. Mr Skinner was thoroughly pleased with the outcome.

Johnson Banks has recently renovated the well known and loved Science museum’s brand identity in order for the museum to appeal to a wider audience. The studio was put to work on redesigning the museums identity towards the end of 2009 and the result has provoked some very positive arguments stating that the logo is far from dead

Lynda Relph – Knight argues in her column in ‘design week’ that the museums new logo counters any theory that the logo is dead. ‘The square device, with its grid typeface, dominates communications, while creating a framework for imagery and text, rather than the other way round.’

The new brand identity is hoping to draw in older audiences as well as younger ones, by changing the logo it’s possible to really achieve a new look and feel for the museum, providing a strong argument that the logo still holds a strong presence in creating a brands identity. The logo is going to appear prominently across promotions including banners, signs and publications. The brief Johnson received from the museum was as follows

“The museum briefed us to search for a more sophisticated visual identity, to avoid the usual science clichés of test tubes and mad, white-lab-coated professors, whilst supplying more cut-though,” he explains. “We were also keen to find a visual style that was much more than just a logo and could plant the museum back in the minds of audiences who might have forgotten them. After experimenting with several routes, the chosen idea stemmed from research we did on codes, puzzles, patterns and basic digital typefaces, and we found a way to shorten the word science so we could create a grid-like ‘stack’ of the letterforms. We also began to experiment with slightly abstracted letterforms as we noticed that ‘science’ and ‘museum’ were relatively generic words.”

Of course we at Logotastic will argue that the logo is not dead, far from it…..but does the new logo for the science museum prove that? What do you think?…..

I know that we have tended to go on a bit about how constructing your own logo without any experience or artistic flair can be a serious sin. However the following logos will really highlight how destructive it can be to a business if you brand your product or company with an unprofessional logo. It’s so important that we don’t underestimate how influential branding and identity can be. For instance if you saw this image outside a restaurant, would you be tempted to eat at it? Does this logo totally assure you that you are not going to get food poisoning from this establishment?

I think I’d be tempted to keep walking…..

Now when it comes to having a hair cut females particularly, but males too, want to feel that they are in trusted hands when they let someone loose with scissors on their beloved barnet. Therefore the next logo almost makes my sides split…what on earth were they thinking?! Why would you ever want to portray this sort of image for a hair salon. A graphic designer would never make this sort of fatal error, but it does cause amusement for passers by I suppose.

If these two disastrous images are not enough to convince you that a good logo is crucial when thinking about your company’s branding or identity then you will probably remain unconvinced. They are funny, i’ll give them that, but that’s about all the credit they are worthy of.