Vlad GorshkovFuturism
There are great number of words in design that define a specific style. I want to focus on Futurism today. Futurism is nothing new. It started at the beginning of 20th century when the idea of technology taking over the world didn't exist yet. The industrial revolution gave a great inspiration and imagination to modern artists. With rise of new machines and large machines, artists looked away from usual, common nature scenes and looked into the man-made shapes. A great artist and musician from the birth of Futurism era, Luigi Russolo, gave birth to a theory of electronic music and collection of unnatural and abstact noise. His work often show shapes of a "noise machine."
A century later, and it seems like graphic artists are still obsessed with something unnatural and machine-like. But after all, human technology is just as natural as honey bee's creations. And who else is better to give an example of our obsession with shapes than Simon Page, a self-taught graphic designer from the UK.
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Check out his great portfolio and his print shop as well.
Style Over Reason
When designing a new logo for a brand, throughout the process, it is important to keep in mind that there has to be a reason for shapes, elements, colors and the overall mood. If you are a designer you should already know this by heart. But adding random swooshes to random typefaces that you though looked good on your Dell monitor is a wrong way to go and will not bring you success. Of course you can never please a client just with your own ideas, it has to be a collaboration and a compromise of thoughts.
Looking at the logo, I always think of what it speaks to me. In my experience:
- logo has to be simple enough that the viewer can draw it by hand just from a short glimpse at it.
- logo has to speak a simple and clear message
- logo has to have a reason or idea behind it
You’ll be surprised how many huge corporations with huge marketing budgets don’t research or have a proper logo. A great example would be Microsoft’s latest failed attempt: Bing. Name itself has a great sound to it and would worked great with a simple shape. But, it looks like Microsoft was not thinking of the image, users, audience or the philosophy behind the brand. It was strictly profit. Microsoft had to fight Google. And for Microsoft, to compete is to imitate. Just as Google’s bland logo, Bing had to reflect that. Just like Google’s blend User Interface, Bing had to go the same way. Microsoft claimed that they spend $80Million on Bing’s marketing campaign. Really?
To end the post on a positive note I’ve found some amazing examples of swiss style logos by helvetic brands. There ARE great identity designers after all, and you don’t have to spend millions to find one. Just Google them.
