Here’s an interesting article for all you out there who just want the down low on the logo design mistakes that can be made.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/06/25/10-common-mistakes-in-logo-design/

Hey hey everyone. Pretty soon I will be offering some tutorials and downloads for you guys. If you have anything you’d like to see, just leave a message after the beep – beeeeeeeeep.

I was reading an article about the hallow mask illusion, and how schizophrenic brains aren’t fooled by it. Here’s a video that shows a couple of really good examples.

Luckily I am sane, but I would still like to see it the other way. Maybe I’ll get drunk and try it (or maybe not ).

This is just a quick check
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I tend to scour the web looking for anything in the design industry, but I came across a site that seems like it will be very helpful. It’s called http://www.fontsquirrel.com/ and they have free font downloads for commercial use. It’s pretty cool actually. So if you’re starting a new business this site could help you on your way. Still, make sure you read the license agreements just incase.

There are plenty of sites around the web to find your inspiration for design. I enjoy studying logos and trying to see what makes them successful. Please have a look at some of the sites I frequent.

This contest is closed. Thanks for all who entered! Keep an eye on your twitter accounts for your announcement!
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You want it, you got it!

Here’s your chance to get the logo you’ve always deserved. Between now and December 14, 2009 you can win yourself a logo completely designed by me J-Mill. Anyone from anywhere can enter!!

First Place: 1 Logo designed by me.
Second Place: Secret
Third Place: Secret
(see “The Technicals” for more info.)

How to enter

All you have to do is follow me on twitter http://twitter.com/jmillgraphics and write a message using @jmillgraphics in a post telling me what you need the logo for or retweet one of my posts. It’s super easy and take only seconds to do! Just make sure before you submit your reply by December 14, 2009 at 11:59 PM EST!!!

The Technicals

Three winners will be chosen at random.

The first place winner will get to work one-on-one with me on designing their very own logo. After all the work is done, the winner will receive the working files and anything else that might be needed, just like you paid for it! This is for the logo only and does not include any stationary. If you would like stationary, feel free to let me know and I can give you a quote.

The Second and Third place winners get a little surprise if they chose to receive it.

I will post the winners in a reply message by December 16, 2009, so keep a look out. I will make 3 attempts to contact the winners. If I don’t hear anything, I will move on to runners up.

Please have fun and enjoy.

Typography says a lot about you and your business. In all of my designing years, I believe that sans-serif fonts are used the most. They are clean, bold, simple, and easier to read on a computer screen than a serif font. Something to think about before you chose a font at all, is do you want a font created just for your business, or do you want one that has already been made?

Having a designer create a font just for your business usually means you will get only the letters for your name, unless otherwise specified. It also means a little more money out of your pocket. But the benefit is that nothing else exists like it. It would be your company font. Since most fonts require you to pay for a license fee to use the font commercially, sometimes it’s best to just pay a little extra money to your designer for a custom font.

There are benefits to purchasing a font online too. You will have a font that has been formatted and ready for use on any documents quickly and easily. It can take a while for a designer to create the perfect font, so if you’re in a rush, this might be the better choice.

It’s always very helpful to have font references ready for your designer one way or the other. Here are some places you can get some ideas for the font you want. You can also send links to your designer for their reference.

http://www.adobe.com/type
http://new.myfonts.com
http://www.dafont.com
http://www.1001fonts.com

Please be advised. If a font is listed as free, that doesn’t mean it’s FREE. Sounds confusing yes, but really it’s not. Fonts can be free for personal and commercial use, but in most free downloads, they are only free for personal, non-profit use. If you have a non-profit company, you can use most font’s that are downloaded for free unless otherwise stated.

Make sure you read the license that is downloaded with each free font. If there is not license, check the site you downloaded the font from. Chances are there is a site link for the person that designed the font. You want to make sure everything is legit with your fonts.

A good design brief will act as a guide for the designer. Everyone will ask for different things in their design brief, but the important thing is that you have an idea of what to expect to write about. I used most of this information from David Airey’s Site. I found it to be very useful. I will also add or update as I see fit to.

Company Profile

Provide a summary of your business along with a brief history. This helps the designer get a better feel for what they need to design.

Market position

A realistic evaluation of your company, service, or brand relative to your what the competition is doing.

Current situation

Explain what’s happening to bring about the need for this project. For instance, a new product launch that needs advertising, or new competition.

Communication background

This includes both previous and present communication activity, such as research, advertising, direct mail, graphic design, public relations etc. It’s nice to get a powerpoint presentation of any research you may have found too.

Communication task — “the message”

What’s the context of the specific message in relation to your business plans?
Include pieces of information to be shown in the designed item e.g. text, logos, images etc.

Target market

Demographics — the age, gender, income, employment, geography, lifestyle of those you want to reach.

Objectives

What do you want to achieve? Make your objectives specific and the results measurable.

Available budget

Providing your budget tells the designer if it’s worth his / her time initiating the design process. Since I am just starting out, I am willing to give a little slack as far as how much to charge. However, I will not under any circumstances start a project for anything less than $150.

Schedule and deadline

To make things more comfortable, I suggest setting up some realistic deadlines for each step of the designing process. When do you need certain things done by? If you need help with this step, I can advise you on the time it can take me to finish each step.

I want to take a look at one of my favorite logo designs. It took a lot of work and thinking, but this is what I came up with. Mingle is a new up and coming social dating site. The logo needed to show social mingling, along with a sleek clean web 2.0/3.0 look. I started with several ideas that slowly evolved over time.

1. This was just too flat and lacked any sort of solid look for the site.
2. It had the right rounded look, but the colors and style were off.
3. The icons above were nice, but they distracted from the people, which the client really liked.
4. The fact that this was a social dating site brought up the heart idea. It was still too distracting from the people.
5. I ended up scrapping the shine because it was just too distracting with the name.

This project took some time. It was a lot of thinking and planning. The blue color alone took 2 days to finalize. In the end, it’s just plain fun to design logos!