Logo

Healthy Logo Creation Process

March 4, 2011 by Raul Colon

A lovely price waited for us at the project completion.

This is a guest post written by my friend Rick Lipsett on how he created the logo’s of CIMA IT Solutions and Raul Colon’s Blog. This post was originally published on @ricklipsett’s blog.

In the past, we’ve brought you our creative process on logo creations, but since that post was done a long time after the project was over, it lacked information on how we go about creating Brand Identities for our clients. We knew we needed another shot at it and were thrilled, when it came knocking at our door.

Back in december, right after he established a connection with me through Twitter, Raúl Colon (@rj_c) approached me to create his corporate identity and personal blog identity as well. If you’ve read this blog before, you know how much we LOVE creating Brand Identities. Designing a logo is like creating a magic trick. We get to define visually someone and at the same time outperform whatever we’ve done in the past.

Since Raúl needed two logos, we didn’t want one to outshine the other. And since we try to out do ourselves on every project, we decided to create both identities at the same time. Some call us overachievers, that’s the best compliment we’ve ever had.

[Read more…]

Social Media for Digital Artists

January 24, 2011 by Raul Colon

Guest Post by : @ricklipsett

Some time ago, my friend Joseph Garrahan told me that we should create a blog for our Digital Artists Collective: UNDOdigital. At the time I was somewhat unaware of the potential that Social Media had. I had a personal page in Facebook, and one in Myspace for UNDOdigital (which I almost never updated) but that was about it. I did not realize that Social Media could have such a positive impact (if managed well) on our Artists Collective.

Today, I can honestly say that social media works. After we created the blog, and posted a few articles, I was afraid that no one was reading. Our message was getting nowhere. The few that knew us were the only ones reading. I wanted to make sure more people knew what we were up to, so after much inner-battles, I opened up a Twitter account.

The rest came soon afterwards. As I write this, our Twitter @UNDODigital has 263 followers, our Facebook Page (Facebook.com/UNDOdigital) page shows 202 likes, plus the RSS followers of the blog (35), casual visitors, etc… I know that some of our Twitter followers also follow us on Facebook, but not all. Actually the majority of our Facebook fans are NOT on Twitter. This is without counting our YouTube followers or the people who have listened to our podcasts on Audiofarm(Audiofarm.org/UNDOdigital).

All this can be really overwhelming, I’m the first one to say it. It’s a full time job to keep up with all social media channels. I mean, not only do we add content to the blog, but we follow up through social media, email, word-of-mouth, etc…

By now, the usual person asks me: Is it worth it? What’s in it for you? Well, UNDOdigital is on its way to becoming Puerto Rico’s only/leading front for Digital Art. The more people we reach through our efforts, the closer that goal gets. Let’s say we wanted to invite people to one of our Art Shows. Normally, or rather, traditionally we would invest in some flyers and/or invitations. A catalog would also be on the works as well as many other print media to let people know of the event. We now, don’t have to kill a forest to let people know of us. Through our social sites, at the very least, 500 people (and counting) will know of it. Social media works by word-of-mouth, so you can be sure, many will re-tweet, re-send, forward, etc, etc…

Also if, say a few of our followers need to know something art-related, is more than likely that they will reach any of our 4 writers and start a conversation on the blog, or via any of the other social websites we participate in. This helps in posturing UNDOdigital as a knowledgeable community in our area of expertise: Art.

At first, we envisioned these efforts only to promote our shows. In the long run, we’ve seen how we can do more good, by promoting artists from our group and out of it, cultural/art related events, we share trends, give out wallpapers, talk about art topics, start discussions, interview artists, and so on. I guess you could say that we got in sync with what Social Media really is by accident, but we got there. We now, share like crazy.

Results. That is what you must be thinking now. Well internet is a very analytical medium. We, at UNDOdigital, know how many people have visited us, from where, which browser they use, which connection speed they use, how many links they clicked, which posts are they’re favorites, how many time our tweets have been clicked, and more. We have and know it all. This gives us complete control over what we achieve with these sites. Of course all of this is long term. After all, Social sites are like dating. And dating is a process.

About the Author

Rick Lipsett – http://www.ricklipsett.com is an Illustrator/Graphic Designer/Digital Artist. Co-Founder of UNDOdigital; Puertorican Digital Artists Community. Fan of blogs, social networks and Del Eses(http://myspace.com/deleses). You may find him on Twitter as: @ricklipsett.

Importance of a Good Logo

January 17, 2011 by Raul Colon

Guest post by Dwight Santana (@slayerkun)

Many people think that a logo might not be that crucial for their, brand, individual, company, institution, or product. Are these people right?

Historically people have been using logos to brand their work. So is no coincidence they use logos to associate whatever they were “promoting”.

Right now we use logos with the same purpose we did before. The logo always has a direct relation with the concept of the brand and it’s promise. We use logos so we can communicate a message, so we can achieve an interpretation from the spectator.

Jörg Zintzmeyer affirms in his book “Logo Design” that:

“…the logo is a promise. The logo is not a brand in it self, it’s a form of expression of the brand or a condense image of the brand… The brand must offer what the logo promises…”

These are strong words but is exactly what you want to have in mind when you’re designing a logo. Because you should start working on a logo after you have outline all aspects of the business, product, or the individual you’re trying to represent. It’s not always a good choice to design a logo first if you don’t know what you are going to represent.

The most important feature of a logo, is recognition. This makes the logo a mnemonic device. A mnemonic device is a learning technique that helps memory. Usually it is use so people can remember easily a data that is to be remembered, or remembered the source from were the device came. i.e. The logo.

E.g. (insert de Mcdonal’s M) when you see it from a far you know, or at least your brains knows, that near that “M” there’s a place were you eat.

That example is the perfect representation of how a logo impacts those who perceive it, and why is important. The logo is the image representing an organization. This concept is represented with the example above, we imidiatly distinguish this example and recognize what it symbolizes. It is, ok, to take time a develop a good logo, because one thing we want to avoid is changing the logo frequently, if were to do that is gonna be counterproductive with what we want to achieve.

When designing a logo, you can take a lot into consideration, deciding what fits your logo needs, it’s hard work. Like I have said it is important that you reflect what your selling thru your logo. The logo is the vehicle of communication on the real world.

There are a lot of concepts and tips regarding construction and design, for the most part, for now, the most important thing when working with your logo is to remember some basic design principles:

The logo must be legible (at any size)
The logo must be scalable
The logo must be able to be reproduce in any material
The logo must be distinguishable (in any color)
THE LOGO MUST BE MEMORABLE

This process usually doesn’t happen imidiatly it takes time, and a lot of analyzing. Like building anything we could have 40 drafts, and after a process try and error we find one that fits, and decide on using that one.

Also one good last recommendation might be that we shouldn’t rush into deciding in a logo on the fly, take time analyze it, verify it and make sure it really represent the message your trying to deliver and if represents what you want to sell. But be sure it is what you want, you don’t want to be changing logos every time, as I said before changing it a lot is bad and it will ruin the purpose of a logo.

There’s a whole lot to cover in the logo subject but I’ll be addressing them as I develop each area.