Designing Logos
I think logo design is the most difficult–by far! In just a small space you have to communicate the totality of the company, all their hopes, their mission, their value… It’s a nightmare, I think. But where do you go for inspiration?
I recently read one of the best posts on web 2.0 logos. The author identified the typefaces many of the cutting-edge websites use. What’s more, you can see some of the common effects good logos are using.
For scrounging up ideas, I also like Logo Yes. There, you can mix and match shapes and fonts for some neat logo designs. These make for fabulous stock logos.
One of the largest logo databases out there is hosted by Logotypes.ru. Just run a search for a company logo, or just browse away, to see what’s being done in the corporate world of branding.
After I have consulted some of these, I try to free up my mind and begin sketching. The important thing is to not pre-judge what you see. I keep going and going, usually to a time limit, say 15 minutes. If I haven’t found something to spin off with in 15 minutes, it’s usually not worth it anyway. Then from there, I start work in Adobe Illustrator to vectorize the whole thing.
It’s still tough, though.
Color Theory Made Simple
Trying to come up with a good color scheme? Maybe you just need to repaint a wall in an ugly bedroom or you have a brochure you want to redesign. Here are some tips on how to achieve good color combinations without killing yourself.
Other Color Palettes
You can grab color ideas from others without infringing copyright (some people don’t know this!). The rule of thumb is you can borrow color or layout but not both at the same time without any fear of copyright problems. So a good strategy is to find a source for good color and grab the color values from it. I’m going to use, for example, this website. On a Mac, you can take a snapshot of the screen by pressing cmd-shift-4. (Cmd-shift-3 will take a shot of the whole screen.) I’m taking a snapshot of the home page:
Here, I’ve highlighted in orange the main color areas. Now, we open the snapshot file in an image editing program like Adobe Photoshop to grab the colors. Using the eyedropper tool, click in the main color areas to create the palette:
In this case, the colors I grabbed were
- Red CMYK 20,95,100,10
- Light Red CMYK 20,80,70,10
- Tan CMYK 15,13,15,0
- Gray CMYK 45,37,38,2 (or #808080 if it’s easier)
- Dark Gray CMYK 58,50,49,17 (#585858)
Using Color Pickers
By far the most fabulous color picker I’ve yet found on the net (for free) is the Well Styled Color Generator. This handy tool lets you put together rich color schemes in seconds. I don’t go very long without using this color picker.
Some folks enjoy Color Schemer, but I prefer their Dashboard widget (sorry Windows users). Their site is also good for the online color scheming community. Folks have uploaded hundreds of different schemes to play with.
And, finally, if you want to see a live demo of sorts for painting, etc., use Behr’s ColorSmart tool. This will let you select different swatches of paint and apply them on walls and ceilings to get a visual idea of what these colors look like. It also provides handy schemes to draw from, even for digital designs.
So there you have it: some of my strategies that don’t require much science to grab professional color schemes.
Cosmo Begins
A sweet 2-minute spot aired at BYU’s first home football game. I just had to spread the word some:
