More Effective Logos

Logos are meant to communicate a company's message to the public quickly and easily.  Logos can make or break a company. It doesn’t matter how good the company is, if the public doesn’t get it and it doesn’t hold their attention it will be forgotten about.  Color, positioning, subliminal messaging, text and more must be thought about and used effectively.

The Tostitos logo is effective for many reasons, one being its color scheme.  Classic black to fill in the bold letters is strong, while the red and yellow add playfulness.  Tostitos is a chip/salsa/cheese company and salsa is red, and cheese is yellowish hence why the red and yellow is fitting.  The cool part about this logo is the “tit” in Tostitos. The two t’s have tiny dots above them to mimic heads, making the whole t look like a person.  In between these two “people” is the i which cleverly has a red dot instead of l=black. The red dot looks like a bowl of salsa, and the two t shaped people are jointly holding a chip above the bowl.  This is fun and gives people a sense of sharing and gathering when thinking of the company. It strongly gives the message of sharing a bowl of salsa with friends and having a good time.

The subway logo clearly has two arrows one exiting the s and the other exiting the y.  These arrows are counter intuitive to the name. Everyone knows that the subway is a form of transportation and the tracks run one way to the other and the logo embodies that.  Although it is a fast food place it is still fitting because it gives off the message of coming and going. Customers can come in and out quickly. It represents a stop, like an actual subway stop, people stop here to eat.  Yellow is bright and represents optimism while green reads healthy.

The at&t logo is a globe like figure with blue and white.  There are more than one version of logo the only difference being the colors alternated.  The globe is a strong representation for this company because it represents that they are a global company and have locations everywhere.  The lines going across have balance one side thicker leading into the other which is thinner, these lines with varying thickness balance eachother out.  The lines also show connections and for a cell phone company connection is key. Overall the logo is balanced due to it being upright.

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The Best Buy logo is minimal and in your face.  The text is bulky and bold and in all caps. The text isn't crazy fancy it is simple and big.  The text is surrounded by a yellow tag. The tag goes along with the name, Best Buy. The tag represents good deals, which is what they're trying to promote.  Yellow also stands out as a logo color. The logo being so minimalistic works well with the company because their message is simple. They have the best buy, period, nothing else to it, nothing else to complicate the message, so having a clean straightforward logo further enhances this message.  

The goodwill logo is all lowercase which could be confusing to some when it comes to logos.  The top portion of the logo shows half of a white smiley face, and the g in goodwill at the bottom mimics the smiley.  Now it is easy to see that the top part is also a g and a smiley like the bottom. The goodwill is based on giving and donations, which make people feel good after giving and helping out.  The smiley is innocent looking thus coming off pure.

These logos are just a few examples of good representation.  It isn’t just about the logo being aesthetically pleasing, it also has to represent the company and their product and what they stand for.  These five logos expressed their company and services effectively through design.

PromoteCards

Promoting oneself is so important in today's society because of the vast amounts of competition.  When everyone has almost the same qualifications it is vital to try to stand out. The postcard is the perfect way to promote oneself in a professional way, but stand out due to the design aspects.  Future employers will see the postcard and be able to immediately understand who this person is, not just from the text, but from the supporting graphics and the picture. The postcard also communicates with people that one knows how to use various Adobe Creative Cloud applications, which is a leg up in the communication field.

This exercise has every aspect of design communication wrapped into one.  A professional, clean, to the point biography had to be written in order to communicate to future employers, or anyone at that, who this person is from a professional standpoint.  Writing this bio was hard because it wasn’t simply bulleted points stating accomplishments, rather it was a fun(but still professional) way to communicate oneself to the public. People are accustomed to trying to present themselves professionally, like in resumes and cover letters, but this project was different because it required visuals to back it up, a professional picture and supporting graphics.  The professional picture had to support the text, the two had to work together in this case. The supporting graphics could be tricky because they had to be relevant, something that makes sense when describing the person, not just thrown in for a requirement and still be deemed professional. In many cases graphics can hurt and not help the design, this is why it is important to pick wisely.

The postcard project was a struggle because it involved writing a clean and consist bio about ourselves, along with design elements to enhance it.  The main design element that was chosen was a Mandala, that had yellows and blues and a trim of black. The initial reason for choosing a Mandala is because they are beautiful and are all different.  The mandala was focused behind the silhouetted picture. The mandala represents balance because of its symmetry. Its design is complicated and intricate but overall is balanced and clean. This was suiting for the postcard because the bios overall message was that of balance; being fun and going with the flow but also being responsible and a hard worker.  Also, Mandalas show cultural awareness and are widely accepted, and do not give off an unprofessional vibe. The Mandla and the bio work together in communicating who this person is.

Surprisingly for once photoshop wasn’t the hardest part of the project.  Finding a professional picture was what took the most time, but once a suitable picture was found it was a breeze.  Silhouetting and using the clipping path wasn’t too hard. The picture that was used had the very top cropped out so a little editing was done to fix it by adding to the canvas size and clone stamping the top portion of hair onto the missing part.  The Mandala was also slightly edited in Photoshop by removing it from its background and deleting the black ring around it. At this point in the semester these were easy things to do. In Indesign the picture was placed on the left side of the postcard with the Mandala in the back almost directly behind the head, utilizing layers in the process.  A text wrap was placed on the bio which curved around the Mandala and picture. The text wrap was a newly learned technique so it was a little bit more complicated than the rest and took a few tries. If there wasn’t a text wrap the postcard would look too separated, picture on the left, column of text on the right. Having a text wrap intertwined the picture with the text and make it all flow together as one.  The name was made in Illustrator significantly larger than the body copy text, so that it could stand out, and a gradient of purple and pink was added then copied to Indesign. The gradient color in the name is supposed to compliment the colors in the Mandala. Making the name larger and adding a gradient make it more important and stand out. Lastly a very faint yellow was put on the background of the entire post card, this was to pull hints of the yellow in the Mandala out and because the background being white was too… white.  

The postcard came out adorable… but also super professional.  It is easily something that can/will potentially be given out to potential employers and a part of resumes and portfolios.  It fully embraced what design communication is all about, thoroughly using design elements to enhance a point, or in this case a person.

Final Portfolio... Finally

This is a new and improved resume, with more design aspects and revised content.  The name in the middle of the left column is different from most resumes and is eye catching while the lightly colored boxes behind the body copy add structure to the resume.

The flyer for the Buffalo State Pom Dance Team is a strong visual representation of the team and its ties to Buff State pride.  The Pantone colors used are the same as the Pantone colors in the Buffalo State Logo.  The importance of information was clearly show on the flyer from the varying text sizes.

 The brochure for the midterm was tedious and a very involved step by step process.  The method of placing in place was used often, along with dragging guides to fit the pictures into the dimensions perfectly.

This post card effectively uses Photoshop for the silhouetted picture and the mandala behind it, Illustrator for the name with the gradient and InDesign to put all elements together and add a text wrap.

 The logo for the company "Axis Now" is shown both in color and black and white.  The logo portrays that this is a communication services based company and the headphones on the two figures gives the idea that it is based around the music industry.

The business card contains the previously shown logo and personal information.  The personal information is all accurate (besides the address because the company does not yet exist) so that if/when the company is created this business card can be put to real use.