Design for Fun #2: The Culture of Ownership

Prescott — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 03:56:24 +0000

Remember back in May when I started the Design for Fun initiative? Well, it’s back. This time around we’re tackling a smaller project: a logo for The Culture of Ownership.

The current Culture of Ownership header/logo.

BACKGROUND

The Culture of Ownership is a blog about intellectual property, and how big business and government are slowly, and not so subtly, hacking away at personal rights. Great resource, but it doesn’t really have a logo.

THE BRIEF

Create a new logo for C of O. Use type and/or symbols to make something simple and memorable. This should add to the blog, not distract from it. The logo should reflect the content’s serious and stern nature, but doesn’t need to be sterile and boring.

GUIDELINES AND CONSTRAINTS

The logo should be clear, and easy to read. Since it will primarily be used on the web, raster graphics and gradients are ok. However a sharp vector logo is always preferable.

Use the grey background as above, or use the white. It should match the website.

Spend as much or as little time as you like.

DELIVERY METHOD

Create a JPG of the logo that fits into a 300×55 box. Leave some white space all-around. Upload the files and add them to the comments, and I’ll grab ‘em and add them to the thread as they come in.

Design For Fun #1: GeekBrief.tv logo

Prescott — Mon, 19 May 2008 20:14:57 +0000

Welcome to a new initiative I’m tentatively calling “Design for Fun.” The premise is simple: We as designers certainly enjoy what we do, but as we become more and more involved in a our work, we find it harder and harder to muster motivation for side projects, personal projects, and other design “for fun.” Hopefully, a little friendly competition (with no prizes, obviously), will help us all keep up our skills and maybe even add some projects to our portfolio.

The first project up for grabs is an identity re-design for my buddy Cali Lewis and her show GeekBrief. Here’s the brief and how we’ll proceed:

The current GeekBrief.tv logo

Background

GeekBrief is a daily technology news video podcast. Produced by Cali Lewis and Neal Campbell, the show prides itself of delivering “shiny, happy tech news” in a light-hearted, but expert manner. While most technology enthusiasts are males 15-35, GeekBrief enjoys a much wider audience, including women!

The GeekBrief logo lives in a shape that is a hybrid between an elipse and a rectangle. It resembles a monitor, complete with glass reflection. The type is some typewriter face with a bevel effect that is straight from 1996 and Photoshop 3.0. The “.tv” is tagged onto the wordmark implying that this is a modifier and not part of the show name, GeekBrief.

All of this is in play for a re-design.

The Brief

Create a new logo for GeekBrief. The new identity should clearly display the show name, as well as “.tv” to complete the URL. While GeekBrief is normally a video podcast, at least one parellel extension is needed for GeekBrief Radio, the audio-only version of the show.

GeekBrief Radio

Bonus Points: demonstrate an overall style of art direction such as patterns, graphic objects, mascots, and other assets. These are the sort of stuff that can fill monitors behind Cali during the show.

More Bonus Points: find a way to include the other GeekBrief properties into the overall identity system. This requires a more modular approach to the design thinking, but it will be interesting to see if what’s possible. These other properties include iYule.tv, The Big Trip, and DearCali.com.

Guidelines and Constraints

The logo should be clear, and easy to read, especially when projected on a monitor behind Cali. It should also be scalable to small sizes. An abbreviated version of the logo “GB.tv” would be helpful, as would a version that can exist solely as a wordmark.

GeekBrief logo in action

Spend as much or as little time as you like.

Delivery Method

Create a JPG of the logo that fits into a 300×200 box. Leave some white space all-around. Upload the files and add them to the comments, and I’ll grab ‘em and add them to the thread as they come in.

use this template for your logo

This is a bit of an experiment, so let’s see where it goes…

Any questions, just leave ‘em in the comments.

Design for Fun #2: The Culture of Ownership (1)

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