I am curious. What is your favorite color? Is there a specific shade you prefer? Why do you like it?

I love color. I love the way it makes me feel. I love reading about color symbolism and color psychology. I love studying the physics of color and how our eyes see it. I love coming up with fun, new color combinations. Yet, I cannot seem to pick a favorite color. Every color has something to offer me. Consequently, my favorite tends to change — from day to day and even minute to minute.

When I was a young girl, my favorite was Crayola’s Ultra Blue. I loved that crayon and always searched for a reason to use it. When I was in high school, I switched to forest green. Later, I went through a phase of blue and orange together, but after I started designing, all of that went out the window.

Designing has stretched the way I think of color. Now my favorite color depends on the purpose — the message I am trying to achieve, the mood I want to convey or even the mood I am in at the moment.

There are so many fascinating tidbits and theories about color. It is hard to tell if nature or nurture is the cause of how colors affect us. My guess, it is a combination of the two. For example, in nature, blue often serves as a warning that something is poisonous. Thus, many people have studied the effects of blue on appetite and many have concluded that blue actually suppresses appetite. Consequently, it may not be the best choice for advertising food. Think about it, how many fast food chains use blue? Immediately, I think of an abundance of red and yellow. I do not think that was an accident.

On the side of nurture, the way we have been raised influences how colors affect us. In many Western societies purple symbolizes royalty, blue represents calm and loyalty, red represents power and love, yellow serves as a warning or can make you happy, green speaks of nature and fertility…the list goes on. Every color out there has many meanings tied to it. Check out this entry in Wikipedia for an extensive list of colors and their associated symbolism. For those interested in design these two sites have some more insights: www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-meaning.html and www.precisionintermedia.com/color.html. Keep in mind that different societies think of color in different ways. If you want to represent royalty in China, you should think about using yellow.

What are your thoughts? Have you noticed particular colors change your mood? Do you automatically associate certain colors with certain things?

Filed under: Graphic Design || 3 Excellent Comments

No, this is not a tutorial. As a designer, I am concerned about what the general masses are learning about “design.” Free clipart. Free fonts. Free “design” software. Ugh, it is no wonder I constantly find myself cringing.

I recently attended a “Photoshop CS3 Power Tour” by Kelby Training. Overall, the seminar was useful — CS3 has some great new features. However, part of the way through the third class, I glanced at my coworker who was looking back at me with the same horrified expression that I imagine I had on my face.

“Customized Type Treatments for Logos”

You can imagine the quality of logo design tips taught in a Photoshop seminar. I do not think Photoshop is a good tool for dealing with vector art or type. I am also not a fan of three-dimensional logos in general. As a result, it makes me sad when somebody teaches a room of 300-400 people how to set type, deform it and then make it look like it was chiseled out of gold in Photoshop as a “customized type treatment for logos.”

Okay, I admit it, somewhere down the line I MAY come up with a need for such an effect. However, I do not see a need for it when designing a logo. I wonder how many people walked out of that class thinking, “Cool, I finally know what I’m going to do for my personal logo.”

If you do not understand why this bugs me so much, here you go:

• Creating a logo in Photoshop can bite you in the ass later. I am not a fan of logos built in pixel-based software. What if you need to make the logo really big for a sign, banner or billboard? When you increase the size, the logo will become pixelated. If you start with a vector logo, resizing issues should never be a problem.
• A logo should look good in black and white. At some point, you will print it that way. Maybe you will need to fax it to somebody, maybe you cannot afford to pay for full-color printing all the time or maybe somebody wants to make a copy of a letter you wrote on your company letterhead.
• A logo should look good really small. If you think you can make the above image one-inch wide and still understand the gold effect, I can tell you right now, you are wrong.
• You should not deface a font without a good reason. If you were paying attention, you probably noticed I stretched the ascenders and some of the serifs in the Gold logo. I only did it because it was one of the steps he showed us in the seminar. When I see stuff like this, I find myself wondering why the designer did it. Sometimes it is necessary to help with kerning. Sometimes it helps the design, but doing it just because you can really irks me.
• Beveling, embossing and drop shadows are my nemeses. Instances do exist where these treatments make sense. However, every wanna be designer seems to believe these are the coolest things ever invented when it comes to “design.”

These are just a few of my design pet peeves. What are some of yours? Have you successfully used the above technique in one of your designs? If so, I hope you will share.

Filed under: Critiques, Graphic Design || 9 Excellent Comments

Most people seem to believe logos are quick and easy to design. I often hear, “I don’t want to pay that much for my logo, I just need something simple that looks good small.” If you ask me, I think the best logos out there are simple and look good small. However it’s highly likely, these very same logos did not take only an hour to design.

To me, designing a logo is another form of brainstorming. I like to sketch everything — good ideas, bad ideas, even ideas that are out in left field. As soon as I get them down on paper, it makes room for more ideas.

Here are some of the sketches I did during my personal logo design process five years ago.

Early on I wanted to incorporate my name with a road. My favorite quote at the time was, “I take the road less traveled” by Robert Frost.

I started to experiment with font styles and other graphical images. Plus I began to notice the negative space between the “K” and “A”.

The puzzle pieces were meant to represent my love of puzzles and problem solving, but I couldn’t think of a really good way to make it work with my name. It didn’t quite make sense to me.

#45 was a happy accident. I was playing with the letter “b” by turning it into a circular arrow. When I looked at it longer I realized I saw a “k” in it too. So, I started experimenting with the idea more.

Eventually the mark made its way inside a circle. I am very happy with my end result. My logo not only encompasses my initials, but it also represents my thought process. It’s like what Saul Bass said, “Design is thinking made visual.” The circle and arrow symbolize how I consider my decisions and, if necessary, reevaluate a problem to create a new solution.

What are your thoughts? Do you feel my final logo is a good choice? Should I have considered any of the other directions more?

Filed under: Graphic Design || 13 Excellent Comments