2011 Logo Trend: Banded

The report for 2011 shows that color is still prevalent, but scaled down in the form of tints. Brown or gray is dominating the neutral hues. Meanwhile blues and greens are softer. They’re seeing more Pinks too.

Lightness is being carried out in other ways: Airier shapes that seem to lift off the page, line weights are thinner, and there’s plenty of transparency as well. Here’s a quote that sums up this year’s trend rather well.

It feels like what people believe a logo to be is also becoming more transcendent. A logo is no longer a single piece of flat art. It can be a favicon, an icon, or an entire set of marks that work together to support the team. Its boundaries have become less strict as well. There was a time when most logos could be enclosed in a simple hand-drawn square, circle or similar geometric shape, but now many logos drag outside those outlines. They just don’t want to fit the old mold.

Here are the trends they identified this year:

• Gradients
• Juvi
• Vibrate
• O
• Earth
• Monoline
• Series
• Brown
• Dandruff
• Concentric
• Loopys
• Banded
• Comma
• Buckys
• Fruit

Check out the full gallery here. Image courtesy of LogoLounge. Credits: 1. BrandBerry, Artive 2. Higher, Voscast 3. Dickerson, Healing Touch 4. Frog Design, Microsoft Word

2010 Logo Trend: Shift

Catching up myself with LogoLounge’s annual logo trends. Last year was awesome for logos!

This year some of the tools available to designers has had a hand in some of these trends. For example, new Ilustrator tools such as Swirl, Pucker, and Scriptographer have clearly left their mark. We also see that current events also influence ideas that make their way into logos. For example, O-shaped logos popped up after the 2008 U.S. Presidential elections. There are also new standards like Transparency. We’ve seen plenty of them now to be perceived as a trend. Transparency is here now. We also see an increase in hue brightness, and  it’s most likely due to the pervasive use of on-screen color, which is light that is projected (and also RGB and not CMYK). Text based logos are really strong as clients and designers are distilling their messages to be concise and direct. The use of color has been greatly expanded.

Here are the trends they’ve identified for 2010:

• Cubist
• Spores
• Ghosts
• Tendrils
• Shift
• Parts
• Pixels
• Hexahedron
• Dust
• Peepshow
• Festoon
• Stains
• Burst
• Wallpaper
• Box-up

Check out the full gallery here. Image courtesy of LogoLounge. Credits: 1. Asta form, Sheriff Studio 2. Go Welsh, Penn State Architecture 3. Effusion Creative Solutions, musicplace.com 4. Liska + Associates Communication Design, Becker and Becker.

Chinese Typography

Designer Nod Young shared his awesome typography on the Behance Network as part of a project to provide suggestions to visitors of Beijing. No additional details, but our guess is that these recommend things to do, places to go, where to stay, where to go for good entertainment, and places to eat. In his own words:

Beijing is an up-and-coming city with too much flavor not to share with the rest of the world. given that more and more people are coming to our city, many of whom might be in need of a suggestion or two, we thought we might provide a short typographical tour for any prospective visitors.

Follow the link to the gallery and check out the rest of the typographic signs. They’re all very good. Something about the ones laid out to look 3D reminds me of russian constructivist  type. Very nice.

Typographic Chair

I’d like to have this chair–and have nobody sit on it because it looks so awesome. Wonder if it’s available in other color sets. I do understand the simplicity of the black and red and the relationship of these colors to type. This 1h or whatever chair is part of a collection by designer Marc Lauckhardt entitled Typography Furniture which uses type in a sleek way.

Bonus points for not allowing the design to look like it belongs in a child’s room. Follow the link for pics of the full collection and separate shots of each piece.

AIGA published this great little article recounting the tale of how the NYC Subway system went from a labyrinth filled with mosaic and hand-made signs in a variety of colors, sizes, styles, and more–to a highly organized signage system. They made it look so easy!

We’ve all been witness to the efficiency of this system so we don’t even think about it anymore. They made it look so easy! This is on of those articles that you want to print and read offline on a Saturday afternoon. And that’s just one of the design wonders that the 20th century brought into existence.

NYC Subway signs - before

Mosaic subways signs (from the top): 1 train, Rector Street (1918); 1 train, South Ferry (1904); N/R/W, Prince Street (1917); “To 19th,” 1 train, 18th Street (1918); L, Morgan Avenue (1928); “Down town,” 4/5/6, 86th Street (1917); “Up town,” R/W, Whitehall Street (1918); E/F/G/R/V, Grand Avenue, Newtown (1936); M/R, F connection to 9th Street (1915) and BMT, Fourth Avenue (1933). Caption courtesy of AIGA.

NYC Subway signs - after

(top and bottom rows): From the 1970 NYCTA Graphic Standards Manual, Unimark Design Consultants, a page indicating directional information, the cover and and typeface instruction using Standard, not Helvetica; (middle) “Donna” illustration of platform signage by Bob Noorda (c.1966, colorized in 2008). Caption courtesy of AIGA.

Flipboard's FlipDesign

So this iPad app exploded into the scene last week. Yes, Flipboard. Everyone’s talking about it! It flips!

Yes, it does. To me, that’s just eye-candy. The transition they chose to program on top of this app is the hook. What keeps me coming back is the look. It just looks great. They’ve put the content to the test, over and over and over. They’ve chosen a series of layouts, nit-picky typography, and  a minimalist color palette to showcase the content. Content is still king, and as long as you can make it look this good and throw in some eye-candy for the masses, you’re golden.

I did read an article pondering the legality of FlipBoard and its scraping technology–but that’s beside the point here. I think that now that they’ve made a splash and have some attention, they’ll get right on that legal thing ASAP. Especially with the list of content providers going around the block waiting to get in on this. Strike while it’s hot boys!

I really dig the FlipDesign section. Plenty of impeccable design to thumb through and admire.

Selfridges House brand packaging

High-end British store Selfridges & Co. re-launched their house brand packaging system that covers over 100 products. Their house brand did not set itself apart much on the shelves. Now it is eye catching, forward thinking, clear, concise, and decidedly modern. It has a hip new attitude that inspires confidence in their product line.

Black is the base for all their new packaging, and type does its job letting the visitor know what’s inside. The type is even used in the same point size whenever possible to strengthen the brand consistency. Black with colored text is not new, but it is certainly not what comes to mind when thinking about store packages. This is bold and refreshing and I suspect it will go over very well. London-based R-Design deisgned the new packaging. Good job to both.

www.r-design.co.uk

www.selfridges.com

Story via Communication Arts.

I love Typography website

One of the sites that I visit regularly is ilovetypography.com. A quick glance upon getting to the homepage reveals the sheer amount of information available on this site. Aside from the free desktop wallpapers and stuff you can buy,  there is always good reading within a click or two.

The list of popular articles on the center column showcases some of the best resources they offer. Currently on this list are articles on how to make a font, type terminology, type history, a web typography guide, choosing type, and identifying a font.

Web design benefits greatly from good use of typography. The same rules that have applied to print for centuries are critical in web design and have been largely ignored since the web exploded into what it is today. The viewers have the same basic need for clarity when accessing information–regardless of where it is displayed. I was very glad when I first learned about this site. The time invested in learning  how to improve web typography pays off in the quality of the design as a whole.

Metropolis movie poster

I have to admit that I was looking forward to seeing the posters in this collection by Designer Daily. I think they’re very good for the most part. But the ones that I’m still thinking about are the ones that I did not expect to see in this collection.

I didn’t have any posters in mind, but I was not surprised to see the awesome Metropolis poster, 50′s sci-fi posters like The Forbidden Planet, and swinging 60′s posters like Vertigo. Those are the kind that while they do show very iconic and memorable eras of the movie posters, they represent what we already knew–our own western and typically commercial movie posters.

This collection becomes more memorable because it is including different posters that are from other countries and film genres. I was very glad to see the poster for The Wall (rock musical film), and the posters from movies from other countries like Teorema.

The collection also shows that no matter what era, a great movie poster could be executed many different using different elements to support the composition and convey the meaning. From typography to image+type placement to shapes+lines, you can clearly see that there is an abundance of things to do that are unique.

Why then is it that so many movie posters today have so many floating heads, cityscapes, actors standing around, and so many other unimaginative things. There is so much to choose from.

Design History Primer 2 - Handwriting to Printed Type

Moving on to the second page of Design History lecture guides by Design History.org which covers the beginnings of writing and how it came to be what we know today.

This page groups the information into five major trends in the history of writing.

1. Early Writing in Clay and Stone
Writing started as humans stopped living nomadic lives and started to settle. They use the Clay Bullae used in Mesopotamia as an accounting tool to record transactions.

As the need to record more than agricultural transactions emerged, Cuneiform provided a way to communicate ideas and concepts with horizontal rows of symbols pressed into clay tablets. The symbols were abstracted from pictograms of animals (for example).

In Egypt, writing and relief carving merged into the Hyeroglyphics that adorned the walls inside pharaohs’ tombs. This system used both rebus and phonetic characters and is thus the first link to an alphabetic system of writing.

Not so far away in ancient Greece, Early Greek was arranged in horizontal rows, and was read switching directions on every other row. It is believed that Greeks borrowed the alphabet from the Phoenicians and added vowels.

And still in the Mediterranean neighborhood, the Romans copied the Greek style. In Early Roman Lapidary they carved letters in stone that were equal in width and did not have serifs. Early on they used dots to divide words.

The serifs originated with the development that lead to Classical Roman Lapidary. It is theorized that the serifs were developed to decrease the possibility of stones splintering at the end of a carved line, as well as to possibly mimic the way the brush strokes produced varying thickness of the letters when the letters were painted on the stone initially as guides.

Special mention in this section goes to Trajan’s Column. The letters in the inscription at its base are considered to display the ultimate results of the development of Latin letterforms. The characters have been studied by type designers for almost 20 centuries and have inspired many spinoff typefaces. Some include reinterpretations by Edward Johnston, Eric Gill and Carol Twombly.

2. Majuscules and Minuscules
During the 1st century AD, Roman Capitals emerged in early attempts to copy the attributes of letters that were originally carved in stone. Roman Capitals were mostly written on vellum paper using a reed that had a flat edge, or a quill nib.

Early Christian works during the 5th century AD show the development of Uncials letterforms, which were taken from the square capitals that were previously carved in stone and also from written majuscules. It was written between 2 guidelines of one uncial — the Roman name for the one-inch measure.

One more century led to the Half Uncials. During the 6th century AD, Half Uncials were written between four guidelines that allowed the development of ascenders and descenders. This newer style was easier and faster to execute.

The Carolingian Minuscule came about during the 8th century (789 — 1100′s). Emperor Charlemagne decreed that the entire Holy Roman Empire use a standard style of writing as a way of uniting his regime. It is believed that the Carolingian Minuscule was developed by the British monk Alcuin of York. His letterforms are based on classic documents from ancient Rome. During the Renaissance (centuries later) the Carolingian handwriting was mistaken for the original Roman style. It was copied and labeled a “Classical” handwriting style. The Alcuin of York founded a school for monks that featured the following standards for clear and legible script:

1. Uniform spelling
2. The Carolingian style of well-formed lowercase letters
3. Capitals to begin a sentence and lowercase to continue
4. Space between words
5. Standard punctuation
6. Division into sentences and paragraphs.

Blackletter: The Gothic Hands
Handwriting styles became more condensed and angular after the death of emperor Charlemagne. To conserve space and materials, word, line, and letter spacing were reduced. Carolingian and Blackletter handwriting were developed in France. Both evolved into variations of regional style. There are 4 basic styles of Blackletter that emerged from 13 to 16th centuries.

• Textura (formal)
• Rotunda (formal)
• Bastarda (semi-formal)
• Cursive (informal)

3. Renaissance and the Humanist letter : Quill Pen & Compass
Renaissance Humanism arose in Florence, Italy as scholars sought to recapture their lost heritage by re-evaluating the literature of ancient Greece and Rome. Humanism was committed to the idea that ancient Greece and Rome was the peak of human achievement and should be taken as a model by Europeans at the time.

Transcribers used two forms of letters based upon the ancient (or antique) Roman models: The Lettera Antiqua formata (for elaborate manuscripts) and the Lettera Antiqua corsiva (more informal) for scholarly works.

Leon Battista Alberti, believed the circle and the square are the most perfect geometrical forms, and that architecture and the alphabet should use them as their base. He restored the Roman tradition of inscribing letters on facades.

4. Steel Pens & Engraving
George Bickham published The Universal Penman in 1741. It was the considered the ultimate guide to English penmanship. It was also a compilation of broadsides, that focused on a different art, profession, emotion, or human moral. Aside from the handwriting, many of the broadsides are highlighted with engraved vignette illustrations by Bickham. He wrote books that were not only decorative, but also examples of easy-to-read and easy-to-write styles for business clerks and others who required a much writing and record-keeping.

5. Letterforms in Metal : Mechanical Writing Leads to a Cultural Explosion
Johann Gutenberg developed a modular “moveable type” system in about 1450, even though printing had been practiced in Asia for several hundred years and Europeans had been printing type with wooden blocks for about one hundred years. Johann Gutenberg is the commonly accepted inventor of modular moveable type system although different people were working on a system of “automated writing”.

