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Horrible things
harryk
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Oh snap, did I just make a thread here?
Anyway, I started taking classes at the local community college here and the student government is having a contest to redesign their logo. I've decided to make my own shitty logo to submit:
I'd love to get feedback on this before I keep working on it.
Looks amateurish? Fonts are weird? The ASG letters I kind of hobbled together from stuff that I liked so I'm not sure if it all matches well.
This is their current logo as far as I can tell:
Also, here are some recent sketchy things:
Anyway, I started taking classes at the local community college here and the student government is having a contest to redesign their logo. I've decided to make my own shitty logo to submit:
I'd love to get feedback on this before I keep working on it.
Looks amateurish? Fonts are weird? The ASG letters I kind of hobbled together from stuff that I liked so I'm not sure if it all matches well.
This is their current logo as far as I can tell:
Also, here are some recent sketchy things:
harryk on
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Have you looked at other government or educational logos? Sometimes when you're designing for an industry or a group of people you're not really familiar with, it's a good idea to see what's out there and figure out the visual "language" they use. A Google image search for "student government logo" is a good place to start.
The other big thing to consider is whether your school has fonts/colors/symbols/etc. that would make sense to incorporate.
The ideal starting place would be to establish what the Student Govt want to achieve with the redesign - what sort of personality and tone do they want to convey? Does the redesign fit in with any specifc strategy they are working towards? Are there existing brand guidelines which the logo needs to adhere to, or is it a clean slate? In what ways will it be reproduced? etc. etc.
If a client is unable to identify what they want to get out of a logo, how can it's success be measured?
It sounds like they just want to choose a logo which they think looks nice, which is a poor way of approaching the design of something which wholly represents your company/endeavour, but there you go. (I will here take the liberty of saving my rant on 'design contests' for another time.)
As for feedback on the design - it looks like you're just trying things for the sake of it. You'd be far better off coming up with a concept and refining and refining* until you come up with the strongest means of communicating the concept, without any of the clutter.
Some pointers: Simple is often better; good logos have a strong, recognisable silhouette; ensure that every choice you make has a reason behind it (more meaning per mark); *refining means taking away, not adding!
As DMAC's wholesome advice rightly points out, do a bunch of research in order to be better versed in the appropriate visual language.
Good luck!
I did look at other student government logos and a lot of them looked like school crestish things, big circles with lots of text and olive branches and justice scales and banners. I didn't really like how they looked (really formal and pretentious bullshit?). But I guess it's not really my decision to make. I will take a closer look at that stuff.
Thanks for the advice man.
I agree with everything you said. I feel like I'm kind of taking a shot in the dark here with this cause there wasn't a lot of information about what they wanted, what they represent, etc. I guess it wouldn't hurt to shoot them an email to see if I can get some more details out of them.
And you are right. The logo looks the way it does right now because I kinda liked the lines and shapes created by the letters and such.
Sadly, it sort of says they don't know what they're doing!
But, on a positive note I would definitely ask them some questions in order to clarify what they hope to get out of the design - you never know, you might be the only entrant who bothers to do this, and it may work in your favour.
My main advice would be to just have fun with the task but keep in mind that it's not a very good teaching aid in designing - i.e. understand the limitations of the excercise, and how it falls short of the ideal process.
If design is something you're wanting to get into, then a book should be out in a month or so which I think will be absolutely great for young designers:
http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Workshop-Challenges-Sharpen-Design/dp/1600617972
I'm an avid follower of David Sherwin's blog and certainly his design theory & teaching stuff; I honestly think the contents of his book will be more valuable than 90% of anything students are taught in design school.
I'm inclined to agree about those logos being too formal but you may be able to take some elements of that format and give them a bit of a twist. I visited your school's Website and they definitely seem to have more of a modern/friendly/approachable vibe rather than traditional/academic. My instinct would be to try to blend elements of your school's visual identity with some of the symbols/format of those other crests.
First idea. The mascot for the school is the Olympians so the olive branches kind of double up as a victory laurel type thing. Looks kind of like the orowheat logo?
The idea of this other one, I like a bit better. 'Student representation' was something that popped up several times during our talk, so the squiggly stuff at the bottom is 'supposed' to represent that as a mass of students with their arms raised.
Lastly, I polished up that first logo a bit, just for kicks. Not really feeling it at all anymore.
What do you guys think? Am I going in a good direction here?
:P
This:
reminds me a bit too much of a low end lending institution whose home loans are advertised as the best thing since sexual intercourse but in reality are a one way ticket to bankruptcy. Am I right?
So right.
even though I think of old school olympians and greece etc when i i think of olives branches.
But I think that the the typeface for most school related things when it comes to schools in america,
has a sport theme, ergo modern olympians etc. Ramble much.
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I don't think the crowd of people idea is going to work at logo size. For something that's likely to be printed on business cards or letterhead, it's just going to be too much tiny detail and will come out looking like the letters just have some sort of corrosion on the bottom. Maybe if you incorporated something simpler like 3 raised hands in silhouette?
Ok, I need to ask something. I am taking a drawing course at my CC, and I guess I imagined it would be a bit different than how it is turning out. For example, for the curtains above, the assignment was to draw the curtains in our classroom, and focus on using value to define form. After going through the critique, it seems like the actual assignment was: "apply value, make something interesting, also, look at these curtains for a while", because there was some seriously abstract/psychadelic shit that people came up with. People mention that they either got bored or frustrated with trying to draw the curtains so they just did their own thing. The professor praises these (some of them did look interesting) and encourages us to try different approaches if trying to accurately portray the subject is not working out. He walks around while we draw but avoids giving any feedback.
Meanwhile, I feel like I was the only one who was actually trying to draw straight up curtains, the way they looked, the "realistic approach". (Isn't that how you train your eye? by careful observation?) My shitty curtain drawing gets heaped praise. It seems like as long as there is consistency in approach, anything is fair game. It is a beginning drawing course, but I feel like I am walking out of a gigantic hippie circlejerk whenever I walk out of that classroom, and I feel like I am just paying to rent space to draw in. Please tell me I am crazy and closed minded, and I will suck it up.
Also, a wire sculpture I did for another class:
However, do you have a course syllabus? Are there objectives listed on it? Is there anything on there about training your eye or drawing realistically?
As with any college class, the people that eventually succeed in their work outside of the classroom will be the people that push themselves beyond the class.
Maybe I am imposing my own goals somewhat on this class. I'm just getting very frustrated because I feel like I'm not getting much out of it.
Edit: I'm not trying to say that stylized illustration is wrong, it's terrific, but I think you're going to be much better off if you are able to draw realistically. I think there are a lot of people that make amateur mistakes and make excuses like, "that's just my style." Stuff like short, scratchy line strokes might look okay to a beginner, but I think anyone with medium to high illustration skills can recognize those mistakes and differentiate stylized illustration from those mistakes.
that wire thing is awesome.
I bet you could have a lot of fun with light effects on that.
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