Mark Comparisons

Good Examples

Pilot Fish is a web design and SEO company located in Akron, Ohio. Their logo seems very appropriate, because they are dedicated to leading companies in the right direction and helping them to become easier contacted.  The logo has a very natural containment and is visually interesting. The actual fish logo can be minimized and scaled up easily with no difficulty in seeing the original design. In general, it is a simple design that can be easily recognized and related to by a lot of people.

Chez Del is a home furnishing and interior design company located in Akron, Ohio that focuses on eclectic furnishings and accessories. I do like this logo because of its unique typeface and its simplicity. The font can be reproduced in black and white and also reversed out. The logo represents the elegance of the type of furniture that they sell. The one negative would be that the “z” and “d” could sit closer to each other and be worked together by just adjusting the kearning. The logo could reproduce on many surfaces such as pens and other products.

Integrys is a natural gas and electricity provider that is based in Chicago, IL but also has offices in the Ohio area. This logo is just simple and straightforward. The color choices caught my eye as well as the hierarchy. My eye starts at the star burst and follows down through the subtitle. The typeface is unique with the “t” having an angle at the top and the “i” with no dot. The marks on top are a good representation of energy. The logo can also be reproduced easily and can last through the years without becoming dated.

Weathervane is a playhouse located in the valley of Cuyahoga Falls. This is a newly updated version of their past logo that was a very good success. The logo can be reproduced in color and black and white very easily. The typeface shows excellent hierarchy and be reproduced fairly easily. The actual logo does not seem dated and is very well representative of their company. It has clean lines and is a simple, abstract look at an actual weathervane. It can also be understood universally by many different people.

InterChez is a shipping and logistics company with some offices based in Northeast Ohio. This logo well represents the goal of the company. The arrows represent moving across the globe and can be easily reproduced at a large size and also minimized. The typeface is unique and the layout shows good hierarchy. It has easy readability and can be easily understood universally.

Bad Examples

Budget-SEO is another SEO company in the area that focuses on search engine optimization and affordable websites. Their logo just doesn’t really make too much sense to me in that the sun looks a little out of place. Their customers seem happy with their work, but I feel like the professionalism of the logo is lost. The typeface is too simple and there is definitely too much going on. There is no real containment and the kearning makes the logo seem very spread out. Although the logo is somewhat straight forward, I do not think the logo would be very reproducible.

Acme Fresh Market is a grocery store in the Northeast Ohio area. This is actually a revised logo after the store downsized a few years back. Besides disagreeing with the current color choice, I believe that the logo appears to be very outdated. The repeating lines make the logo not very easily minimizable, plus the typeface used is not very visually interesting. I think that they need to stray away from the oval and create something with a more natural containment.

Two Men and a Truck is a professional moving company dealing with businesses and homes. To me, the logo looks very unprofessional and does not give me the initial trust that I look for when looking for a company that is going to be handling my possessions. The “cartoonish” image is very plain with no color and it probably cannot be minimized to a small measurements without becoming one big black dot. The typeface could be updated as well. The Bauhaus all caps is not very unique and does not show any hierarchy.

Akron Reads is a non-profit organization in the Akron area that helps students improve their reading and brighten their future in the community. This logo was most likely designed in house and not much thought was put into its look. The color choice is definitely not the best, and the box around the logo and text could be omitted. The logo is good at getting the point across but I feel like it could be updated more as well at the typeface. Its unique quality is lacking and it could use a push in the right direction.

Belle Tire is a tire store that installs and also carries rims and other products. This is a fairly well established company in the Northeast Ohio community, but I feel like the logo definitely needs an update. This may be a fun mascot, but he could definitely be difficult to reproduce and also to shrink to a smaller size. The “Tireman” also doesn’t work well with the typeface. It seems very estranged and could use some more simplicity.

Form & Content 6

My first example of good typography is a movie poster I found online. It definitely caught my eye, because of the really cool artistic design used with the gun. The blacks, grays, and whites give the poster an old school look almost like an old western. The posters also have nice intricate work using the swirl designs with the smoke. I really like everything about these posters, becuase they have depth and movement. The poster on the left uses the art of the letters W and Q within the design. Overall, this was a successful advertisement for a movie.

My second example of good typography was also found online. It was an article found titled "Saw of Truth". The thing that caught my eye was the left page where the designer used different fonts and words to create the image of a saw. Although only some words are visible at this distance, they are the most important words that the article is about. For example: truth, leadership, and justice. I also like the colors used a lot. they tie both pages together nicely and have somewhat of an earthy feel.

My third example of good typography is one that I found on vacation in Hilton Head. This is a restaurant that my brother, a local there, frequently visits. It is a Brownsbackers bar and the owners are from the Cleveland area. The concept is a street vendor vibe, but with their own twist. While the food is amazing, the inside if the cafe is also decorated to represent the street corner. Their logo is what I chose as good typography, becuase it is simple, but something I had never seen before. It looks like a manhole cover right from the city. The rough look to it gives it a genuine feel and it is easy to read. It is just a really cool design that really represents what their restaurant is all about.

The first logo I chose as a bad example is Pepsi-Cola's new rendition of Sierra Mist and Pepsi. They just recently re-designed their packaging which actually seems to be a step backward. When you have such a recognizeable brand it is a very bold move to change your logo. I think that they can achieve it, but their new designs seem very bland and almost like a generic brand. The Pepsi logo is a more modern approach, but with a plain blue background and the Sierra Mist seems like a way more artistic approach. For some reason they just don't sit right with me. Maybe its because I am so used to what I grew up with.

For my second bad example I chose the new logo for the 2012 Olympics in London. The thing that I do like is the colors that they chose. It is very bright and caught my attention, and I like how they used white as an accent. The one thing that bothers me is the attempt to make the year 2012 in the color pink. It was hard to come about at first, but I don't think that many people would see it at first glance. The numbers are very choppy and haphazard. I think if maybe the numbers 2 would look somewhat similar it might be easier to recognize, but they are shaped differently. I think with just a little bit of tweaking it could really work.

My last example for bad design is pretty self-explanatory. I found this while searching online and to be honest, I'm not really sure what kind of company it is for. This was on their website and I think it is some kind of recording company, but that is all I can think of. First of all, there is WAY too much going on here. I feel like the designer took a bunch of clip art and pasted it all around the title. There is stuff hanging and on top of stuff everywhere and they probably could have just stuck with one thing and kept it simple. It doesn't explain anything about the company or what they might be about. It almost gives me a headache looking at it for too long.

Form & Content 5

The article I chose this week was from a recent copy of Wallpaper Magazine, a design lifestyle magazine. They had a special Fashion edition that caught my eye, and I had never read this magazine before. The article I chose was titled "High Life" which discussed Andre Balaz's newly designed and built hotel in New York City. The article talk about the design asthetics and amenities throughout the modern design.

I like how the interior photo of the lobby takes up most of the page and bleeds off of the edges. What originally caught my eye was the distinct white line that leads the reader's eye up into the room. The outside view of the building seems very industrial compared to the dramatic decor inside. The text of the article is short, but set very well on the page. It is easy for the reader to read through, and the title of the article is short and gets the reader's attention. There are no flashy fonts or colors and the title is thin and represents the decor of the hotel itself. I liked this page layout a lot. It was simple enough, while being interesting at the same time by the actual layout of the photos and text.

Form & Content 4

The article I used for this weeks form and content I found in a recent copy of CMYK magazine. The article focuses on profiling the CEO and founder of Hello Viking. Tim Brunelle went to school as a jazz major in a music conservatory, and now has an excellent marketing resume. CMYK interviews Tim and he gives advice on his experiences and what he thinks will be the future of advertising.

The look of the article is very simple, but seems to flow well when you flip onto the next page. What initially caught my eye was the bright red title, which made me want to read on. The only image was the small picture of Tim in the lower left hand corner. I can't really figure out if I like that aspect or not, because it doesn't make the piece very visually interesting. The circles in the background are a neat design, but it just adds to the chaos of the random placement of the paragraphs of text. I do not really enjoy this piece visually, but the actual reading was quite interesting. The paragraphs have a good vertical column structure, but they seem all skewed around the page. I also do not really like the use of all the different colors in the paragraph titles, along with four different font sizes going on. It all together has way too much visual tension.

Form & Content 3

Form & Content 3

This week I found an article in Vol. 42 of CMYK, a very popular visual communication magazine. The article discusses the act of self-publishing your own work and some examples of how to do so. They interview four publishers of their magazine who have all had experiences publishing their own works.

The form of the article is set up almost like a scrapbook with the first two pages looking like the pages of an open book. The header is quite interesting and is definitely what initially caught my eye. Black and pink are the colors used continuously throughout the theme of the piece. This use of color really keeps the unity throughout the page layout. The header represents the text of the article, because if the artist's interesting use of heavy rules. They appear to be books on a shelf. I also really like how they mixed the use of a serif and a sans-serif font with reversed out type. Another visual aspect I especially liked was the black text boxes with the pink text used throughout the rest of the piece. It really pulled it together very nicely. All these aspects together made the piece very visually interesting and easy to read. It was also a very insightful article, and the artwork just seemed to complete all aspects.

Form & Content 1

Amanda Sabo
Form & Content 1

The article that I read for this critique was found in an issue of Communication Arts from June 2008. I chose this article mainly for its inspiration and interesting layout of the heading and text. The article talks about a logo design competition that began in Europe. The European Union Logo Design Annual, better known at Eulda, has such popularity, that it has sparked the launch of Wolda in 2008, the Worldwide Logo Design International. Now what has been known as the “Best of” in Europe is spreading the globe for all designers to participate. The winners are chosen by a panel of design professionals, corporate clients, and even members of the public.
The article is laid out well on the page, and the simplicity of it is what caught my eye. The vertical header, along with the year 2007 across the top is set up together very well making its own grid structure. I also love how the writer’s name seems to break the grid by coming in the letter “u”. Their use of white space also worked very well in the piece. The rest of the images show examples of winning work from the 2007 competition. The Best of Europe is shown with a text wrap around in the actual article, which really breaks up the monotony of the text. The remaining three pages are all really excellent examples and inspirations for corporate identity. I thought that they were all very excellent choices and they all seem to explain themselves quite well.