A letter was carved on the end of a steel bar. The is is called the punch. Then a matrix was created when that letterform is struck into copper. Gutenberg was a jeweler by profession and was knowledgeable in metal carving, casting, and knew which metals worked best for each stage of his process. He developed inks that would adhere to metal surfaces.

A clever inventor, Gutenburg was not a very good businessman. He borrowed considerably from Johann Fust. When Gutenberg could not pay his debts, Fust sued and took over the business. Fust then partered with his brother-in-law Peter Schoeffler they produced the bible around 1455. Still to this day it is known as the Gutenberg bible.

Gutenberg did not use Roman style lettering. Instead he used the Blackletter style. He hoped it would replicate handwriting. Scholars believe that Gutenberg designed a font that included 270 characters which used several variations of each letter to add a human factor.

Within 50 years, over one thousand printers established themselves across Europe, and many people tried to establish control of the technology. Professional scribes feared the technology would cost them their livelihoods. Religious and sometimes secular authorities attempted to control the content of what was printed. Some were successful—for hundreds of years books could only be printed by printers who were authorized by the government, or with the approval of the Church in some European countries. These printers would be held responsible instead of the authors for the ideas considered “unwanted” by some. Printers were even executed. In the end most of these restraints eventually fell.

Typography Daily

If you like Type–and who doesn’t? Check out the new Typography Daily site from the folks at Designer Daily. Full of inspiration, links to free typefaces, typographic experiments, and very good reading material, the site doesn’t disappoint so far.

The focus seems to be on visually sophisticated typefaces, avant-garde typographic treatments, packaging with exceptional type, and the like. A very favorable move considering the existing ocean of free typefaces that leaves much to be desired, horrible web design, and general disregards for the principles of design. Good job–and keep up the good work. I’ll be visiting it regularly.

Moss Grafitti

Designer Daily brings us this collection of urban marking/marketing approaches that have clearly evolved (or de-evolved) with the times. This reflects the attitutes of a new generation of designers who not only want to do something different, but they view their surroundings in a different way. They’re more in touch with nature, and they’re concerned with materials and the impact of their designs on a global/environmental scale. More marketing than self-expression, they show a degree of creativity that is unusual for urban art. For now. They certainly grab attention.

They’ve grouped this collection into mini-series. Let’s see. We have Moss Grafitti, where text and graphics are on-the-wall and made of moss or grass. Very earthy. Chalk art is very playful and versatile and cheap. No steady hands? Make a stencil! Very nice. I dig the rock-n-roll logo/ad.

Reverse Grafitti

Reverse Grafitti is probably my favorite, simply because it involves removing what’s already there (dirt, mostly) and creating the designs in reverse. These have an air of purification somehow. They’re almost luminous because more light is reflected off the clean surface–much like when the wall was freshly painted or the concrete wall built. Very easy on the eyes.

Snow tagging is not only cool and has a nice texture, but it has the least impact of all. This type of communication is very temporary. And working with snow has a built-in expiration time. It’s also cheap to make your mark with a stencil and go around tagging snow around a city after a fresh snowfall.

Fur Coat Graffitti is more art than marketing but it certainly has its uses and it does grab attention. They show examples of animal shapes. Maybe throw in a little Fur Text? PETA anyone?

Neiman Marcus print ad

One of my favorite things about design is typography. One can do so much with it–and yet so many pay little attention to it. John Berry’s Dot Font column on Creativepro.com is a great source for those of us who love typography. This particular article shows great examples of how type and type alone can be used to compose a great design. I like that he opens with a piece by Herb Lubalin, who I think is great. he looked at type like nobody else did before or after.

Examples from newspapers, books, advertising, and fine art show amazing uses of expressive typography. In these examples it’s hard to imagine the type placed anywhere else or doing something else. Expressive typography can inject meaning to the design, offer visual puns, be used as texture, reinforce the meaning of the words in the design, or simply exist as art.

Although there is no specific standard to using type in an expressive way, the result looks like it was very easy to do because it looks so natural. This is not the case. Designs that use type in an expressive way can range from requiring a modest assessment of the purpose of the design in order to take a direction with the expressive type–to requiring extensive research and experimentation to meet the goals of the design. It can be a lot of fun too. Expressive type allows us to use (sometimes) type in ways that type is traditionally not used. We can use principles like repetition, anomaly, placement, and kerning.

Sample courtesy of Creativepro.com.